SVP wants to ban gender-bending in Basel schools

Sarah Regez, President of the initiative committee and party leadership member of the Young SVP Switzerland, was present at the handover. A total of 1705 signatures were collected for the initiative, as the canton announced on Facebook. A total of 1500 were required.

The unformulated cantonal initiative wants "clear, understandable and legible language" to be used in schools. The use of "special characters within individual words" should be banned. It also calls for the spelling "Schülerinnen und Schüler" or, where appropriate, the generic masculine "Schüler" to be set as the standard.

Accusations of ideology and indoctrination

In an accompanying media release, the initiative committee accuses the canton of ideologizing the language by using "gender language". This is not compatible with the legally prescribed "neutral, apolitical teaching". Elementary school is "no place for ideological experiments", Regez was quoted as saying.

Peter Riebli, President of the Basel SVP and member of the district council, who is also on the initiative committee, went one step further and spoke of indoctrination. Children must be protected from this.

The initiative launched in the fall of 2023, known as the "Child Protection Initiative" for short, caused an uproar with its poster. It featured a monstrous arm wearing an armband consisting of Pride flags and a typographic star, which appeared to be reaching out to children who were reading.

Failed in the city of Zurich

It is not the first initiative of its kind. In November 2024, the population of the city of Zurich rejected the almost identical "Bye bye gender star" initiative with 57% of the vote. This initiative attacked the administration's language regulations, in which the internal I ("LehrerInnen") was replaced by the gender star (Lehrer*innen) or neutral formulations such as "Lehrpersonen" in 2022.

The Zurich City Council defended itself against the initiative and wrote that the language regulations had proven their worth.