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Jewish World Review June 6, 2005 / 28 Iyar, 5765 Searching for accurate information in sex education By Diana West
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."
"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?
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.
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JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Diana West |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||||||||