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Sex Education

JazzGal said:
The article leading this topic was written by a senator voting for the bill. The editorial in support of the veto: [URL="https://www.deseretnews.com/article/765560561/Thoughtful-veto-of-sex-education-bill.html?pg=1"/URL]

Many have commented on the pragmatism exemplified in this year's legislative session. But in the latter half of the session, the Legislature asked an important question that caught many by surprise and has sparked considerable debate.

The question: How should we teach children about human sexuality in the public schools?

This is an important question about a profound responsibility. How we teach about sex is more than an issue of biology or public health. It affects the emotional and physical well-being of our children. It influences culture, family life and sexual mores. For all these reasons, it is an understandably emotional issue for Utah's families.

Given the current curriculum's core focus on abstinence and fidelity, given the current requirement for parental notification and approval, given the very high rates at which parents have opted into the current program and given ongoing broad public opinion in favor of what is taught in the current curriculum, it was surprising that the Legislature felt a need to push through additional restrictions on how Utah schools teach human sexuality.

In an ideal world, accurate, authoritative and wise teaching about human reproduction and guidance about the wonder, challenge and moral responsibility entailed in human intimacy would be the exclusive domain of families.

But we live in a less than perfect world. Because of dysfunction, dissolution, cultural attitudes or misinformation, not every family will provide clear guidance to their children about this vital aspect of their lives. In a culture that is saturated with manipulative, misleading and inaccurate messages about sexuality, we believe that a well-designed public school curriculum on health and human sexuality can be an important resource to families in their private efforts to teach children about sexual health and responsibility.

Indeed, factual, developmentally appropriate and abstinence-focused curriculum delivered by trained teachers can complement and reinforce parental teaching on these matters. And for those parents who, for whatever reason, might feel otherwise, the current system's opt-in structure gives them full control over how their children are taught these topics.

This year's restrictive legislation, known as HB363, came with the best of intent. It appreciated that abstinence before marriage and fidelity after marriage are the surest safeguard of physical and emotional health as it relates to intimacy.

But HB363 also came with a large dose of misunderstanding. The discussion of the bill was clouded with inaccurate characterizations of the abstinence-focused content of the current curriculum and confusion about serious issues surrounding a separate elementary school maturation program that is not even affected by the bill. The bill inexplicably wrested from local control this aspect of curriculum that seems particularly suited to local parental involvement. Moreover, there appeared to be no natural demand for the changes. The effort to legislatively overhaul a program that didn't seem broken created confusion and the potential for serious unintended consequences.

How and what we teach our children about human sexuality in our public schools is an issue of vital public trust. Although this year's bill on the issue followed a regular and timely legislative process, our sense is that the public felt the issue passed them by without a full vetting. Because of the need for broader agreement and understanding and the need to provide parents with more and better options in their partnership with schools on this topic, we appreciate more time and deliberation on the issue. We believe that more discussion will provide better results and better understanding about aims on which most of Utah's families can agree. It is with that hope for better results that we welcome Gov. Gary Herbert's veto of HB363, not to punish good intentions, but to ensure the kind of deliberation that will secure the best results.
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This is one of, if not the best post I have read on Jazzfanz. Thank you JazzGal.
 
Parents have had the right to opt out...from numbers I've seen only 3% exercise that right.

This bill was pathetic and shouldn't have ever gotten to the governors desk.
 
chawx said:
Parents have had the right to opt out...from numbers I've seen only 3% exercise that right.

This bill was pathetic and shouldn't have ever gotten to the governors desk.
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It's amazing what legislators will do to back up their party even if it means voting for a stupid and unpopular bill.

Seriously, that's the only reason why it got that far. No one wanted to tell their party buddies that they were ****ing out of their minds.
 
JazzGal said:
My representative voted against the bill. I've sent him an email thanking him.
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My wife went up to the capitol to lobby for the bill. I live with the reality that intelligent people will differ on their opinions about what government should do. I usually just wish the government would get a whole lot less useful to idiots.

I take it your post just above is largely the DesNews op ed production. That is why it fundamentally still claims for the State the power to legislate what "education" should be.

I should write a book or something, but without just slamming what the Church does and why on a factual basis and recognizing that the whole Judeo-Christiabn tradition is one of establishments of religions laying down laws for people, we have done something fundamentally different in this country by establishing freedom of religion and the individual rights including freedom of speech. We have much to thank many leaders of the past who resisted and opposed statism and religious authority at great personal danger for the development of our individual freedom.

What you are claiming is still that some majority of folks has a fundamental right to establish government-enforced beliefs and rules of personal conduct in areas that I believe are personal rights and essential to human freedom and liberty.
 
siromar said:
YOUR individual liberty or that of your child? Or are they one and the same? I agree with rule of majority being a bad idea, but why is your random alternative any better? The only system that works is Rule by Reason. Is it better to leave sex education to parents or not? Why? Or why not?
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I think kids are kids and need some help sometimes. Parents maybe should be first in line for giving that help. I think state or school authority comes with a smelly bag of collectism generally where acceptance within the group or society, and various techniques of imposing power against individual choice result in a severely challenged level of thinking generally.

In my own experience I never had effective parenting, and went through more "trouble" than most kids then, or now. But I found my own "star" to live by, and I look at people who don't have that as severely dysfunctional.

My kids have heard my stories, and pretty much know they can ask me anything, and probably understand enough for their present stage and interests. They will grow up as free as I did, but with an adult who can be a resource when they want it.
 
Wes Mantooth said:
Once they're 18, I'd be willing to teach sex ed to any of your female children?

Pics are desired in advance of course.
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Man, I like you, but Gordon Damn, you're creepy as sin.

babe said:
What this? An example of the multitude of ways socialism just goes into the ditch?

Public schools are an abomination. Not just in financial terms in regard to the expense in proportion to the product, but in social terms. When will we all decide we can teach our own kids according to either their own interests and needs, or our own reasoned values, whatever they may be.

Democracy is a bad thing when it devolves into the rule of a majority, no matter by what percentage, over individual liberty.

So if we get a Mormon or other religious majority in any population voting for their values just like the socialists and progressives do for theirs, how is that any worse than having political ideologues dictating what schools must teach?

Get the government out of the habit of being forced to dictate to the people by contentious zealots striving for their causes. Just say "no" to government power.

The whole reason we have a federal government, and a Constitution, was from the beginning to make it possible for disparate people to unite in merely essential things like protecting our liberty from the imperialist interests abroad.
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Democracy -- take it or leave it. Seriously. Stop blaming "big mean old religious groups" or "XXXXX" or whatever the hell you're boobing about today and realize that you have to take the good with the bad sometimes. The great thing about a democracy like ours is that if you don't like it, you can vote against it and get it changed. Or you're like Thriller and think your voice doesn't matter and you'll just sit on here and cry. Hard.
 
TroutBum said:
Man, I like you, but Gordon Damn, you're creepy as sin.



Democracy -- take it or leave it. Seriously. Stop blaming "big mean old religious groups" or "XXXXX" or whatever the hell you're boobing about today and realize that you have to take the good with the bad sometimes. The great thing about a democracy like ours is that if you don't like it, you can vote against it and get it changed. Or you're like Thriller and think your voice doesn't matter and you'll just sit on here and cry. Hard.
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Oh, I know what social realities are well enough, and I'm not actually crying about it. Talking about it, or trying to get my view out, is grass roots and as important as voting. I annoy a lot of people, but I think there might be some who will start using these ideas in their own reasoning sometimes. I call it grassroots education, and talking about stuff is just as important as voting.

I am seeing a trend in your own ways. Not a bad trend, just a human one. Loyalty to your roots and the ways of life you've known, a lot of people-oriented values, an outspoken BS-o-meter, and a fairly reasoned insistence on good sense. Normality in all it's glory. I could use a little more of those things.

I still think we've over-done the government and other sometimes-useful establishments. A lot of folks don't know how to function without them, and I'm just breaking the news that life and almost every good thing about it can and will go on if we just get the lead off the gas pedal of our speeding car to nowhere called "progressivism". Well, like my wife wisely says, I'm a socialist afterall, and I'd proably be willing to go along with even more government if I thought it was doing the right things. Like infrastructure projects, desalination plants, and other things that would actually lead to more life on earth. And more respect for human rights. I'd even be cheering for a religious institution that was developing humanity to its real potential in terms of people who can think and act responsibly using their full human potential.

Amazing you're liking Morgan Philpot, who is much more conservative than I am in reality but who knows how to project his ideas in apparently a more effective way, and without being too overbearing about it. I wouldn't make a really good politician because of my tendency to blather endlessly and just annoy people. You, on the other hand, have a lot of potential.
 
I wouldn't say that I like Fill-Pot, but I liked his interview.

By the way, I fooled my wife with the whole, "I've got potential" thing -- I'm not going to tap that well again.
 
babe said:
Parents maybe should be first in line for giving that help. I think state or school authority comes with a smelly bag of collectism generally where acceptance within the group or society, and various techniques of imposing power against individual choice result in a severely challenged level of thinking generally.
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There's a huge difference between using guilt, shame, peer pressure and the like to coerce people to obey and discussing consequences.
 
Cyrone Torbin said:
It should be taught. Parents should not have the right to opt out.

Sex is real. Kids need to know about it. They need to know the consequences if the act isn't performed with proper safety. They also need to be shown videos of pregnant teens explaining how much their life sucks.
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The Scared Stiff, I mean Straight approach. Well, not even that since homosexuality is also taught. I do think the bill presented and the assumptions behind it were silly. Sex education does not make one more likely to go out and have sex. This isn't a course on the Kama Sutra. The new approach by the Eagle Forum and others is exactly what they should have done originally...inform concerned parents of the curriculum. If there are certain parts of the course that concern the populace, then that is what should be changed, not removing the entire course.

And I do think parents should have the option to opt their children out of the class. I may do the same with my child, if I have that option in California. But you can be assured my wife and I will make sure she is educated on STD's, pregnancy, etc. We will, of course, stress abstinence, but if she decides to not go that route, then I will not stop her from obtaining birth control. I'll be disappointed by her choice, but better not to compound it with an unwanted pregnancy.
 
I looked up to see whether my House Representative voted for or against the bill, and was pleased to see that he was one of the few Republicans to vote against. I sent him an email yesterday thanking him, and I received a very nice email from him today. Not sure why I don't do this more often. I'm ashamed that I had to look up who my House rep even was.
 
JazzGal said:
I looked up to see whether my House Representative voted for or against the bill, and was pleased to see that he was one of the few Republicans to vote against. I sent him an email yesterday thanking him, and I received a very nice email from him today. Not sure why I don't do this more often. I'm ashamed that I had to look up who my House rep even was.
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Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, said that he continues to support the bill and doesn't see how the governor thinks it limits the choice of parents.

"Maybe he didn't understand it," Waddoups said.
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I really, really, really dislike Waddoups.
 
JJ Rage said:
I read this as "Democracy is a bad thing when I don't get my way."
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What I meant was that it's always a bad thing for people who actually care about what they do, and want to make their own choices in life. It's a bad thing when you can't make that decision on your own personal and private life.
 
Scat said:
I think that it should be offered but parents should have the right to opt their child out. That said, why would a parent desire to do so?
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Because the Planned Parenthood agenda promoted is counter to their values, and a mixed message.

Premarital "safe sex" is a dangerous concept to sell to teenagers. Even if teenagers, girls especially, are able to avoid pregnancy or disease, there are still emotional/spiritual consequences.

I think a lot of parents don't know what their kids are learning. They are just happy that someone else is doing it for them.
 
Millsapa said:
Because the Planned Parenthood agenda promoted is counter to their values, and a mixed message.

Premarital "safe sex" is a dangerous concept to sell to teenagers. Even if teenagers, girls especially, are able to avoid pregnancy or disease, there are still emotional/spiritual consequences.

I think a lot of parents don't know what their kids are learning. They are just happy that someone else is doing it for them.
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I don't get this.

Why do critics of Planned Parenthood say that it promotes safe sex for teens?

Doesn't having the knowledge about the reproductive system, diseases, pregnancies, and contraceptives benefit EVERYONE? It's odd to me that these critics automatically assume that Planned Parenthood= Teaching kids to have safe sex.

In reality, most of this knowledge will be used in their young adult/married life. You'd be surprised how many married couples in Utah don't know a damn thing about sex.

Kinda like how the anti-contraceptive/Rush Limbahites make it sound like the only people to use contraceptives are rebellious college folks. In reality, contraceptives are used far more by married people who have a steady sex life but do not want to change their lives with additional mouths to feed.

Knowledge is power folks
 
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