A Ugandan court has unbanned sex education

IN 2016 UGANDAN officials burst into the halls of Green Hill Academy, a highly regarded primary school in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. They were on a curious mission. The minister for ethics and integrity had ordered them to seize copies of Jacqueline Wilson’s “Love Lessons”, a book about how a 14-year-old girl called Prudence falls in love with her art teacher. Conservative Ugandans threw a fit, fretting that “erotic” and “distorted” books were brainwashing their children. Within months all forms of sex education were banned. Last November a court lifted the parliamentary ban and gave the education ministry homework—to write a new policy on how it will teach children about sex.The court case was not without surprises. Ismail Mulindwa, a senior official in the ministry, argued that teaching young people about sex could lead them to masturbate or become homosexual. (Presumably he thought these were bad things.) Conservative views on sex education start at the top. President Yoweri Museveni and his wife Janet, the minister of education, have long promoted celibacy as the best way to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Both are against condoms, arguing they promote promiscuity. And the first lady seems to think that contraceptive pills not only fail to prevent pregnancy but also erode morals, turning Ugandans into sex-crazed people who “have sex, take pills, conceive and abort”.