When the question is asked in public opinion surveys, “Do you favor sex education in the public schools?”, a majority of people answer “yes.” If the question were asked, “Do you favor health education in the public schools?”, probably a very large majority would answer “yes.”
Most people, however, haven’t the slightest idea what is taught in the public schools under the subjects “sex education” and “health education.” Some parents in the Seattle School District recently asked their high school children to bring home their “health” textbook, and the parents went into shock at what they read.
This textbook, which has been used in a mandatory “health” course since 1978, describes premarital sexual intercourse as acceptable for both men and women if they are involved in a stable loving relationship. It has been suggested by some marriage counseling authorities that all couples should live together before they are married.
Here is another quote from this textbook: “Often promiscuity is labeled as ‘bad’ by persons who do not accept this type of behavior. As with other patterns of sexual behavior, one should not pin a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ label on a practice.”
This textbook teaches: “Morality is individual; it is what YOU think it is. Your conception of what is right or wrong (morality) is an individual decision.”
This textbook says that homosexuality is a normal lifestyle, and that “gay rights” legislation should be enacted in order to stop discrimination. It recommends that prostitution be legalized. The textbook asserts that it is NOT deviant for teenagers to watch others performing sex acts through binoculars, windows, or holes in walls.
The textbook states that “alternatives to traditional marriage” include “open marriage where outside sexual relationships can exist and will not harm the marriage,” and also “group marriage” where three or more people live together and “have sexual relations with each other.” The textbook asks the students, “Do you feel that you might be interested in becoming a part of such a group?”
It’s no wonder that our country has a high rate of teenage promiscuity and the unhappy consequences it causes including out-of-wedlock births, abortions, and venereal diseases. Those things are the result of the sexual liberation that students are taught in required courses in “health” and “sex education.”
Why don’t these courses promote abstinence? Is it because there is no money in that route? If high school students are mostly virgins, they are not customers for contraceptives or abortion clinics. They are not “clients” for the ever-expanding bureaucracy of social service and health care providers and counselors.
One Florida public school textbook includes a “birth control chart” listing eleven methods, one of which is “abstinence.” But the chart gives the “disadvantages” of abstinence as follows: “Pleasure and closeness of sexual intercourse not enjoyed.”
Instead of teaching abstinence, the people who stand to make money out of teenage promiscuity try to sell the notion that they must be given new funding and more personnel to cope with the “problem” of teenage pregnancy. The fact is that teenage promiscuity is the real problem, and pregnancy is only one of its consequences. The problem cannot be solved by encouraging and legitimizing more promiscuity.
Teenagers who are given contraceptives so they can be “safe” from pregnancy are simply NOT safe from VD. Today, 20 million Americans have incurable venereal herpes, 4.6 million have chlamydia (which causes infertility among women), and 20,000 have the incurable fatal AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).
This nation has accepted all sorts of government restraints on our personal behavior that are not nearly so dangerous as teenage promiscuity. The seat-belt law, the 55-mile speed-limit law, and the 21-year-old drinking-age law are three examples. Teenage promiscuity is more dangerous to more people, and more costly for all of us, than violations of any of those laws.
The American Association of Advertising Agencies has just announced a billion-dollar public-service campaign to convince the American people NOT to use drugs because it is NOT cool or chic or healthy. Why can’t we have an advertising campaign to convince teenagers that sex before marriage is NOT cool or chic or healthy? Is it because the commercial interests making money out of illicit sex are too powerful, especially in advertising and television?
