Should Your 12-Year-Old Be Forced To Learn Anal Sex?

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2017/07/18/should-your-12-year-old-be-forced-to-learn-anal-sex/

When is the appropriate age for students to be taught how to engage in oral and anal sex? This is not a question most parents have probably thought a lot about, but it’s one that legislators on Beacon Hill are forcing us to ask.

Eighty-three state representatives and senators have co-sponsored legislation titled “An Act Relative to Healthy Youth,” a version of which is up for a vote in the Senate on Thursday. If passed into law, it would mandate that all public schools in Massachusetts that offer “comprehensive sexual health education” ensure that it is “age appropriate.” That certainly sounds reasonable, but how exactly is “age appropriate” defined in the bill? According to Senate Bill 2113, “age appropriate” means “topics, messages and teaching methods suitable to particular ages or age groups of children and adolescents, based on developing cognitive, emotional and behavioral capacity typical for the age or age group.” If that clears it up for you, read no further. I would like to think that’s what most of the legislators supporting this bill did. Would they still support it if they knew the truth?

Later in the text, the bill gives authority to “promulgate rules to implement, administer and ensure compliance” with the proposed law to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. So what do these education professionals think is “age-appropriate” for your child? One of the curricula they recommend (an example of what would be “in compliance” with the bill’s requirements, if passed) is “Get Real.” “Get Real” is for middle school students, and the state education department lists it as “developmentally appropriate” for the “intended age and ability.”

So I ordered the “Get Real” curriculum and several others that were recommended by the state experts. That is how I learned what state education officials, and perhaps some legislators, think is “age appropriate.” In its workbook for 7th-graders, “Get Real” gives instructions on, among other things, how to perform oral and anal sex. Let that sink in. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education wants to teach your seventh-grade sons and daughters, some as young as twelve, about anal sex.

Is that “age appropriate”? The minimum age for consent for ANY sexual activity in Massachusetts is 16, so why would we want to mandate teaching children four years younger than that about an act which the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognizes as one of the riskiest sexual behaviors?  You’ll have to ask the authors of “Get Real,” which is published by none other than the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. And if state education officials have put their stamp of approval on THAT as “age appropriate,” what else would they require be taught?  (Warning:  This is where you may want to stop reading. The following examples are enough to make Larry Flynt blush.)

Not satisfied with merely introducing the concept of certain non-reproductive sex acts, “Get Real” goes on to teach twelve-year-olds in eye-watering detail how to properly use a “dental dam,” which is “placed over the vulva … or anus during oral sex.”  Concerned that your seventh-grader might not have a “dental dam” handy?  No problem. State education officials and Planned Parenthood want your child to know they can “also use non-microwavable saran wrap.” When the nation’s largest abortion provider tells young children to make their own prophylactics at home out of kitchen implements, that ought to concern us.

Do state education officials offer other options for schools if they don’t want to use Planned Parenthood’s material?  Yes.  Another middle school curriculum that they recommend is “Making Proud Choices.” But would this be your choice for how to teach young children about sex? In a scripted role-play, students are asked to pretend that “Your parents are out late. Your boyfriend or girlfriend comes over, hoping to have sex with you.” The following script is then read by students:

Person 1:  I don’t have a condom. Using those things is wack, I can’t even feel you … it doesn’t feel as good.

Person 2:  That’s not true, I can show you how using one can feel good.

This curriculum only received a “good” rating in the category of age-appropriateness, so maybe the experts at the education department thought that role-play scenario came across a bit precocious for 12-year-olds.

What about “Our Whole Lives,” a curriculum for 7th-to-9th-graders that earned a score of “excellent” for being age-appropriate? “Our Whole Lives” features a 20-minute workshop on masturbation, in which facilitators are instructed to “Offer the following cross-cultural perspective:  In Japanese, the word for male masturbation is sensawari, which means ‘one thousand strokes.’ The Japanese word for female masturbation is monsawari, which means ‘ten thousand strokes’.” It also gives an in-depth definition of the term “outercourse,” and multiple first-person narrative descriptions of how “amazing” masturbation is. One memorable example relays that, ”as it becomes really intense my body begins shaking with excitement. The sensations take me over …”

This is why I and thousands of other parents are asking the Massachusetts legislature to vote “NO” on this sex ed mandate.  Right now, local school committees, in conjunction with parents, educators, and health care professionals, can decide what’s appropriate for the children in their own community. But not if this bill passes. Why in the world would legislators want to take that authority out of the hands of their constituents and give it to bureaucrats at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education who think 12-year-olds should act like porn stars?

And at a time when Beacon Hill is having trouble passing a budget, this bill would create yet another unfunded mandate. Our local schools will be forced by the state to not only teach smut, but to buy it, with our tax dollars, for the purposes of exposing our children to it at an early age. 

 

Andrew Beckwith is president of the Massachusetts Family Institute.