When Sex Ed Becomes Porn 101

Heritage Foundation ^ | 8/27/03 | Robert E. Rector

[Jean S]

It’s “Back To School” time again, and here’s the first pop quiz. No, it’s not for the kids. It’s for parents, and they have to answer only one question: Do you know what your children are learning in sex-education classes? If you’re like most parents, the answer is no. But if the program is billed as “abstinence-based,” you probably don’t feel particularly concerned. The important thing, as far as you’re concerned, is that your kids are being taught to say “no” to sex.

But are they? The fact is, nearly all of the government-funded abstinence-based or “abstinence-plus” programs delivered in schools nationwide contain little, if any, reference to abstinence. They may mention it briefly, but it’s often presented as something that (wink, wink) kids in the “real world” will ignore.

Far worse, though, is what abstinence-plus programs do contain: explicit demonstrations of contraceptive use -- especially condoms -- and direct encouragement to experiment sexually.

This despite the fact that parents consistently say they don’t want their children to be exposed to such messages. A recent Zogby poll found that three out of every four parents disapproved or strongly disapproved of abstinence-plus curricula. About the same number say they want their children to receive an authentic abstinence education.

More likely, though, their children are being exposed to programs such as “Focus on Kids” (which, like other abstinence-plus programs, is heavily promoted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Kids are told, among other things, to go on a “condom hunt” to local stores to survey the various types of family planning methods and ask: “What’s the cheapest price for three condoms?”

Focus on Kids also has teachers stage “condom races” between teams of students. (Warning: Explicit language ahead.) “Each person on the team must put the condom on the dildo or cucumber and take it off,” the program says. “The team that finishes first wins.” But intercourse isn’t the only topic on the agenda. Teachers are told to have the kids “brainstorm ways to be close. The list may include … body massage, bathing together, masturbation, sensuous feeding, fantasizing, watching erotic movies, reading erotic books and magazines …”

Unfortunately, Focus on Kids isn’t the only program that takes such an approach. In “Becoming a Responsible Teen,” or B.A.R.T., kids get an education not only in condoms but in lubricants: “If you were trying to find something around the house, or at a convenience store, to use as a [lubricant] substitute, what would be safe? Why? … Some ‘grocery store’ lubricants are safe to use if they do not contain oil: grape jelly, maple syrup and honey.”

Then there’s the ironically named “Be Proud! Be Responsible!” program, which lists several ways teachers can show kids as young as 13 “how to make condoms fun and pleasurable.” For example, “once you and a partner agree to use condoms … go to the store together. Buy lots of different brands and colors. Plan a special day when you can experiment. Just talking about how you’ll use all of those condoms can be a turn-on.”

And who knows where you’ll be when the mood strikes? Perhaps that’s why the CDC-approved “Reducing the Risk” program advises teachers to tell kids, while they’re shopping for condoms, to “put down the store’s hours, too, because it may be important to know where to get protection at some odd hours.” There are also family-planning clinics, of course: Students who might worry about what Mom and Dad think are told, “you do not need a parent’s permission … no one needs to know that you are going to a clinic.”

It helps to engage in some “role playing,” too, according to the “Be Proud! Be Responsible!” program. Two females, “Tyceia” and “Felicia,” are told to “begin negotiating safer sex” together. They’ve been “sexually active with males in the past,” but now they can “accept” their bisexuality. Male students aren’t excluded: “Gerald” is told that “Allen has never used condoms. You want to have sex with him, but not without using condoms.”

It’s bad enough that these sex-ed programs hide under an abstinence-plus label while completely undermining what most parents want for their children. But when they encourage indiscriminate condom use and sexual experimentation, they’re sending kids a troubling message -- that we expect them to be sexually active and approve of it, provided it’s “safe.” And it’s all billed to you, the taxpayer. Is that what we want?

Robert Rector is a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org), a Washington-based public policy research institute.

Distributed nationally on the Knight-Ridder Tribune wire

[DoughtyOne]

Other than having kids pair off in beds and do the deed, I can't imagine these classes being much worse. The homosexual portions are incredibly offensive to me.

[mattdono]

Is it just me or are these people totally crazy? I don't think that the word "dildo" is ANY appropriate use in a school, even in a "sex education" class.

Maybe I am becoming and old fogie, but I don't remember this type of encouragement in high school. I remember having to carry around a drained egg for 2 weeks to simulate the care that would be needed if I were stupid enough to have sex, get a girl pregnant, and have a baby.

I am certain that isn't taught anymore; rather, the girls are shown how to have sex and simply directed to the nearest abortion clinic.

This is insanity.

[Porterville]

Sad.

[TalBlack]

It's over, folks. There is a bit of inertial roll left but, basically, for the culture, it's over. And culture being literally the manufactory of the person/citizen...well it's over.

You wouldn't believe what you would see if you could look a mere five years into the future. You wouldn't recognize your own nation. Interesting times ahead.

[Archangelsk]

A couple of things. Here is the theoretical frame work for Focus on Kids:

Providing opportunities to consider the personal and social rewards (pressures) of engaging in sexual risk-taking behavior. Through all its varied learning activities, youth learn to create positive feelings about themselves without engaging in risky behaviors. In addition, in Session Two, youth dispel the myth that all peers approve of risky behavior.

Examining the health risks involved in unprotected sexual behavior. Sessions Two, Three, Four and Seven increase youth's sense of vulnerability to becoming infected with HIV and their awareness about the difficulties of living with HIV.

Identifying the alternatives to sexual risk-taking behavior. Through the SODA Decision Making model, the Family Tree Activities, and role play activities, youth learn to consider the alternatives to risk-taking behavior and practice decision making, communication and condom use skills necessary to act on healthy decisions.

And here is the picture of the guy who wrote this:

Now not to judge a book by its cover, but I wouldn't trust my children around this feral, rat-like-looking, John Holmes-mustache-wearing individual.

[mattdono]

The homosexual portions are incredibly offensive to me.

I agree. And that brings up something else that I knew we have been bantering around lately: why is everything "gay" this and "gay" that? What is going on?

It seems that the "gay lobby" (read: almost every person in show business...at least it seems) has made it chic to be gay. What I find weird and (of course) 100% hypocritical is that gay people talk about being born this way or it being a "lifestyle" choice. Ok, so why is it somehow "wrong", "uncool", or whatever to be a heterosexual?

1. You don't have to be gay to dress nice.
   
   I go to Men's Wearhouse and they hook me up.
   
   
2. You don't have to be gay to keep up your appearance.
   
   I get my haircut every two weeks and I shower twice a day, brush my teeth twice a day, and shave or trim my goatee every day.
   
   
3. You don't have to be gay to have a stylin' apartment/house/etc.
   
   That is what I have a wife for now, but paid an interior decorator to do when I was single.
   
   

So, why is there a whole show dedicated to having a bunch of "queers" (their word) help out a straight guy?

Why is it that you have to be a homo all of the sudden? And, why do young people, who are having a hard enough time as it is figuring out who they are and what they are about, have to be further confused?

If their statements are true (you are born gay), then you can figure that out on your own with time. If it is a lifestyle choice, why be forced to make (or at least confront) the choice at 13? These people can't make a decision on what the best way to parallel park a car is, but you are asking them to chose whether they are gay or not?

This is insane.

</rant> </ramble>

[DoughtyOne]

Along with your take on this, I also ask, with homosexuals being about 2% of the total population, why does every television series or movie have to have touch on the homosexual topic. Here's a clue marketing boys, if there's a homosexual in the subject matter, I'm not going to be watching. Go ahead and waste your advertising dollars if you like.

[sd-joe]

No, don't tell me his name is E Rector.

Erector - a muscle capable of raising a body part.

[First Amendment]

It’s bad enough that these sex-ed programs hide under an abstinence-plus label while completely undermining what most parents want for their children. But when they encourage indiscriminate condom use and sexual experimentation, they’re sending kids a ***troubling message*** -- that we expect them to be sexually active and approve of it, provided it’s “safe.” And it’s all billed to you, the taxpayer. Is that what we want?

Understatement of the year. The message is more than "troubling". The secular humanist-moral relativist- whore-mongers want to turn the country into a free-for-all brothel. They are also recruiting future abortion clients. Anyone who doesn't home-school their kids or send them to a decent and trustworthy private school is courting disaster. Not every kid sent to gov't school will get ruined but the odds are very good. Kids are notoriously "peer influenced" - and DO soak up the atmosphere, values and what is being taught. That's why the homo and hedonism promoters want to get at them young. If they waited until the kids were in college, they'd have a much harder time destroying them.

[milemark]

"having kids pair off in beds and do the deed"

Soon to be part of the course, I'm sure.

[First Amendment]

You wouldn't believe what you would see if you could look a mere five years into the future. You wouldn't recognize your own nation. Interesting times ahead.

The only taboos left are incest and pedophilia (and profs and psychologists, supported by NAMBLA and their brothers-in-arms the ACLU are nomalizing that as we speak), bestiality, necrophilia, and cannibalism. Everything is else is normal, natural, fine, and okey-dokey.

Even ten years ago most people would have shuddered with horror to see what now is commonly accepted and seen on TV. It's called desensitizing the sheeple. Or putting the frog in cold water and gradually turning up the heat.

The only solution I can see short of major catastrophe of some sort is a strong religious revival among a lot of people.

[Archangelsk]

And Rector is just too close to rectum if you ask me.....lol

[EdReform]

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[mtbopfuyn]

There's always these shocking sex ed articles but I've yet to see someone who's kid was ever in such a class. I haven't heard of such here and I'm "one of those moms" who's at the school regularly. If these classes do exist I can't imagine a couple parents sitting in wouldn't cause the board to change curriculum pronto.

[Archangelsk]

I agree, Rector's article is so full of holes it makes it a screed of bad information. My kids have never been exposed to this and Rector sounds like he has his own personal agenda going for him.

I am always leery of guys who vent their outrage on these matters because it seems they can think of nothing else. My question is why are they so preoccupied with it?

[drhogan]

in my daughter's health class a few years ago they did practice putting condoms on cucumbers. (this is in Northport, NY, which is a pretty liberal area.) i don't know what else they were taught, because my daughters tend to be pretty closed-mouth about these things.
the author of the article should have provided more specific information about how many high schools are doing the things he describes, and he should have provided references. i suspect that this stuff is going on in more liberal communities, but it may not be as widespread as he suggests.
i doubt if anyone who writes about this stuff (on either side) will give us an unbiased account.

[des]

Those queer eye guys on the show don't look so good, either.

[Hildy]

I don't know...it seems to me that the allure of sex is taken away when some geeky teacher is putting a condom on a cucumber! LOL...really, think about it. It seems pretty absurd.