The Healey administration wants to update the Massachusetts health framework guidelines, including sex education — and it wants the public’s input.
The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education unanimously approved a framework for health and physical education in the state’s public schools on Tuesday, June 27, which brings us to the public comment period. Members of the public have until Monday, August 28 to submit feedback on the proposed framework.
Then, the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is supposed to consider this feedback, and the voting board can revise the proposed framework before it casts a vote to finalize the framework.
Let’s make our voices heard on this one.
Is it likely that a department under the Healey administration will fully agree with conservatives regarding sex education? No way. Yet, if conservatives bombard the public comment portals with insightful concerns, disagreements, and suggestions, perhaps we could make, at least, some impact.
If NewBostonPost, the Massachusetts Family Institute, Massachusetts Informed Parents, The Boston Broadside, Turtleboy Daily News, and Massachusetts Citizens for Life were to animate their supporters and inspire them to make their voices heard, maybe we could drown out the liberals. After all, right-wingers are motivated to do something about school curricula, not liberals.
While approaches will vary on this one, I think we must constructively conduct ourselves, familiarizing ourselves with the proposed framework, and calling out what is bad about it.
A solid concern voiced by Michael King of the Massachusetts Family Institute is how this proposed framework would be counterproductive for the state, as it would lead to more families opting their children out of sex education entirely. That’s not a guess, by the way — a mass-exodus actually occurred in Worcester after the city’s school committee adopted morally corrupting sex education.
It may also lead to districts opting out of teaching sex-ed.
There are likely many families in this state that support a typical pro-abstinence sex education that aims to reduce teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and teaches fetal development. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they want their kids’ schools to teach them about non-reproductive sex acts, sexual orientation, and liberal gender theory.
Under this framework, the Healey administration wants schools to teach third-graders that biological sex and gender are different. For reference, a lot of third graders still believe in Santa Claus. Yet, the Healey admin wants to introduce emotional trauma to small children.
Promoting this idea in schools is harmful because environmental factors contribute to gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia. We should not want schools making kids question who they are and having kids feel bad about themselves. Instead, kids should be taught to be accepted for who they are, including their immutable characteristics, rather than thinking they must try to change.
Here are a few other salient problems with the framework:
1. The Framework Is Not Pro-Abstinence
The age of consent in Massachusetts is 16 years old, although it should be 18 because minors cannot marry in Massachusetts, and grown adults dating 16-year-olds is highly taboo; few men would be comfortable with a grown man their same age dating their 16-year-old daughter. Sex ed should consider why such taboos exist. Sex can lead to pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and complex emotions. Kids can avoid such problems by avoiding sex until they are ready to commit to a lifelong relationship. Unplanned teen pregnancies often end in abortion, the deliberate killing of an unborn child. Whether you’re pro-life or not, that’s a situation we should all want to avoid.
2. The Framework Doesn’t Require Teaching About The State’s Safe Haven Law
The current framework is from 1999, when the safe haven law did not exist back. However, now we have a law in place that allows a woman to drop off her unharmed newborn at a police station, fire station, or hospital within seven days of birth to surrender the child. The law aims to lessen instances of infanticide. However, a lack of public awareness of the law, among other things, hurts the law’s effectiveness. If more people knew about it, perhaps we could prevent more newborns from being left in dumpsters to die.
3. The Framework Includes Nothing About Fetal Development
One of the reasons that sex-ed exists is that proponents say it reduces unplanned pregnancies. If the class deals with pregnancy, it should explain what happens during pregnancy. It should explain why women give birth after nine months of pregnancy and that their child, created at the moment of conception, is growing and developing inside them.
I encourage all of you to review the proposed framework and to respectively provide the state government with your thoughts using one of three methods:
C. Mail: you can mail your feedback to this address:
Kristen McKinnon,
c/o Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
75 Pleasant Street
Malden Massachusetts
02148
They say they want feedback. Let’s tell them the truth.
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