Sunday, February 12, 2012

It's my 100th post and it's about Sex!

.... No this is not a Penthouse Forum post.  Your not going to find out anything about my secret sexual desires or what I like to do in the privacy of my own room.  It is about my disgust with the current attacks on the availability of healthy sexual information to our children.  The Utah Legislature is in session.  45 days of the year the Utah Legislature does everything they can to act in their own interest and against the interest of the Utah population.

Gayle Ruzicka - The very face of Evil
Representative Bill Wright (R) introduced HB 363 on the docket with the intent of banning all discussion of contraception, homosexuality and sexual practices from the public school health and sex eduction programs.  This should be seen as an assault on our children because it is exactly that!  Even the BYU Health Services Department has come out against this bill.   



Cougar Hall, assistant professor and school health adviser at Brigham Young University told the committee that Utah current law is very conservative. He said he supports abstinence education 100 percent, but there needs to be some information out there for students at risk.

"It is immoral to withhold life-saving information from segments of our population because it doesn't fit our value system," Hall said.~ Deseret News
Bill Wright used his granddaughter as a prop to defend his bill saying:

"She represents the innocence of those we are really talking about," Wright said. "This is not an important part of our curriculum. … It is just basically something out there that takes away from the character in our schools and takes away from the character of our students."
....
"I think we are intellectually dishonest when we teach pregnancy prevention in our classes and do not teach the only sure pregnancy prevention," Wright said.

My daughter Jessica (Liberal Blogger Kate) pointed out the misogyny in this tactic saying that only a girl could represent the innocence lost by sex.  He did not bring in a grandson because using a young boy as a prop would not have the same effect.

Mr. Wright is a Dairy Farmer by trade.  I don't say this to mock is chosen profession but to mock his credentials as a health educator or someone who would set health education policy.  To this end, Mr. Wright is  advocating withholding information from children and to rely on the failures of the past.  Parents do not really educate their children about sex.  Most of them are as qualified as Mr. Wright, or the woman with her hand up his back, Gayle Ruzicka; to provide real world sexual information to children.  Just because you have had sex, does not make you an expert.  Our children should be educated about their bodies and how they function mechanically and psychologically.  Our goal for our children should be not just having safer sex but developing a healthy attitude toward sex.  They will eventually have sex and we need to raise them in an environment where they can have good sex.

If you take Mr. Wright's comments and view them in the daylight your will realize how absurd they are.  We teach math in progressive steps.  Counting, Basic Addition, Subtraction and so on.  We do not expect them to open up a Trigonometry book and start solving the problems.  The same goes for their bodies.  Bad sexual information leads to bad decisions and bad sex.  I wish I had the information I know now when I was a teen and even in my 20's.  I feel like I was robbed to some degree of many additional years of good sex.  As much as I now know, I still find that I have some general misconceptions about sex.  If I am left to educate my children on my own those misconceptions could be passed on as bad information.

We have progressed, as humans, beyond the bronze age but for some reason we continue to cling to attitudes and practices from that era.  I don't know what Mr. Wright and the Puppet Master Ruzicka have to gain by denying quality information to children.  Why is denying the truth a virtue?  In response, I am linking two websites that are a great jumping off point for sexual information.  The first is Go Ask Alice from Columbia University and the second is Kinsey Confidential from Indiana University.  I think it is time somebody tells Gayle Ruzicka to shut up and sit down.  Let's provide our children with good information with an acknowledgement that the older they get the less they need us and the more independent their decisions become.


5 comments:

  1. The gentleman from BYU seems to get it... and yep, Ruzicka is just evil.

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  2. Congratulations on 100 posts, Kevin!

    Protecting kids from truth is Standard Operating Procedure in U-duh.

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  3. @ Andrew: I have no problem with teaching abstinence as the best method to prevent pregnancy and transmission of STD's. But, like the health educator from BYU I also think that those who choose to be sexually active with another human need all of the information medicine has on the subject. Our schools are the best place to distribute that information.

    @ Lynne, thanks! I guess the mistake we make is believing that education promotes curiosity rather than quenches it.

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  4. "Representative Bill Wright (R) introduced HB 363 on the docket with the intent of banning all discussion of contraception, homosexuality and sexual practices from the public school health and sex eduction programs."

    If they remove such content, then what on earth would be the point of sex education classes!? This right-wing phobia of sex is going too far. Ignorance is not bliss.

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