Cav's Place

It’s no news that any attempt to offer teenagers proper sexual education puts one on very treacherous ground, but what one district attorney from the state of Wisconsin did borders on ridiculous even by these standards. I could call it worse, but that’s probably the most lenient term that can be used to describe the actions of a person mandated with upholding the law who threatens to put people behind bars not for breaking a law but for following it, especially when the law in question makes perfect sense and was long overdue anyway.
For those who don’t feel like reading the article, the story is that a new law requires those who teach sexual education classes in the state of Wisconsin to adopt a comprehensive approach, offering students all the relevant information about birth control and other things related to having safe sex as opposed to preaching about abstinence and little else. The law doesn’t require schools to offer such classes, nor does it take away parents’ right to refuse allowing their children to participate in them. It just states that, in case the school does offer such classes and the parents do decide to allow them to participate, those teenagers will actually be offered the relevant information they need. However, this didn’t go well with one district attorney, who sent a warning to the teachers in his county that anyone who will teach students how to put on a condom or take birth control pills will face criminal charges, as that would encourage minors to have sex and therefore contribute to the delinquency of a minor, seeing as it’s illegal for minors to have sex in that state. I would hope that this will serve to remind some people how idiotic it is to make having sex illegal for teenagers and have that law repealed, but that may be too much too soon unfortunately.
Sure, this is just the sort of reaction one would expect from a conservative and religious fundamentalist, especially since his position grants him a high degree of authority. I’d expect him to also be one of those who wants to ban violent games and certain kinds of music because of the way they supposedly influence behavior. Not to mention most definitely one of those who support the “go forth and multiply” approach, regardless of the terrible effects this has on the environment and even on human society, as he certainly seems to think that procreation is the only purpose of sex anyway. But perhaps this will raise enough eyebrows in the right places and result in some attempts, hopefully at least some of them successful, to take such powers away from him and others like him.

Back on my side of the pond, a proposal that’d have taken things one step further in the right direction by making sexual education compulsory for British teenagers aged 15 and over has been dropped due to fierce opposition. The main argument seems to be that, by taking away parents’ right to pull their children out of such a class, the family is taken out of the game and parents are forced to raise their children according to the will of the government. Which is a rather interesting line of thought, because it takes us to a whole lot of other ways in which governments force people to bend to their will, many of which very rarely being challenged.
Let’s think about that for a moment and just focus on school, to make it more relevant. Couldn’t that same reasoning be applied to, say, geography, just in case some parents want to believe the Earth is flat? Or how about the English language, for those who don’t care to speak it and perhaps really don’t speak it at home? Or mathematics, even if only because it’s quite unlikely that most of what’s learned about it in school after the first few years will ever be useful to the vast majority of students… Not to mention the fact that school in general is compulsory, at least according to the law, despite all the useless, conflicting or even harmful, especially if you take every parent’s views into account, information it shoves down students’ throats, the stressful and damaging environment it creates and all the physical and mental health risks that can be associated with it.
So why’s sexual education so different from all those things? Why’s it singled out? Then again, it probably should be singled out, but as by far the most useful class taught in school after the first few years, since pretty much everyone will need that information, some of them quite early, which can’t be said about the vast majority of things taught in pretty much any other class… Not to mention that governmental policies aimed at preventing pregnancies and STDs are badly needed, especially considering the United Kingdom’s outrageous teenage pregnancy rate, so taking families out of the game when it comes to this is likely necessary.
I do, however, agree with the complaint about the inclusion of information about adoption and bringing up children in these classes, as the proposal suggested, simply because that has nothing to do with sexual education. When one of the main goals of these classes is to avoid accidental pregnancies, this would have ended up sending conflicting messages. Information about proper abortion procedures should obviously be offered during such classes, as a last resort in case the undesired event somehow still happens, but that’s about as far as sexual education goes. Pregnancy, birth and raising children are completely different matters and, while I fully believe that taking such classes should be required before a couple would be allowed to have children, I also believe that extremely few should ever be in a position to apply this knowledge, knowing how I feel about overpopulation. But since this was far from the main reason for dropping the proposal, it’s pointless to dwell on it.

And yes, I’m quite aware of what happened today, but I’ve been trying to write this post since yesterday. And there’s not much to say about that plane crash anyway. Such things just happen…