Following the scandal in the Ss. Cyril and Methodius elementary school in Skopje, where first graders were given materials representing same sex families, both the school and “independent fact-checkers” are trying to defend the program and insist that the parents misunderstood the material.
The leaflet that was distributed portrays two men with a child and two women as a couple. The images were taken from an LGBT friendly material available online and the picture of the two men is marked “two dads and their son”. The program in the school was introduced under former Education Minister Mila Carovska, who worked for a far left wing NGO group and has strongly supported introducing LGBT friendly sexual education in the public schools.
Still, some of the parents who reported the material and shared it online afterwards apologized to the teachers and said that they misunderstood the material. The school, but also the Vistinomer fact-checker – ran by a left wing NGO group – now insist that the material portrays a father with this two children – presenting the other man, who is incidentally of a different race, as the older son of the single father. The all women couple, according to the school, is a mother and a daughter.
The school’s explanation and the “fact-check” caused widespread ridicule on the social media. Still, Vistinomer insists that the image of the gay couple with a son, given to first graders, was “maliciously taken out of context”.