Happy days are here again

This article from the Washington Post about how a long-term study supposedly shows that abstinence-only education has no impact on teenagers one way or the other should please to no end pro-”comprehensive” sex ed advocates who believe sex among young teens should be normal, acceptable, and, oh yeah, “safe.”

Like an official with Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), quoted in the WaPo piece:

“Comprehensive education means teaching about abstinence and a myriad of other topics,” said spokeswoman Martha Kempner. Among them, she said: “contraception, critical thinking, one’s own values and the values of your family and your religious community.

“Abstinence-only was an experiment and it failed.”

Wanna learn more about SIECUS? Read on:

Congress should get to the root source of this “comprehensive sexuality education” blueprint for all American schools. The originator is the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). It sounds like an official arm of government but, in fact, it’s a coalition of health and education groups. With tax money, the CDC in 1992 contracted with SIECUS to rewrite and expand sexuality education to all school children, through state departments of education. SIE CUS is being paid to rewrite health education curricula state by state and has weaseled its way into the driver’s seat.

Six years of SIECUS contracts with the CDC reveal a radical political agenda that undermines the authority and morals of many families and usurps local control of schools. In 1992, SIECUS published its “K-12 sex education guidelines” which were distributed to all 50 state agencies. They recommend, for example, that children in the age group 5-8 be taught that masturbation feels good; The 9-12 group should be taught that “homosexual love relationships can be as fulfilling as heterosexual ones” that sexual intercourse “provides pleasure” and “a legal abortion is very safe.” It recommends learning about sexual erotica for the 15-18 group.

The PDF link to their K-12 “Guidelines” for educators appears to be down at the moment, but I did find an HTML cached version of some of the guidelines, and also a site that had a summary of the guidelines listed in an easier-to-read format: start here, and keep scrolling. This September 2000 National Review article by Daniel Mindus has more background on SIECUS and what they’re all about.

Read more on SIECUS’ excitement over the results from the abstinence study here. Judging by the examples of what they advocate teaching to children as young as 5, it’s not difficult to understand why they appear to almost welcome the findings, rather than find them alarming. This is the group public educators in America turn to for guidance on teaching sex ed in the classroom.

And yes, SIECUS view conservatives as “the opposition.” Similarly, Planned Parenthood views the “religious right”, aka anyone concerned about what’s being taught in the classroom – and at ‘official family planning’ sites like PP – to kids and teens about sex, as the enemy (oh, and they view parents as the enemy, too).

Update: Ken Shepherd at Newsbusters has more commentary on the WaPo piece and notes some positives that the Post didn’t emphasize.