Well Bill, I don’t think our fundamental disagreements about sex could possibly be illustrated any more plainly than by your response to my last post, so I won’t repeat them. But there is one point that you made where I think I can actually reassure you that our views are not so divergent as you think:
*You liberal people want to brainwash kids in to free love and anything goes as long as they are using protection. *
Actually, you’re 100% wrong about this. I (and most other liberals) would never advocate brainwashing kids into “free love” or “anything goes” or any kind of premarital sex. Though this hasn’t got through to you yet, we don’t even advocate teaching them that premarital sex is okay. We don’t want to teach them that it’s not okay, either: the point is that schools should not be making any moral pronouncements to kids about what the right sexual choices are for their future lives. (However, schools certainly should teach basic ethical values such as responsibility, maturity, forethought, consideration, and respect, which are useful in sexual situations as well. And it is certainly valid to emphasize the notion that sex is not a child’s game or an adolescent status symbol, but a serious part of adult life.)
What schools should be specifically teaching about sex are facts about reproduction and sexuality. How conception happens and how it is prevented are factual matters that, as I noted before, have huge consequences for almost all human beings at some point in their lives. Therefore, children should be taught these facts, and also the basic facts about pregnancy, birth, and parenthood (including the facts about the difficulties of teenage parenthood). The issue of whether or not unmarried people should ever put this knowledge into practice is not a fact, it is a moral judgement, and I do not think that public schools have any business espousing either side of the question. What kids should be told on that score, if anything, is merely that “this is a deeply personal issue that you will have to decide for yourself when you’re mature enough to deal with it.”
Similarly, sexually transmitted diseases, homosexuality, and masturbation are facts of human sexuality, and children should be taught about them. (And no, of course I’m not advocating explaining to them “this is the way you caress your own genitals, this is the way you insert your penis into a man’s anus”, etc.: only a hyperactive prurient imagination could believe that the “liberal agenda” champions such a thing! What we should say is more along the lines of:
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“Most people sometimes touch their own genitals for sexual pleasure. Many people have personal or religious convictions that oppose this practice, and it is not medically unhealthy to avoid it. However, it is also not medically unhealthy to engage in it, and it will not make you blind or insane”, etc.
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“Most people feel sexual attraction to members of the opposite sex, but somewhere between 3% and 10% of people are physically attracted primarily or only to members of the same sex. Their sexual activity therefore isn’t the sort of genital intercourse we explained to you last week, but involves other practices such as oral or anal sex. Many people have personal or religious convictions that same-sex sexual activity is wrong. However, it is not considered medically unhealthy, and homosexual attraction is not regarded by psychiatrists as a sign of mental illness or psychiatric disorders”, etc.)
This is not “brainwashing” kids into views you don’t agree with; this is merely refusing to brainwash them into the views you do agree with. People can have whatever personal or religious convictions they want to about sex, and we liberal types do not believe in teaching schoolchildren to disown their (or their parents’) personal or religious convictions. But neither do we believe that it’s appropriate to refrain from teaching schoolchildren the basic facts about these important subjects.
If that still seems too intrusive to you, as other posters have pointed out, in most places you can just exempt your child from sex education classes. Contrary to your belief, liberals do respect your right to teach your children about morality as you see fit. We simply don’t think that we have to refrain from teaching other children important facts just because you believe it’s immoral to know them.
And as for your claim that “liberal policies aren’t fixing the trouble kids are in,” when will you actually take a look at the studies that Gaudere has been knocking herself out providing cites for, that show that thorough and reliable sex-ed classes do have the effect of reducing teen sexual activity and corresponding problems such as teen parenthood and STD incidence in youth? As other posters have asked, when are you going to admit that, regardless of the truth of your personal moral convictions, your statements here have simply been wrong about the facts?
We’ve established this quite solidly already.