The Real Values Behind “Values-Free” Sex Education
Now, the social liberals at the forefront of the “safe-sex” movement openly declare what they have quietly been advocating all along: They want school sex education programs to include values
Articles within this series
- Overview
- Dear Parents: What Your Teens Need to Know about Sex
- Dear Parents: Let’s Talk About Doing
- The Real Values Behind “Values-Free” Sex Education
- Next Steps / Related Information
Through decades of fighting against “values-free” sex education, many conservatives have failed to notice that the opposition’s strategy has shifted. “Safe-sex” proponents no longer call for kids to learn just biology and the mechanics of contraceptive use. Now, the social liberals at the forefront of the “safe-sex” movement openly declare what they have quietly been advocating all along: They want school sex education programs to include values.
Among the values liberals now sanction are respecting yourself and your partner(s) enough to use condoms every time you have sex and affirming that everyone—regardless of age, mental capacity, marital status or sexual preference—deserves sexual fulfillment, as long as the sex is “consensual.” Furthermore, the “new” liberal strategy states that children as young as 4 or 5 years old need to have their identity as “sexual beings from birth” awakened through sex education that begins in kindergarten.
For example, the “Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education,” from the Sexuality Information and Education Council for the United States (SIECUS) call for the following instruction for kids, starting in kindergarten:
- Touching or rubbing one’s genitals to feel good is called masturbation.1
- Both boys and girls may discover their bodies feel good when touched. 2
- HIV and STDs are usually acquired by teens and adults during sexual behavior or by sharing injecting drugs with an infected person. 3
- Boys and girls are capable of more complete sexual stimulation during adolescence and afterward.4
- Sexual intercourse provides pleasure. 5
- Some families and religions oppose masturbation. 6
- Homosexual love relationships can be as fulfilling as heterosexual relationships. 7
- Note: SIECUS, which is NOT a government agency, boasts that it has “distributed more than 20,000 copies of its guidelines to individuals and groups across the nation. Many people, community-based organizations, and educational systems have used the SIECUS guidelines.” 8
On the surface the SIECUS guidelines may appear to be free of moral values, but they are not. The authors are using the guidelines to define values as personal choice guided by personal pleasure.
Houghton Mifflin, one of the nation’s leading textbook publishers, further illustrates the agenda:
Sexuality education ideally would encompass sexual knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors. Included would be anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of the sexual response system, gender roles, identity and personality, and thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and relationships. In addition, moral and ethical concerns, group and cultural diversity, and social change would be addressed. Unfortunately, sexuality education classes in the United States fall far from this ideal. In 1992 Debra Haffner found that less than 10 percent of U.S. children “receive comprehensive sexuality education from kindergarten through adulthood” (emphasis added).9
As supporters of traditional families resist the new liberal sex education agenda, we need to keep in our sights liberal sex educators’ strategic shift to openly declaring the value of unrestrained individual choice.
Values-free sex education was a sham—and a shame
Sex education never has been “values free.” Education is all about instilling values; so to have called it “values-free” has been a contradiction in terms. All along, the true struggle has been over which set of values (based on which one of two primary worldviews) would drive sex education. One worldview begins with this foundation: 10
- Morality cannot be defined without a fixed reference point, apart from which, today’s taboos becomes tomorrow’s “choices.”
- A solid moral reference point must transcend time and cultures.
- A solid moral reference point will protect those who base their lives on it, but its strength is inherent and self-sustaining; its authority is not based on its protective qualities.
The other worldview has these foundational views:
- The only universal moral value is that no one should be forced to do something against his will.
- Morality is individually determined.
- Morality is fluid; what is “wrong” for me today may be “right” for me tomorrow.
- Morality is based in a “compassion” that seeks any means available to mitigate the painful consequences of personal choices.
In The Pivot of Civilization (1922) Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wrote, “Our approach opens to us a fresh scale of values, a new and effective method of testing the merits and demerits of current policies and programs”11 (emphasis added). In the same chapter, Sanger also wrote, “Like all other education, that of sex can be rendered effective and valuable only as it meets and satisfies the interests and demands of the pupil himself”12 (emphasis added).
The pioneers of the “sexual liberation” movement always knew that sex education, like any other education, has to have some kind of value system as a foundation. The “value-free” label was a red herring tossed out to send opponents howling down the wrong path. Sadly, however, the “fresh scale of values” Sanger and the sex pioneers clandestinely introduced—and which became widely accepted as the “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s—have been disastrous.
- In the United States, in 1960, the birthrate for unmarried women was 21.6 per 1,000; by 1990, the U.S. birthrate for unmarried women had doubled to 43.8 per 1,000.
- In 1960, syphilis and gonorrhea were the only major sexually transmitted diseases (they were called venereal diseases). By 1990, more than 20 varieties of STDs (some fatal, and many resistant to condoms) menace those who are sexually active outside faithful marriage.
- In 1960, no Americans had an incurable STD; now, more than 68 million Americans have an incurable STD.
- In 1960, no one had heard of AIDS or AIDS orphans. Now, experts predict that, worldwide, by 2020 AIDS will have killed between 65 million and 100 million and will leave more than 40 million as AIDS orphans.
How to fight liberal sex education in your school district
- Build on the right foundation: Actions display beliefs. If we truly believe that some actions are eternally and universally right and others are always and everywhere wrong, then our behavior will reflect those beliefs—and will model right behavior to our children.
- Be aware: We cannot resist efforts to indoctrinate our children with anything-goes morality if we fail to monitor what the local schools are teaching. Read the local newspaper, attend school-board meetings and monitor your children’s textbooks.
- Form grassroots coalitions: There’s strength—and diversity of abilities—in numbers.
- Recruit, learn and practice: If you are not an accomplished letter-to-the-editor writer and/or school board lobbyist, find people in your community who are and recruit them, learn from them and then practice what you learn.
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