Obama and the kindergarten sex ed bill
Tuesday September 16, 2008
posted by Rod Dreher @ 2:29pm Permalink Email This Add to »
I haven't seen the McCain ad saying that as Illinois state senator, Barack Obama supported a bill teaching comprehensive sex education to kindergartners, but I instinctively assumed it was a load of b.s.
But National Review's Byron York actually troubled himself to look into the claim, and to write about it extensively -- and what he found tells us something about the way sexual liberationist activists and their legislative allies work to mainstream their ideology in schools. York's conclusion: McCain was right. In this excerpt, York followed the Obama's campaign's advice and contacted the five original sponsors of the bill (the language of which is here); only one, State Sen. Iris Martinez, returned his calls. Here's York:
That leaves Sen. Martinez, who was kind enough to speak to me by phone Monday afternoon. Martinez began by saying that the bill was indeed about inappropriate touching. "We know that young children, very, very young, have things happen to them that they don't speak about," Martinez told me. "It's important that we teach our young kids very, very young to speak up."
When I asked Martinez the rationale for changing grade six to kindergarten, she said that groups like Planned Parenthood and the Cook County Department of Health -- both major contributors to the bill -- "were finding that there were children younger than the sixth grade that were being inappropriately touched or molested." When I asked about the elimination of references to marriage and the contraception passages, Martinez said that the changes were "based on some of the information we got from Planned Parenthood."
After we discussed other aspects of the bill, I told Martinez that reading the bill, I just didn't see it as being exclusively, or even mostly, about inappropriate touching. "I didn't see it that way, either," Martinez said. "It's just more information about a whole variety of things that have to go into a sex education class, the things that are outdated that you want to amend with things that are much more current."
So, I asked, you didn't see it specifically as being about inappropriate touching?
"Absolutely not."
The controversy over the McCain sex-ed ad is a rerun of a similar controversy that erupted in the 2004 Illinois Senate race, when Obama's opponent, the Republican transplant Alan Keyes, brought up the same issue. In a debate that year, when Keyes accused Obama of supporting sex education for kindergartners, Obama answered, "Actually, that wasn't what I had in mind. We have a existing law that mandates sex education in the schools. We want to make sure that it's medically accurate and age-appropriate. Now, I'll give you an example, because I have a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean. And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age. So, that's the kind of stuff that I was talking about in that piece of legislation."
Obama's explanation for his vote has been accepted by nearly all commentators. And perhaps that is indeed why he voted for Senate Bill 99, although we don't know for sure. But we do know that the bill itself was much more than that. The fact is, the bill's intention was to mandate that issues like contraception and the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases be included in sex-education classes for children before the sixth grade, and as early as kindergarten. Obama's defenders may howl, but the bill is what it is.
The thing you have to watch out for with groups like Planned Parenthood and their legislative allies is how they push to institutionalize a progressive sexual-cultural agenda in the schools under the guise of health and safety. For example, GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) offers a course for educators seeking to shape the moral imagination of pre-K to third graders to an agenda more to GLSEN's liking. I honestly don't blame GLSEN for doing what it's doing, even though I would oppose it if it came to my kid's school. What's interesting and important, though, is how GLSEN frames all of its gay advocacy work in terms of "safety," and "making schools safer." After all, who can be against safer schools? Similarly, with the Illinois sex-ed bill backed by Sen. Obama (D-Planned Parenthood), who can be against keeping little bitties safe from sexual predators?
You see how this works.
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