They might be seen that way, but they're not written that way.
As I said in a previous post, the standards present broad ideas that should be mastered, but do not go into detail about the actual curriculum (the way in which the standards are taught).
The point I've tried to make, not very successfully, is that the standards themselves are not a great concern so far as education goes. For the most part, individual teachers select the vehicles that will be used to teach the material. So, for example, if a teacher says he's assigning a sexually charged novel because it's required by the standard, that's a lie, and he should be held accountable.
You are referring to the simple standards themselves, when you say they don’t dictate content, but that is not how they are necessarily implemented at the state level.