Posted on 06/06/2005 8:35:07 AM PDT by wagglebee
Last month, a federal judge found the Montgomery County School Board's sex-education pilot plan in Maryland so flagrantly in violation of the First Amendment that he had to hand down a restraining order. (Either that or hand in his gavel forever.) With the sex-ed plan's legal route blocked, the school board ditched the whole idea for now, along with the citizens committee that waved it through in the first place, despite plenty of flapping red flags.
OK, there were two really big red flags. Judge Alexander Williams Jr. called one "viewpoint discrimination" because, as he wrote, the new curriculum for 10th graders was supposed to teach that "homosexuality is a natural and morally correct lifestyle -- to the exclusion of other perspectives." Also outrageous was the way the curriculum promoted certain religions to the exclusion of others. In touting "the moral rightness of the homosexual lifestyle," the judge wrote, the curriculum suggested that "the Baptist Church's position on homosexuality is theologically flawed," and reminiscent of the racial prejudice of the segregation era. At the same time, the curriculum applauded Reform Jews, Unitarians and Quakers for promoting an activist homosexual political agenda. If you're wondering when religious prejudice or favoritism became a subject fit for the public schools to preach -- I mean, teach -- the answer is never. And that's what the court ruled.
But imagine if the school board had been smart enough to reel in those First Amendment red flags on which this particular sex-ed course was hung out to dry. Would Montgomery County teens be sitting down to become both "informed" and desensitized by the course's instructional video on how to apply a condom to a cucumber? Would these kids be reflecting on their curriculum's no doubt scholarly treatment of all manner of sexual experimentation? In this hyper-sexualized culture of ours, I'm afraid the answer has to be yes.
But kudos to the parents in Montgomery County who banded together to stop this sex-ed train on its way out of the station. After it retools, the same basic train will undoubtedly chug away in the fall. My question is, do we like where it's going, and, if not, how do we get off?
It's a track we've been stuck on for a long time -- since 1930, in fact, when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals "forever changed the course of obscenity law," writes Rochelle Gurstein in her illuminating book "The Repeal of Reticence" (Hill and Wang, 1998). It was then, in an acclaimed case, that the court ruled that sex-education material could no longer be considered illicit. According to Judge Augustus Hand, "accurate information, rather than mystery and curiosity, is better in the long view and is less likely to occasion lascivious thoughts than ignorance and anxiety."
But, as Gurstein points out, "accurate information" did more than remedy "ignorance and anxiety." After all, she explains, "ignorance and anxiety" were only part of the human condition. "Equally important," she writes, "were considerations of the inherent fragility of intimate life, the tone of public conversation, standards of taste and morality, and reverence owed to mysteries. These defining characteristics of the reticent sensibility had been lost."
"Lost" isn't the word. Something more forceful (pulverized? mutilated?) is in order to describe the, well, fallen condition of a world in which -- just to take a random example -- a new Simon & Schuster teen title, "Rainbow Party," that recounts a tale of an oral group sex party for the "young adult" set. (Thanks, Bill Clinton.) I'm both happy and resentful to report that so-called rainbow parties -- reportedly a real-life trend -- are a new one on me: happy that I've lived multiple decades without an inkling; resentful that I'm now and forever stuck with the knowledge. Who needs it?
More important -- what does making such berserk sexual adventurism a mass-cultural commonplace do to the individual human psyche? Are we better off so limitlessly coarsened? Are our children? Certainly, the publishing industry is better off.
According to The New York Times, publisher Judith Regan, among others, has capitalized on sex-in-the-citified sensibilities to inaugurate a "growing and increasingly racy genre of how-to sex books ... extolling the excitement that could come from oral sex, anal sex, fetishism and S&M."
So glad to hear what now constitutes "racy." What we really need, though, are some new definitions of pornographic, obscene, lewd -- categories the courts told us decades ago don't really exist. I think they do. And I think we've wallowed in them long enough.
Over my dead body would any child of mine attend this class.
Sex education should be banned in schools. Adults should not be talking to unrelated children about sexual matters. There is no way a curriculum can be devised that is acceptable to every parent. The evidence shows that STDs and pregnancies increased with the inclusion of sex education in our schools.
Sex education is a failed program that should be ended.
YES,we should demand that these EVIL sex ed programs be stoped ASAP.who in the H
And who pray tell is going to teach the children about sex? The parents? Most parents don't even mention the word sex in front of their kids much less attempt to try and educate them properly at home.
I disagree with your "evidence" that STDs and pregnancies increase with the inclusion of sex ed in the schools.
STDs http://www.cdc.gov/std/2004STDConf/MediaRelease/Trends.htm
"United States Pregnancy Rates for Teens, 15-19
(The Alan Guttmacher Institute)
Updated February 2004
Synopsis: According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the U.S. teen pregnancy rate for teens 15-19 decreased 28 percent between 1990 and 2000. After reaching 117 pregnancies per 1,000 females ages 15-19 in 1990, the pregnancy rate has decreased to 84 pregnancies per 1,000 females ages 15-19. The pregnancy data include births, abortions, and miscarriages." http://www.teenpregnancy.org/resources/data/prates.asp
And here is the argument from both sides, http://www.americanvoice2004.org/health/sexeducation.html
If parents don't have the balls to teach their children the facts of life AT HOME, instead of at school, then they are not doing their job.
Sex Ed in school is a bunch of malarky.
Sex Ed started long before 1990. By then, the damage was done. Rates of new infection are falling because so many people are already infected.
While you intended to debate me, you actually confirmed my point: There is no way a public-school system can devise a curriculum for our children that would be acceptable to both of us.
I want a program that says don't do it because you'll get pregnant or infected or viewed as cheap trash and others want instruction on how to lube up children for gay sex, apparently, because that is what is going on.
No actually the rates are falling because more people are taking precautions or not having sex.
I sent a link detailing the outline of the history of sex ed. did you miss it?
Not all schools have a program and not all schools have a gay-friendly agenda. What the parents in Massachusetts and elsewhere have done it prevent such an agenda from being imposed on their children.
You haven't answered my question: Who will teach the children if their parents won't and the schools don't?
The other kids in the neighborhood can teach kids what they don't know. Kids with a third-grade education know how to use the library. I'm fine with that. What I'm opposed to is some other adult with a different value system talking about sex with my children. If I was a liberal, I wouldn't want a sin-based approach and as a conservative I don't want a morality-free approach. The public-school system can't satisfy the different constituencies and shouldn't try.
Also, the school day and year is limited. There is plenty of evidence that American children are behind kids from other countries in math and science so drop the non-educational social engineering stuff and teach more math.
I know the history of sex ed, it's more pregnancy, more disease and more tolerance of sin and perversion.
Ah, but see there's using a "fact" based approach, leaving both religion and "social engineering" out of it. And by the way, I wouldn't have wanted my kids learning about sex from the "neighborhood" kids and 3rd graders need some way of getting to the library.
Your "fear based" {I know the history of sex ed, it's more pregnancy, more disease and more tolerance of sin and perversion.) approach won't help anyone get the facts.
You apparently think these courses can be taught value-free with just "facts."
What's the old expression?
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not.
"OK, little Jimmy, if you and Bobby are going to have anal sex make sure you use a condom and lube."
So, there's a "fact-based" instruction. Are you going to tell me that's value-free?
The public-school system is not the place to be discussing these matters. If parents don't educate their children in this area, it should not the responsibility of other taxpayers and the school system to have educational resources (time and money) re-directed.
More than anything else, these programs have not had an effect in reducing pregnancy and disease if you go back to when they were initiated, not some other convenient, interim baseline time like 1995.
Twist and twist and twist, you still haven't made your case. Care to provide real-time figures to back up your claims?
You have access to these numbers, you provide them. What was the rate of pregnancy for 1980, 1970 (after sex ed began in schools), and 1960 (before sex ed)?
Nice the way you ignored my example of fact-based teaching and the way you ignored my argument that resources would be better spent teaching things we need, like math and science.
And, don't forget, the cost of these sex-ed programs could be eliminated in the interest of bringing down property taxes.
No such thing. Attempting to "leave morality out of it" implies that there exists a context in which it is proper to consider sexual issues apart from morality. I reject that view.
IOW, for Christian social conservatives (like me), a '"fact" based approach" that does not present sexuality within the framework of Christian moral teach directly implies that those teachings are not "facts" -- which is precisely what I believe them to be.
A public school is required to be religiously neutral. For me, as a Catholic, sex is essentially a religious act, because it confirms and strengthens the sacrament of matrimony. A public school has no more business teaching my kids about sex than they do teaching my kids about the meaning of Holy Communion.
Incidentally, I'm very committed to not shirking my responsibility as a father to educate my kids about these issues, and am investing a fair amount of both time and money in doing so in a structured and planned manner. I recognize that many parents aren't. One thing that churches need to do, instead of trying to usurp parental responsibility in this area, is to educate parents that they have a sacred duty before God to educate their kids about Christian sexual morality.
I don't disagree with your statements but looking at the wider scope of things, your children have the priviledge that many don't in the fact that you are active in their lives. It's fine to own up to your responsibility but as a Christian we have a wider responsibility to our world. A simple fact based sex ed class can be taught in any first year biology class in middle or highschool and can be touched on in the lower grades. Fact based meaning the simple biological differences of men and women, how those differences function and what happens when you put those two differences together. Since homosexuality is a biological abnormality, it can be presented as such or left out. What is the problem, other than apparently I live in a dream world, with that?
So the sex drugs and rock and roll era was the fault of sex education? I think not! As for resources being better spent, what good is math and science when you're dying of AIDS, syphilis or someother mutant STD? You have totally overlooked the fact that many children DO NOT have actively involved parents or parents at all and they desperately need to get their knowledge from somewhere? Can you fill the gap?
Let's go back to the beginning. It is my position that it is not the taxpayers' responsibility to "close the gap" left by another parent not instructing his/her child in sex education. That conduct in itself may be a parent's choice of how to handle it rather than a case of neglect. My parents said nothing and I did just fine, picked up everything I needed to know on the playground, car backseats, etc.
Wait, I'm wrong. My dad did give me some instruction: Get a girl pregnant and I'll kill you; there's some pretty foul stuff out there if you're not careful; And, not all homos are pussies, never go to a guy's house if you suspect he's a homo.
We need a major curriculum, including teachers with benefits into retirement to teach that?
I have not overlooked anything, I oppose you in your nanny-state solutions.
So we see the results of "your" education in backseats etc. Just what we need now is more kids "learning" in the backseat, on the playground, in the "neighborhood". Obviously that kind of education now will KILL them. I oppose your uncaring attitude, what worked for you however long ago it was, won't and isn't the solution today.
Quite a good point. It's central to the discussion of all PUBLIC school curriculum's.
"I oppose you in your nanny-state solutions. "
Aside from the many ridiculous comments in this post, the public school system is a subset of the nanny-state. It's for the GENERAL WELFARE. You dislike Public School performance today? Without it, and no involvement from parents, you'd have TENS of MILLIONS illiterate dregs flooding you communities.
At least you have a little common sense on the subject.
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