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Jewish World Review / Nov. 23, 1998 / 4 Kislev, 5759

Don Feder

Don Feder The ACLU wants your kids to get a love life

The American Civil Liberties Union is taking time out of its busy holiday schedule of fighting carols in the schools and creches in public parks to strike a blow for teen sexuality.

In newspaper ads, the ACLU's Ira Glasser asks, "Should government be allowed to investigate your teen-ager's sex life?" The ads are illustrated with an attention-grabbing photo, a la Calvin Klein, of a shapely blue-jean clad behind.

What? Are civil servants staking out Lover's Lane in unmarked cars? Are investigators following up on graffiti in the boys bathroom ("For a really good time call ...")?

None of the above. The ACLU is referring to a few chapters of the National Honor Society that have denied membership to unmarried mothers.

Unfair, discriminatory, Victorian, the selective civil libertarians fume. "Do we want schools conducting Ken Starr-like investigations into the sexual behavior of our teen-aged sons and daughters?" Ira inquires with a timely allusion.

Are Glasser and company so out of it that they believe the average parent wants their teen-ager to have a sex life? "Deny my darling the chance to contract a sexually transmitted disease? Never!"

At issue is the case of Somer Chipman and Chasity Glass of Williamstown, Ky. Both were rejected by their high-school chapter of the honor society for engaging in premarital sex -- as evidenced by the fact that they produced little, out-of-wedlock, bundles of joy.

The ACLU is so incensed by this gross injustice (organizations having standards) that tomorrow it will be in U.S. district court arguing that the Williamstown honor society violated federal anti-discrimination law. Traditional values are anathema to the ACLU. It periodically sues the Boy Scouts of America to force them to accept homosexual scoutmasters (on the grounds that they are a public accommodation, like Motel 6).

The civil libertarians will generously allow Americans to embrace biblical values as long as they don't try to uphold the same in their daily lives.

Listen to the ACLU long enough, and you begin to feel like Alice on a conference call with the March Hare and Mad Hatter. The organization in question is called the National Honor Society, for crying out loud! What exactly is honorable about producing children who, in all likelihood, will never know their fathers?

In the name of civil liberties, the ACLU has done a terrific job of helping to sexualize America's kids and in opposing efforts to restrain their libidos.

In the ad, it poses as a rather eccentric champion of families ("we'll fight for your right to keep government out of your kid's bedroom"), but a champion nonetheless. Yet it consistently opposes parental authority in areas that actually matter.

Your 15-year-old daughter has a constitutional right to obtain contraceptives at a clinic without your knowledge, the ACLU argues. If these fail, she has a right to have an abortion without your consent.

Nor is its attempt to abolish innocence limited to abortion and contraception. The ACLU currently has suits going against a dozen libraries to force them to remove software that blocks juveniles' access to cyber-porn. Your kids have a First Amendment right to log on to www.horny-housewives.com, it absurdly maintains.

Of course, it believes that there are things too awful for kids to contemplate. In 1991, the organization that accuses its opponents of book-banning sued the state of Wisconsin to suppress a text called "Sex Respect," which teaches abstinence.

The ACLU argued that the volume promoted gender stereotypes by suggesting that teen-age boys often feign love to get sex, and teen-age girls frequently fall for the ploy. Only the ACLU would consider such an opinion controversial.

It also charged that the book promoted "one religious perspective regarding the 'spiritual dimension' of sexuality."

Promoting a spiritual perspective on sexuality? How horrible. Why, kids might get the impression that there's more to sex than genital friction -- that quaint concepts like honor and caring should come into play.

If, as the ACLU claims, kids are emotionally scarred for life by hearing "O Little Town of Bethlehem" in a holiday program, imagine the psychic trauma of encountering a non-animalistic perspective on human sexuality?

To call a refusal to bestow an honor on those clearly unworthy of the same "a Ken Starr-like investigation" is too bizarre.

However, to continue the analogy, if the alternative to sexual scrutiny is raising a generation of Lewinsky-like bimbos who pursue degenerate politicians and save semen-stained dresses like battle trophies, bring on the grand inquisitors.

Up

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©1998, Boston Herald; distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Opdateret d. 23/11/98