Illinois has just changed the curriculum for its sex education in our public schools.
They brought Illinois in line with the national standards of
sex education, which is contained in the link.
This is what you need to know about this curriculum.
This curriculum sees all gender identities, orientations,
and lifestyles (apart from disease risks) as all equal that students might
consider as viable options, much like buying a car. It is supposed to be based on science and
medicine, but it doesn’t even see a person’s biology as having any influence on
what might be called normative.
Dissociating sex from gender is a political decision, not a
scientific one. It only confuses the
issue. Now we speak of men becoming
women and women becoming men. Really? What has changed? If sex is determined by chromosomes, how can
surgery change anything but the outside, like painting your house after
removing the porch?
It speaks of sex as being assigned at birth, like a doctor
pulled straws to decide what sex a child was. How is this not confusing and disorienting
for children? Children need guidance,
not told that they must now choose between a myriad of sexual options when they
don’t have enough information, factual and personal, to make these
decisions. It’s like asking an 8-year-old
if she wants to have children and how many?
How the bleep is she supposed to know that? This is not age appropriate and adds immeasurable
stress on children who are just learning about life.
What does gender identity even mean? We do our kids a disservice allowing them to
think they are now boys or girls just because they say so. How are we helping them? Do you know what the suicide rates are for
kids that think they are transgendering, whatever that means or can mean?
The standards talk of pregnancy like it’s a disease to be cured
or an abnormality that can be corrected.
Science cannot tell you the value of a child. You need religion for that. And public schools are going beyond their
bounds here by making value judgments on human life like this.
Sex education is like gun classes. We learn about how to shoot them, how to
store them, how to take care of them, but not when to use them. If every person who committed a homicide in
Chicago this year had taken a gun class, it would have had no effect on whether
they committed the homicide or not. They
probably would have been more effective.
Fewer wounded and more killed.
We are dealing with the biology of sex, the human
interactions in sex, but not the appropriateness of the act itself. When is sex appropriate? Many or most religions have beliefs about
sex, and to teach it simply as a biological function can encourage behavior
that is contrary to those beliefs. This
is going beyond the function of public education.
Like if you gave every teenager a gun, trained them in how
to use it, but did not teach them when it is appropriate to use it. The homicide rate would go up.
When kids grow up and want to marry, they often will want to
marry someone who has not already been with someone. We are essentially encouraging our kids to
experiment with sex before they realize the real value of it, before they will
realize that they will wish they hadn’t when the time comes when they want to
get married.
How can you have a whole curriculum without even mentioning
marriage? The purpose of sex?
It’s like explaining eating and the digestive system and not
nutrition. Do we eat just to fulfill our
appetites or to provide nutrition for our bodies? Is sex merely the fulfilling of sexual urges
and displaying affection, or is there more to it? Teaching sex as merely biological functions
does not tell you whether to be promiscuous or exclusive, whether you should
wait until marriage or start immediately.
We are asking children to make decisions by presenting them with all
manner of information they were not even asking, and then not giving them all
the information they need to make informed decisions, because that information
is beyond the realm of biology.
We have covered the acts of sex, but not its meaning, its
purpose. The impression here is that it
is for enjoyment, just try not to get a disease or pregnant. But if you do either, know how to fix it.
We all know the experience with young kids where we give
them something that they immediately break or deface, and we say, oh, they
don’t know the value of that yet. The
same with sex. Our kids don’t know the
value of what they have in sex, and if we don’t teach it as valuable, they
won’t think of it as such. If pregnancy
is simply something to be treated, like removing a stain on our clothes,
because we spilled something on it, then we devalue the entire process of the
creation of human life, its uniqueness, and its value.
Science and biology cannot tell us what a human being
is. Only religion can tell us the value
of a human life. We are making children
feel like it is now safe to experiment with sex, because they know how to use a
condom or how to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy, when they don’t fully know
what a pregnancy is. They don’t fully
know what this thing is that they are aborting.
These standards assert that “cisnormative, heteronormative
approaches” should be avoided, and they “aim to strengthen young people’s
capacity to challenge harmful stereotypes, and be inclusive of a wide range of
viewpoints and populations without stigmatizing any group.”
Any person who studies biology would immediately recognize
the complementary physical reproduction functions that dominate male and female
bodies. Reproduction is inherent in the
biologic system. Societies need every
woman, on average, to have 2.1 children to maintain a society. To treat all possible sexual orientations and
identities as equal with no need to encourage or even suggest one over another
is absurd, but more importantly, it is a major disservice to our children and
our students not to inform them, no, to encourage them to form what is called
cisgenderism. Especially to children who
are expecting adults, particularly parents and teachers, to teach them about
life. The complementarianism of human
life, all life, is perhaps the most basic thing about life that we can teach
our children.
Having children in a loving relationship with a person of
the opposite sex is an ideal that should not be ignored or made light of. It is only then that they can create new human
life who shares the life of two loving, complementary parents.
This treats sex as just an ordinary human activity, like
buying groceries or getting a job. It
doesn’t deal with the meaning of sex.
Again, it treats sex as something unrelated to a marriage relationship,
but more recreational than procreational.
Certainly, for married couples, sex is an enormous bonding experience
that can lead to the creation of new life, but in uncommitted partners it loses
that bond, because the relationships aren’t lasting.
This curriculum divorces sex from marriage, and we do a
serious disservice to our kids when we do this.
They will be most happy in life, in the vast majority of situations, if
they marry (cisgender) and have their own children.
We consider our children too immature to drive, vote, drink,
smoke, or use drugs. Having children of
their own is also a decision far above their capabilities to do wisely. There is a great chance that they will regret
terminating their pregnancy later.
Giving the child up for adoption at least allows you the option of
possibly reentering your child’s life at some point.
The separation of sex and gender is unfortunate. Sex is firm, immutable. Calling a person a woman by gender but not
confirmed by sex is dishonest and, in the case of minors, a serious breach of
trust. What are we telling our
kids? That they can have surgeries and
take drugs and they will become more of who they are? Is anybody really being honest here?
“The developmental process for young people often involves
experimenting with many different identities, forms of expression, and
behaviors, and sexual identity is not exempt from this type of exploration. As
sexual development continues to progress, most youth will eventually identify
themselves with a gender identity and a sexual orientation, though some may
not.”
Why says that sex is something that should be experimented
on? Encouraging experimentation is
crossing the line into religion. What is
religion but a value system. Normally
that would include God, but a secular value system that deals with ultimate
values like the value of a human life or the meaning of sex is essentially a
religion. You are supplanting your
students’ religion in the name of education.
You are overstepping your bounds.
This curriculum asserts that no one else is qualified to
label or judge another person’s sexual identity? What does this even mean? Are there no adults in these schools? Are we not teaching children? If you are incapable of having an opinion on
a child’s choices at this age, then I don’t think you should be teaching our
children.
This whole program goes amiss when it evaluates sexual
activity only the on the basis of whether it can be performed at a safe
risk. Risk for what? You judge the risk only on the basis of
medicine? You don’t think there might be
reasons for regret when these children grow up and want to get married?
This curriculum believes that it should shape students’ “personal
values and beliefs.”
How is this curriculum supposed to shape personal
values? Values goes way beyond what a
public school education can or should do?
Some values, yes? Sex, no. This treats sex as merely a bodily function
without knowing the meaning of what it is.
That’s why we have parents.
This curriculum does not provide enough information about life to adequately
shape our personal values and beliefs.
Do you think explaining biological functions and the use of contraceptives
is enough information to shape children’s personal values and beliefs?
It promotes “clear health goals and specific behavioral
outcomes.” And those seem to be: not
getting an incurable disease, getting pregnant and not knowing where to get a
free or cheap abortion, or choosing a non-cisgender identity?
It wants students to be “able to access medically accurate
sources of information about gender, gender identity, and gender expression.”
What does medicine, or science for that matter, say
accurately about gender, gender identity, and sexual expression? It has nothing to say about them
frankly. There is nothing that science
or medicine can contribute to a person’s knowledge about gender or gender
identity if they choose a new one.
It wants everyone to “develop a plan for the school to
promote dignity and respect peoples of all genders, gender identities, and
fender expressions in the school community.”
Promoting dignity and respect does not mean validating what
any reasonable adult would see as making a poor choice. You want to stand by your kids, but to affirm
them in a bad choice is never a wise decision.
It wants to “define gender identity and explain a range of
identities related to sexual orientation.”
Kids in 6-8 grade are just beginning to even think about
sex. We are making it like gender and
sexual orientation is like choosing a career or what kind of car to buy. Like biology makes no difference. Like we can and should ignore biological
realities and think we can be whatever we want to be. Are we telling our students what we lose by
going out of the ‘norm’?
A girl who wants to be a boy may be deciding while still a
child herself whether or not she might ever want to have children, oh, maybe 20
years from now. Likewise, a boy who thinks
he is a girl may never become a father, and he is deciding this at what age?
Do these children realize that they will be on medication
for the rest of their lives? And who
will be paying for this?
Biology only knows of two sexes, except for rare defects. Any other orientation is like a carpenter who
uses a screwdriver as a hammer, a pliers as a wrench, a knife as a plane. It’s often workable but he’s not using the
tools as they were designed. Anal sex
can create sexual pleasure, but it will never create children and has great
potential for diseases and physical damage.
In addition to STDs.
“Define vaginal, oral, and anal sex.”
Why are we teaching children about anal sex? Are we teaching them that sex comes in three
flavors, like chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream? Choose the one you like the best. Or better yet, do them all. This will only lead our kids to experiment. When we were kids, we never even thought
about anal sex. Now it’s presented as a
viable option, just as good as the regular kind, except that there is no longer
a regular kind, just one of several equally viable options.
You can teach biology, you can teach reproduction, you can
teach anatomy, but sex is more than biology or reproduction or anatomy. Sex is inseparable from values, morals, and
religion. Human sex is more than two
animals copulating. You are breaching
the bounds of religion. This is going
beyond the purview of public-school education.
“Define racism and intersectionality and describe their
impact on sexual health.”
This only makes sense in an environment when sex is not
intended to be exclusive in marriage. It
presumes that sex is something to be had frequently with many partners. We are encouraging our children to not think
of marriage and families within that context, but to think of sex independent
of that context, and thus we are essentially discouraging the nuclear family
which is the foundation unit of our society.
Not all families work out, but having children created by two parents
(man and woman) in a loving relationship is clearly the optimal setting for
raising children. Not to encourage this
does an incredible disservice to the child whose care we have been entrusted
with.
