Mommy, what’s an orgasm?

Evangelical Christian Charles McVety raised the alarm to the Ontario government’s plans to revamp  sex education curriculum in schools, but it’s not really fair to blame him entirely for the decision this week to shelve the changes.

The new curriculum called for teaching Grade 1 children the correct terms for private parts — penis and vagina. Grade 3 kids would have been inroduced to the concepts of gender identity and homosexuality, while Grade 6s and 7s would have learned about anal intercourse and vaginal lubrication. The education ministry posted the changes on its website in January, but it wasn’t until this week that any attention was paid.

Christian and Muslim groups threatened to pull their kids from school in a day of protest, but their threats alone would hardly have been enough to get the government to flip-flop. Truth is, most regular folks were uncomfortable with the idea, too. We’re squeamish with sex talk because we think it’s dirty. And we think it’s dirty because we learn most of it from hushed conversations on playgrounds instead of in classrooms.

Felicity Morgan, who objected to the changes, told TV news that she wanted to be the one to give her daughter information about sex. But will she tell her daughter about blow jobs? Will her daughter feel comfortable asking her what blow jobs are? Unlikely. She’ll learn about them, along with accompanying misinformation, from her friends.

I grew up in a progressive household. I was taught where babies come from when I was four, yet most of my early knowledge about female anatomy came in Grade 3 from a stack of Playboy and Penthouse magazines at my friend’s house. The magazines belonged to my friend’s mother, who was single. This didn’t seem unusual to me at the time, suggesting I could have benefitted from some instruction on sexual orientation.

I wondered what “gay” meant the following year when I heard it mentioned on the 1970s sitcom “King of Kensington.” I could tell it was something sexual from the way it was talked about on the show, so I knew I didn’t want to ask my parents about it. I didn’t want to risk embarassment by exposing my ignorance to my friends, either, and I eventually figured it out myself by listening to older kids tell gay jokes.

It’s not exactly the best way to learn. But that’s how it always goes. And if it went that way for me, what hope does Morgan’s daughter have of it being any different? Religious groups say they object to schools teaching their children about concepts thet don’t approve of. But scrapping the changes to sex education dooms another generation to dangerous ignorance.

Martyrs can’t be wrong

Am I really an atheist? We get such a bad rap this time of year. The hyper-religious claim I can’t possibly be one. Look, they exclaim, you’re eating a Cadbury cream egg!

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Canadian writer Michael Coren has just taken aim at atheists in a piece where he denounces some notable non-believers for questioning the existence of Christ. At first he attempts to rationally debate the authenticity of historical texts written a considerable time after Christ’s death. But then Coren asserts that since so many early Christians were willing to die for their beliefs, their martyrdom must be considered evidence of Christ’s authenticity and that he was indeed the messiah.

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Let’s be clear. Fervent belief in Jesus and the resurrection doesn’t make it any more true than your neighbour’s adamant belief he was abducted by a UFO and anally probed by extra-terrestrials. Does the world really need more young men strapping bombs to their bodies in return for scores of virgins in the afterlife? Thank-you, Mr. Coren, for offering evidence that those girls in heaven exist. (Just to be on the safe side, I think we ought to ban anyone with Coren’s essay on their computers from boarding aircraft.)

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Coren isn’t the only one who equates numbers with truth but he ought to know better. As an atheist, I’m hardly afraid of polls. I don’t wish to slam democracy here, but if the majority was always right, then chocolate eggs would be good for us and Nickelback would be cool.

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I admit I occasionally doubt my atheism. Sometimes I pick up pennies for good luck. And I often catch myself believing that bicycles have souls. Musicians feel the same about guitars. Everybody talks to their cars, especially old, and sputtering about-to-die cars. We coax them up hills with an encouraging, “You can do it, sweetheart!” I do, at least.

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Religious folks say this shows I’m part of the majority which believes in a higher power. Not really. When I really examine the issue, I realize that I’m only projecting human qualities onto inanimate objects. Bicycles and guitars only have souls as far as our hearts are concerned. My mind is rational enough to know better.

And not that it matters to whether it’s true or not, Mr. Coren, but I’m not the only one who thinks this way.

Faith, hope and character assassination

You’ve heard the phrase “playing to his base”?

Basically, it means pandering to the voters who got you where you are, giving them a message they want to hear. Given how much of pandering to a base on either side of the political spectrum is dependent on the ignorance and fear of said base, it’s definitely one of democracy’s shortcomings — especially when that base then demands some follow through.

Take Barack Obama’s Muslim ties, for example.

Or lack thereof. You’d have to be an idiot at this point to put any stock in the once-heavy rumor mill spiel that the U.S. president was actually a Muslim with a fake birth certificate. (In fact, you’d have had to have been an idiot at pretty much any time to believe it, but I digress.)

However, a recent study demonstrates just how easily swayed people are when a rumour matches their pre-existing bias — bias really being a nice short word for “orthodox belief”. It’s the same in religion, politics, chocolate consumption, you name it. We gravitate to the tribe that seems most like us, whether in thought or appearance (although, as often as not, not in deed), unless we possess enough social intelligence to inject humility into the debate and admit that our own lack of knowledge and foresight is worth heeding when making a decision.

Whether a message has any basis in rational thought  has really nothing to do with the equation for many, many people. If Rush Limbaugh tells them Obama is a Muslim, he may as well have been born on Mars, for all that reality will matter. Similarly, if Al Gore tells the extreme left that the continental U.S. will flood within a decade due to global warming, who are they to instead believe the thousands of climatologists who, while fearing the consequences of climate change, are somewhat more restrained?

In the Obama study, a researcher quizzed people on their knowledge or belief in Obama’s faith over the course of three months. Despite extensive media coverage demonstrating conclusively that Obama wasn’t secretly born overseas and a Muslim, after three months of new information, the same 20% that believed he was at the start still did so by the end of the study. They want to hate the guy and will simple accept anything that lets them do so.

When questioned on the lack of evidence to support the claim, cognitive dissonance kicks in and, rather than face the discomfort of challenging their own beliefs, they’ll react with a tangential argument, perhaps something about ruining health care or hiring death squads or whatever other political nonsense is being dreamed up today.

That’s faith for you.