SIECUS (The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States) is no friend of abstinence-until-marriage education. You can access their site here to see how wrong they think it is. They are not at all happy that Section 510 of Title V of the Social Security Act provides for millions of dollars to help fund this “ideological” enterprise. Some States are relinquishing the monies available from the federal government in order to provide “more comprehensive” sex education to children. One such bill recommends that in grades five to eight students learn the skills necessary to prevent pregnancy, HIV, and other sexually transmitted diseases. Some start in first grade with “age-appropriate” information.

What can these skills be? No doubt they include methods of contraception, ways in which AIDS is transmitted, and this information requires, in turn, detailed information about various sexual acts and apparatus and chemicals to render them safe.

To my mind, the only skill necessary at that age is the ability to say “no” to sexual activity.

Sex education in grade school is being presented as necessary to protect our children. And where has it gotten us so far? Ever-increasing insistence on more explicit instruction at younger and younger ages has gotten us more teen-age pregnancies, more sexually transmitted diseases, even more kids who imagine they are homosexual because they love a friend of the same sex.

And the solution proposed by liberal educators? More of the same. More graphic details, more condom demonstrations, more overcoming natural modesty, more suggestions on how to have safe sexual fun!

Modern sex education has not resulted in so-called reproductive health and certainly not in a decrease in sexual crimes. It takes place, of course, in co-ed classes , much to the embarrassment of many students. Imagine being present when (as happened in my town) a wooden sex organ (aptly named Woody) is used to demonstrate condom use. Are they being told how many pregnancies result from failed condoms? Are they taught that most abortions are the result of failed contraception? Are they learning how ineffective condoms are in preventing HIV infection? SIECUS thinks that teaching these things is “alarming” and promotes fear!

Gone is the innocence of childhood. Gone is the latency period that kids were permitted to enjoy in earlier times–that they, in fact, need for proper psychological development.

Children are being stripped of their instinctive reserve and experimentation is inevitable. They are being dragged into an adult world of rampant sexuality that they are not, and should not be, prepared for at so young an age. They are being prematurely sexualized, in school and by the media, and then we wonder why we read about third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders sexually assaulting other children.

The sex experts tell us that the male of the species is especially responsive to visual stimuli. The sex drive is strong enough so that it does not need all this early fanning into flame.

If you have any doubt as to where modern sex ed is leading, look at It’s Perfectly Normal, available in the juvenile section in our public libraries. It was recommended by Ann Landers and written by Robie Harris who is on the Planned Parenthood Board of Advocates. It deals with children’s questions, from abortion to zits. It is also chock-full of illustrations of boys and girls, stark naked, being sexy or just hanging loose. It would certainly be arousing to its intended readership. If your fifth grader doesn’t masturbate, it will tell him how to do it and how it feels.

The book describes homosexual activity as “perfectly normal,” although I suspect the biology of homosexual sex is omitted because it doesn’t make any biological sense when you get right down to the nitty-gritty of it. When American Life League put a censored video about the book online it was removed from several streaming-video sites for “inappropriate content” and flagged on another site to restrict it to viewers under 18!

All kinds of “families” are described but I could find no mention of husband or wife, marriage or commitment, anywhere in the book. There is no suggestion that activity that may result in babies should take place in a committed relationship.

It’s Perfectly Normal contains no hint that youngsters would not need to know about safer sex and condoms, sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS, the morning-after pill and abortion, if they could just refrain from sexual intimacy until marriage. But no! That would be introducing morality to the kids and the last thing a school should teach is morality!

Or so they say. Never mind that morality is based upon centuries of discovering what works and what doesn’t. Never mind that a morality based on God’s law is our best hope of raising healthy, happy children instead of another generation of unwed mothers and fatherless kids.

Excellent arguments can be made that abstinence until marriage is conducive to physical health, psychological health, freedom from sexual diseases, happier children and more fidelity within marriage. Programs such as True Love Waits have been proven to to reduce sexual promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, and teen-age pregnancies. Nevertheless, liberal educators protest that promoting abstinence is introducing religion into the schools.

Our classrooms are becoming hotbeds of social engineering. Words are being redefined. “Parent” becomes “caretaker.” “Spouse” becomes “partner.” “Family” is any group of people living together and caring for each other.

Sex is being redesigned. Sodomy, “outercourse,” contraceptive options and pleasuring each other are all grist for the educational mill. And tolerance for anything under the sun that doesn’t claim to be a moral value is the ultimate virtue.

Liberal morality-free sex education is just one reason why folks are opting out of the public school system–but a very important one.