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Wednesday, July 17, 2013

What's Wrong with "Comprehensive" Sex Education

For one, it's too comprehensive. Once upon a time, it was more strictly biological. Now it's used a tool to complete the sexual revolution. The Public Discourse has a good take-down of modern sex-education, and how it traces its roots to a bunch of frauds and quacks (Kinsey, Calderone, and Money) whose research was dubious at best. Kinsey's explicit goal was not to educate society, but rather to propagandize it and change it (at the time, his research was rejected by most reputable scientists but widely disseminated by the publishers of "popular" opinion). A few fisked excerpts, then my comments:
Once upon a time, sex education was a simple biology lesson. Students learned the facts of life, and, with those facts, that sex is part of something bigger, called marriage. Teachers explained that this was the moral and healthy way to live.
 In those days, people understood that men and women are different, and that their union is unique, unlike any other relationship. It went without saying that boys grew up to become men, and girls, women. 
 There were only two sexually transmitted diseases, and having one was a serious matter. Certain behaviors were not normal; individuals who practiced them needed help, and a child’s innocence was precious. 
Things have changed. 
 There used to be only two STD's. Now there are myriad uncounted STIs. How's that sexual revolution working out for ya? And remember, we can't turn back the clock.
Now we have comprehensive sexuality education. It includes discussion of identity, gender, reproductive rights, and discrimination. Children learn that they’re sexual from birth, and that the proper time for sexual activity is when they feel ready. They’re taught that they have rights to pleasure, birth control, and abortion.
The terms husband and wife aren’t used, the union of man and woman is one of several options, and morality? Well, that’s judging, and judging is not allowed.
You won’t find much biology in sexuality education, but there’s voluminous information on the varieties of sexual expression, the pros and cons of different contraceptives and abortions, and the harms of gender stereotypes.
Gender itself is a complicated matter. A boy might turn into a man, a woman, or something else. A girl might feel she was born in the wrong body, and want her breasts removed. This is all normal, children learn....And childhood innocence? Forget it! Material created for children makes most adults uncomfortable. On websites recommended to students, nothing is taboo—sadomasochism, polyamory, and what were once called “deviant” behaviors . . . they’re all good.
Here is why conservatives are suspicious of "comprehensive" sex-education, in a nutshell.  This is (literally) Brave New World material, and it represents so many lies, so much propaganda being forced down our children's throats. Oh, but remember, it's conservatives forcing our morality down other people's throats. When they do it, it's called "broadening their horizons" or "opening their minds" or some other euthemistic nonsense.

Modern sex ed began in the sixties. It was based on Alfred Kinsey’s model of human sexuality. Thanks to the brilliant and courageous work of Dr. Judith Reisman, we now know that Kinsey was both a fraud and a deeply disturbed individual.
For Kinsey, it was anything goes when it came to sexuality, and I mean anything. He believed, for example, that pedophiles were misunderstood, and their punishments unjust. “Sexuality is not an appetite to be curbed,” Kinsey insisted. He taught that, and he lived it....
Kinsey was afflicted at his core. He was a depraved human being, and his emotional illness expressed itself through his sexuality. He was consumed by a grotesque, debilitating obsession with a wide range of abnormal behaviors—I’ll spare you the details, but I doubt very much that in all the 62 years of Kinsey’s miserable life he knew even one day of what we would consider healthy sexuality.
Alfred Kinsey had a dream. He would prove to the world—and himself—that his lifestyle was normal. Average. Typical.
It was society that was at fault, with its religions, moral codes, and restrictions. Society made people feel guilty for following their natural urges, and that was unhealthy. Kinsey’s dream was to free people from those destructive institutions—to free the “human animal.” He did thousands of interviews, crunched the numbers, and concluded that most people practiced forbidden sexual behaviors. The average mom and dad were living a double life, just like he was.
His conclusions were widely questioned by leading scientists, but the criticism didn’t seem to matter. The popular press accepted Kinsey’s reports, and his books were best-sellers. A revolution was spawned and western culture transformed.
But his research was fundamentally flawed. His samples were too small and the demography was badly skewed. He excluded some populations and focused on others—most notably, imprisoned felons. His subjects were preselected, since he relied on volunteers for his data.

Enter our first villain. Others followed. Today, they are myriad, often well-heeled and well-respected. But in the end, nothing has changed.
What’s so astonishing is that these men, these very disturbed men, using fraudulent data and theories that have been discredited, succeeded in transforming much of society. Today’s sexuality education is based on their teachings.
Once I understood who the founders were—Kinsey, Calderone, Pomeroy, Money, and others—I understood how we got to today’s “comprehensive sexuality education.” I knew how we had reached today’s madness.
It came from disturbed individuals with dangerous ideas—radical activists who wanted to create a society that would not only accept their pathology, but celebrate it!
These men were pedophiles. It was in their interest to see children as miniature adults who enjoyed sexual contact, and had the right to consent to it, without other adults, or the law, interfering.
Again, this is why conservatives are so suspicious of comprehensive sex education. We've already seen some of this come to head, for example the Catholic Church's widely publicized sex-abuse scandal, and (for those paying attention) in the various wider but less-publicized sex abuse crises facing virtually every other institution which works with minors (from other religious organizations to the thoroughly secular public schools system).

I'm not going to use this post to advocate for abstinence-only sex education, or abstinence-based sex education: these two systems are also flawed in their own way, the latter more than the former, and neither nearly so much so as comprehensive sex education. All three are ultimately forms of indoctrination rather than education, though abstinence-only can at least claim to be indoctrinating for the good of the children.

What I would advocate is some return to focus a bit more on the (hard) science of sex--biology, some discussion of the diseases involved and how they are transmitted--and if it can be done in an honest manner, how these various diseases arose. (Hint: it's not for lack of contraception in general nor condoms in particular, which was neither so widely available nor so efficacious in 1950 when there were two STDs as today when there are two dozen common STIs). The straightforward biological (and historical) facts of the matter are things which might plausibly be taught with impugning the moral authority of the parents. It goes far enough that it could credibly convince a teenager that maybe sex should wait, or that maybe he should use a condom, without necessarily biasing him to either of these two moral options

That biasing should come primarily from parents with secondary support from religious leaders. It will unfortunately also come in part form peers, which with the schools become the de facto primary sources of "moral biasing" when parents and preachers abdicate on this point. In any case, it should be obvious that "comprehensive sex education" is meant to be "thorough sex indoctrination," with an emphasis on getting the poor kids to give up their innocence before their time is come.


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