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After Brown last week said he never opposed sex ed, the emails released Monday remain relevant both because they counter his recent comments and because they reveal a divide from the social conservative base of his party. The emails prove Brown did promise, at least in private, to repeal the health and physical education curriculum the Liberals unveiled in February 2015. The sex ed portions of that document, which mandate teaching anatomy to kids in grade 1 and which include limited references to gender identity and anal sex, have been controversial. After the Liberals backed away from plans to introduce it under then-premier Dalton McGuinty, Premier Kathleen Wynne implemented it in February 2015 — creating an opportunity to mobilize conservative voters that the PC party and Brown hoped to exploit.

He’s since changed his mind and argued the move is proof he is the “pragmatic Progressive Conservative” he promised to be.

“If the price to be paid is that my political opponents will say I’ve ‘flip-flopped,’ so be it. If you want a rigid ideologue as premier, vote for someone else,” he writes.

“I have since come to the conclusion that significant opposition to the curriculum was rooted in a refusal to accept LGBT elements into the curriculum,” he wrote, adding he was also wrong to vote in 2006 to reopen the same-sex marriage debate in Canada.

Like many people, I’ve been shown countless times in my life by friends, family, and those I love how wrong I was to take that view. Today I strongly support marriage equality,” Brown writes. “It doesn’t matter who you are or who you love and no government has any business saying it does.”