This Throwback
Thursday Post was first published on December 12th, 2014. Warning: contains content of a sexual nature.
There’s an old saying:
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” It’s a little odd, when you think about it:
shouldn’t our intentions be good? The
road to Heaven certainly isn’t paved with bad intentions, is it? The answer, I think, is that the second half
of the proposition is left out. It's
about good intentions that are not grounded in reality, or in wisdom, or in
God’s law: they create more problems than they solve (if, indeed, they solve
anything at all).
“Is it OK if I take my pants
off?”
A classic example
of the Road to Hell Principle is the thoroughly modern practice known as “Sex
Education” (Sex Ed informally). A
concern, and I believe a sincere one in most cases, for the well-being of young
people in an increasingly sexualized world has led to instructional programs in
schools (and not just public schools) that, because they are disconnected from
God’s law, and Natural Law, and plain common sense, promote the very harm they
are intended to ameliorate. One such
program has been in the news recently: a class run by a Planned Parenthood
chapter in California that was invited to teach a class on sexuality to 9th
graders in the local public high school.
According to the Fox News story [full story here]:
. . . some parents are irate that
their children’s sex ed class at Acalanes High School in Lafayette is being
taught by employees of Planned Parenthood without their prior knowledge. They
are also fuming over the methods and materials being used, including a
checklist that asks students if they are “ready for sex” and another worksheet
that describes how to give and obtain consent, as well as a diagram that uses a
"genderbread" person for lessons in gender identity.
The Gingerbread Person is a cute little fellow who clearly
was designed to appeal to children, much like the old Camel Cigarettes mascot
“Joe Camel”; and like the much maligned cartoon camel, who was criticized for
promoting an unhealthy product to children, Gingerbread Person offers reassurance
to the very young that whatever they want to express or do sexually is not just
all right, but good and desirable.
Things, perhaps, that had not even occurred to them before. As for the class itself, many of the children
“felt the sessions were pressuring them to have sex” or, as one parent put it,
“Some of the kids were distracted because it was divergent from what they were
taught at home.” Indeed. For
example:
Included in the materials provided
to students were documents and worksheets that included a checklist entitled,
“Sex Check! Are You Ready For Sex?” in which the 13 and 14-year-old students
are asked questions such as if they have water– based lubricants and condoms
and if they could handle a possible infection or pregnancy. Another worksheet
reads like a how-to on obtaining consent from a possible sexual partner and
offers possible statements like “Do you want to go back to my place?” and “Is
it OK if I take my pants off?”
"You can go now."
There are more problems with school-based sex ed classes
that I can get into here. I will point
out that the foregoing tends to support what many of us have been saying for a
long time: that such classes not only debase sexuality and separate it from its
appropriate place in a loving marital relationship, but actually encourage (or
even “pressure”, as the students say above) early and promiscuous sexual
activity.
Here’s another
case, this time from the UK [full story here].
After a sex ed class, a thirteen year-old boy and girl
. . . went to a secluded area where
they discussed what they had just been taught about sexual intercourse. The boy
said that he asked the girl if she wanted to "try sex." Although the
young girl repeatedly said "No," the schoolboy proceeded to pin the
girl down and rape her. Afterward he allegedly told the girl, "You can go
now."
This is only one
case to be sure, but we can see a clear connection between the instruction and
the act. And, as it turns out, many
British students have misgivings similar to those expressed by their American
counterparts above. From the Life Site
story:
Earlier this year a poll of UK
teenagers by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) [here]found that a
large majority of both boys and girls complained that sex education often
presents promiscuity as normal, putting additional pressure on them to become
sexually active before they might otherwise do so. Many of the teens criticized
the sex education lessons they had received at school for not doing enough to
discourage them from becoming sexually active. One 18-year-old girl responded
to the poll question about her sex-ed experience: "I always felt pressured
by teachers, like, 'sex is normal, just be safe OK' when actually I wasn't
interested in having sex at the time and was happy to wait for the right
person.” "I don't think sex should be taught as 'the norm'. I think people
should be made to feel comfortable and teachers should say, 'you should wait,
the law states 16, don't be pressured'."
The Definition Of Insanity
According to Dr. Philip Ney, a retired professor of
psychiatry, there is plenty of research to show that the negative effects of
sex ed programs are very real. In an
essay he wrote for Life Site News [full article here] he says:
It is quite conclusive now, that
the more sex education, the more sexual activity and all the problems that go
with that. The introduction of sex
education is well correlated with the increase in abortion, STDs and boy-girl
interpersonal problems. Good education gives people the desire to try it out or
learn more experientially.
Paradoxically, in that respect, current forms of sex education are good
education but have the wrong results . . . The earlier the sex education, the
younger children explore sex and try various sexual techniques. Present
evidence makes it possible to also conclude that the earlier the sex education,
the earlier the sexual behavior. Thus sexual education is sexual
titillation.
Despite all the
evidence that these programs do the opposite of what they intend, the “experts”
have nothing to offer but more of the same.
In response to the British case above, one such expert said that “in her
opinion the solution to this type of misbehavior is more sex education, ‘and
much earlier than 13, I would say.’”
This whole situation brings to mind an old saying: “Insanity is to keep
doing the same thing, while expecting a different result”. But what else can they do in the public
schools, or in the secular world in general?
They have rejected a worldview in which healthy sexuality is nourished
and supported. They have torn down the
social attitudes and institutions that protected people from the consequences
of lust run amok. In a world where the most important thing is feelings (and
isn’t that what the Genderbread Person is all about?), right and wrong are
random abstractions. That’s why even
abstinence classes, while better than the Planned Parenthood inspired
alternative, are still not enough. Young
people need to be taught not simply the (negative) practice of abstinence but
the (positive) virtue of Chastity, and not just in a classroom: they need to
see it as part of a coherent worldview, as something that not only works but
can be lived out joyfully, especially by the example of the adults in their
lives.
It has happened before. There are many
reasons why Christianity spread as quickly as it did throughout the Roman
Empire in the first few centuries after Christ.
I have heard that one of them was that pagan Romans saw the joy in the
lives of their Christian neighbors, not the least part of which was the love
and respect Christian men had for their wives.
In a culture that more and more encourages people to use each other for
pleasure rather than embrace each other in love, we are again called to show a
more excellent way. We need to
understand, and help our fellow Catholics see, that Church teachings on
sexuality and marriage are not so much a series of prohibitions as they are a
road map to happier, more productive, and holier lives. We need to rebuild, one person, one family,
at a time a culture in which Christ is King.
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