IT'S NOT JUST THE YAHOOS AGAINST
AGGRESSIVE SEX-ED
By John Leo
May 15, 8:11 PM ET
Yahoo News
When covering a dispute over sex education in public schools, many
reporters know what to do. Just type that the fundamentalist yahoos are
at it again.
For all we know, editors have installed a special timesaving key on
newsroom computers so that the usual sex-ed news article pops out in 15
seconds or less. A classic example is the front-page Washington Post
piece for Saturday, May 7, dealing with a new pilot program in
Montgomery County, Md.
The reporters managed to associate the protests with national
right-wing Christian politics, the anti-evolution crusade, and
Dorothy's discovery in "The Wizard of Oz" that she wasn't in Kansas
anymore. (For a deft takedown of the bias in this piece, go to
oxblog.com and scroll down to the May 8 analysis "More Ignorant
Christian Fundamentalists?")
The school system withdrew the curriculum, for the current school term
at least, after a federal judge, Alexander Williams Jr., issued a
10-day restraining order on two First Amendment grounds. Those grounds
were viewpoint discrimination (the curriculum teaches "the moral
rightness of the homosexual lifestyle" to the exclusion of other
perspectives, the judge said) and state entanglement in religion. The
curriculum depicts the churches that endorse homosexuality as
theologically sound, while singling out Baptists and fundamentalists
for scorn. Churches differ, the curriculum says, but all agree that
Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. Why the state should involve
itself in telling us which religions are wrong and what Jesus said or
didn't say is obscure.
Resistance to anything-goes sexual preaching in the schools is
routinely depicted as a phenomenon of conservative Christians, but in
an analysis of health textbooks, Gilbert Sewall of the American
Textbook Council says that the sexual assumptions of the aggressive
"health lobby" offend lots of Americans of all faiths and none. Sewall
wants sex education to find a middle ground between abstinence-only
programs and the muscular "health lobby."
Even apart from church-state entanglement, the Montgomery curriculum is
out of line in dismissing moral claims as myths. On what basis can a
state institution tell parents and children that their morality is
faulty? In dealing with homosexuality, the job of the school is to
teach tolerance, not to disparage traditional views. Gays are our
neighbors and should be treated with respect.
Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, one of two local groups opposing
the curriculum, makes this point clearly. "Teaching respect for persons
with same-sex attraction is appropriate and right," the group says.
"But demanding affirmation of a homosexual orientation and behavior
goes beyond the ethic of tolerance." The curriculum does in fact teach
approval of homosexuality. Understandably, gays want that approval, but
it can't be imposed by state schools.
Much of the most contested material is tucked away in the teachers'
resources guide. Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum complains that
health teachers did not mention or show the teachers' materials at
parent meetings. "When asked about them," the group said, "the standard
answer was they were 'for the teachers only to use and not of interest
to the parents.'"
There's a reason why so many sex-ed specialists slide into
indoctrination almost without noticing what they are doing. The
programs are often prepared with heavy input from Planned Parenthood,
gay groups, and the Sex Information and Education Council of the United
States, all of which operate on assumptions that much of the public
does not share.
One assumption is that sex is simply a smorgasbord of choice, and it
doesn't really make any difference whom you have sex with or how, as
long as you have orgasms and use contraceptives. "Oral, anal and
vaginal sex" all require condoms, says an earnest young woman in a
video (since withdrawn from the curriculum) that demonstrates the
proper way to place a condom on a cucumber. Elsewhere, the curriculum
says, "Sex play with friends of the same gender is not uncommon during
early adolescence." Whatever.
The strangest aspect of the Montgomery curriculum is the insistence
that students should ponder their gender identity. In plain English,
this means boys should examine whether they really want to be boys, and
girls should wonder if they should be girls. This is a current
obsession in the world of sex-ed, apparently inserted here to
accommodate transvestites and transsexuals.
The good news is that local parents and their friends were able to make
a solid case, take it to a reasonable judge, and get the county to back
down, at least for now. It's a model of how dissenters in other
communities should act.
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