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Jonathan Mark: Israel's Response Is Disproportionate
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Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Chanukah: 'Give me Judaism or give me death'
Michael B. Oren: A crisis and an opportunity
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Rabbi Yonason Goldson: When the past meets the future
Caroline B. Glick: Iran and Hamas do Christmas
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Rabbi Dovid Zauderer: Judaism's Santa problem
The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman CHANUKAH FORK-FINGER FOOD FEAST
Dec. 23, 2008
Caroline B. Glick: Repeating failure in Gaza
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Rabbi Boruch Leff: Too many Jews today are missing the intended purpose of one of Judaism's most beloved holidays
Barry Rubin: Liar, liar, pants on cease-fire
Dec. 19, 2008
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Final Battlefield
Caroline B. Glick: Betting on a dead horse
Dec. 18, 2008
The Kosher Gourmet
by Steve Petusevsky: Juicy Chef's hella top, hella bottom, hallelujah in the middle
Craig Crossman : More gifts for geeks --- and those who love them
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Dion Nissenbaum: Israel kicks out outrageously biased UN official
Craig Crossman : Gifts for geeks --- and those who love them
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Jonathan Rosenblum: The Gift of Joy
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Uncle Shariah
Dec. 15, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
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Barry Rubin: What they say isn't what you hear
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Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Can the Bible be a secular language?
Caroline B. Glick: What a PM Netanyahu faces from Washington
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Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Our role in the Divine's global corporation, World Inc.
The Kosher Gourmet
by Steve Petusevsky: A retro-tasting pareve pot pie made with a light hand
Dec. 10, 2008
Rabbi Paysach J. Krohn: Groom admits he was caught "red handed"
Kara McGuire: No money for gifts? No problem
Dec. 9, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Can I make my boss treat me fairly?
Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Next Steps in the Indo-Pakistani Crisis
Dec. 8, 2008
Rabbi Avi Shafran: 'Chanukah Bush' flap and graciousness
Mark Steyn: Jews get killed, but Muslims feel vulnerable
Dec. 5, 2008
Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Truth --- The Key to Gratitude
Jeff Jacoby: UN's obsession is grotesque and Orwellian
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
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Jewish World Review
June 6, 2005
/ 28 Iyar, 5765
Searching for accurate information in sex education
By
Diana West
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Last month, a federal judge found the Montgomery County School Board's
sex-education pilot plan in Maryland so flagrantly in violation of the
First Amendment that he had to hand down a restraining order. (Either
that or hand in his gavel forever.) With the sex-ed plan's legal route
blocked, the school board ditched the whole idea for now, along with the
citizens committee that waved it through in the first place, despite
plenty of flapping red flags.
OK, there were two really big red flags. Judge Alexander Williams Jr.
called one "viewpoint discrimination" because, as he wrote, the new
curriculum for 10th graders was supposed to teach that "homosexuality is
a natural and morally correct lifestyle to the exclusion of other
perspectives." Also outrageous was the way the curriculum promoted
certain religions to the exclusion of others. In touting "the moral
rightness of the homosexual lifestyle," the judge wrote, the curriculum
suggested that "the Baptist Church's position on homosexuality is
theologically flawed," and reminiscent of the racial prejudice of the
segregation era. At the same time, the curriculum applauded Reform Jews,
Unitarians and Quakers for promoting an activist homosexual political
agenda. If you're wondering when religious prejudice or favoritism
became a subject fit for the public schools to preach I mean, teach
the answer is never. And that's what the court ruled.
But imagine if the school board had been smart enough to reel in those
First Amendment red flags on which this particular sex-ed course was
hung out to dry. Would Montgomery County teens be sitting down to become
both "informed" and desensitized by the course's instructional video on
how to apply a condom to a cucumber? Would these kids be reflecting on
their curriculum's no doubt scholarly treatment of all manner of sexual
experimentation? In this hyper-sexualized culture of ours, I'm afraid
the answer has to be yes.
But kudos to the parents in Montgomery County who banded together to
stop this sex-ed train on its way out of the station. After it retools,
the same basic train will undoubtedly chug away in the fall. My question
is, do we like where it's going, and, if not, how do we get off?
It's a track we've been stuck on for a long time since 1930, in fact,
when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals "forever changed the course of
obscenity law," writes Rochelle Gurstein in her illuminating book "The
Repeal of Reticence" (Hill and Wang, 1998). It was then, in an acclaimed
case, that the court ruled that sex-education material could no longer
be considered illicit. According to Judge Augustus Hand, "accurate
information, rather than mystery and curiosity, is better in the long
view and is less likely to occasion lascivious thoughts than ignorance
and anxiety."
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But, as Gurstein points out, "accurate information" did more than remedy
"ignorance and anxiety." After all, she explains, "ignorance and
anxiety" were only part of the human condition. "Equally important," she
writes, "were considerations of the inherent fragility of intimate life,
the tone of public conversation, standards of taste and morality, and
reverence owed to mysteries. These defining characteristics of the
reticent sensibility had been lost."
"Lost" isn't the word. Something more forceful (pulverized? mutilated?)
is in order to describe the, well, fallen condition of a world in which
just to take a random example a new Simon & Schuster teen title,
"Rainbow Party," that recounts a tale of an oral group sex party for the
"young adult" set. (Thanks, Bill Clinton.) I'm both happy and resentful
to report that so-called rainbow parties reportedly a real-life trend
are a new one on me: happy that I've lived multiple decades without
an inkling; resentful that I'm now and forever stuck with the knowledge.
Who needs it?
More important what does making such berserk sexual adventurism a
mass-cultural commonplace do to the individual human psyche? Are we
better off so limitlessly coarsened? Are our children? Certainly, the
publishing industry is better off. According to The New York Times,
publisher Judith Regan, among others, has capitalized on
sex-in-the-citified sensibilities to inaugurate a "growing and
increasingly racy genre of how-to sex books ... extolling the excitement
that could come from oral sex, anal sex, fetishism and S&M."
So glad to hear what now constitutes "racy." What we really need,
though, are some new definitions of pornographic, obscene, lewd
categories the courts told us decades ago don't really exist. I think
they do. And I think we've wallowed in them long enough.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
Diana West Archives
© 2005, Diana West
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