Thursday, March 3, 2011

The world gone mad... schools must teach about orgasms

NEW YORK, March 3 (C-FAM) Graphic sex education for youth is the new battleground at the UN, as evidenced by side events during the past week at the Commission on the Status of Women.

The theme of this year’s CSW is the “access and participation of women and girls to education, training, science and technology.” While delegates are busy negotiating resolutions and outcome documents, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and UN organizations campaign for the installation of socially radical curriculums in Africa and America alike.

“Oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms need to be taught in education,” Diane Schneider told the audience at a panel on combating homophobia and transphobia. I will again note the use of -phobia as a clever tendentious neologism generator. Schneider, representing the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the US, advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in US schools, with curricula based on liberal hetero and homosexual expression. She claimed that the idea of sex education remains an oxymoron if it is abstinence-based, or if students are still able to opt-out. All must attend, no escape, no parental choice. I also like that abstinence is an oxymoron; teaching restraint is not an option, we're all just animals. Maybe we're worse than animals because of our carbon footprints and lack of desire to be part of the food chain.

Comprehensive sex education is “the only way to combat heterosexism and gender conformity,” Schneider proclaimed, “and we must make these issues a part of every middle and high-school student’s agenda.” “Gender identity expression and sexual orientation are a spectrum,” she explained, and said that those opposed to homosexuality “are stuck in a binary box that religion and family create.” Ontological realities are not "created" by families and religion. Acknowledging a truth and choosing to act accordingly might not be sufficiently permissive for Ms. Schneider, but that doesn't dilute the veracity of the "binary box."

A Belgian panelist at the same event explained how necessary it was to have government support when educating about anti-discrimination issues. He claimed that the “positive, pro-LGBT policies in Belgian schools are a direct consequence of liberal and open-minded legislation in Belgium,” and went on to stress the importance of states in providing relevant materials for students and schoolteachers. This highlights the difference between compassionate understanding and forced endorsement. He also held up Belgium’s “gender in the blender” programs, which are discussion-based programs for Belgian teachers who want to discuss gender and transgender issues in their courses, as a model for other nations who wished to encourage their teachers to address these topics.

The UN system was also advocating for the sexualization of youth at this year’s CSW. A panel sponsored in part by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) advocated for “comprehensive sex education” not only as a tool to combat “gender oppression,” but also as the key to achieving all of the Millennium Development Goals. The panelists presented the highly controversial UNESCO guidelines on Sex Education, as well as a new IPPF-sponsored curriculum as the gold standard for comprehensive sex education. Both curriculums promote a liberal approach to sex, approve of masturbation, and expose children to graphic content in their youngest years. The panelists also insisted that these programs be implemented in schools in order to reach as many students as possible, and they also recommended they start as soon as possible, given the fact that many girls in developing countries leave school before the age of sixteen.

Although most of the side events during CSW are not sponsored by governments and attract few delegates, the NGOs who produce the events are UN lobbyists – which means that the agendas on display during this year’s CSW will influence UN policy in the near future.

3 comments:

  1. Seriously, you should just make a sticky with the patristic quote about how all the crazy people will look at the sane people and say "what's wrong with them?"

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  2. I agree wholeheartedly. Maybe I should make a label to gather all these posts together named 'St. Anthony's madness.'

    "There will come a day when the mad people will look at the normal people and say, 'Look at these mad people because they are not like us.'"

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  3. Sometimes, given the current environment, I like to say (tongue in cheek, but only slightly) that I'm beginning to believe in devolution. Through history, guided by God, we have struggled to not be dominated by passions; to become truly human in God's likeness.

    In contrast, it seems like so much of what we see around us is simply striving to, as you allude to in your comments on the text, reduce us to animals who can't help who we are, have no self-control, and, really, nothing to aim for.

    May God give us the grace and strength to keep striving for the higher things.

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