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.

Not that they’re selling anything….

One of the ways in which faith organizations act dishonestly is in their belief-based, self-appointed status as arbiters of fairness.

Here’s a neat example: an article on a U.K. christianity site. Sure, they balance the story with a a quote from the “secularists.”

But that headline? Wow, subtle. Bet they think this is a fair piece overall, too.

Lesbian ban prevents friskiness on prom night.

In a startling discover, a Mississippi board of education has uncovered the secret to saving kids from sexual hijinks on Prom Night: banning Lesbians.

Well, Ok, the board just banned a lesbian kid from being a lesbian kid at the prom. But really, what other purpose could it serve but to uplift the moral fibre of every other kid there, no doubt preventing all sorts of immoral hijinks? Next year’s LGBT ban is expected to end punch spiking as we know it.

Unfortunately, the kid miscreant in question, one Constance McMillen, took umbrage to the board’s doubtless deeply scientific discovery of the impact of lesbianism, and is suing for abridgment of free speech.

Young catholic love

Ah those wacky Catholics!

The Denver catholic school board has announced it won’t allow the children of a Lesbian couple to attend its schools. Aside from the whole usual religious  “magic pixie in the sky who’s angry” stuff, there’s the actual stated rationale:

“The Church does not claim that people with a homosexual orientation are ‘bad,’ or that their children are less loved by God,” wrote Archbishop Charles J. Chaput in today’s Denver Catholic Register.

“Quite the opposite. But what the Church does teach is that sexual intimacy by anyone outside marriage is wrong….”

Ooookay. So, the oldest of the kids was potentially going into kindergarten, the youngest was entering pre-school. Just what does the Archbish think  lesbians discuss around the family breakfast table?

He added the family has “other, excellent options for education and should see in them the better course for their children.”

Well, he almost certainly got that right.