New York City Mandates Sex Ed, Times Cheers
On Wednesday's front page, the Times reported New York City's public middle schools and high schools are requiring sex education courses. The story by Fernanda Santos and Anna Phillips frankly acknowledge that blacks and Latinos are the targets of this mandate:
The new mandate is part of a broader strategy the Bloomberg administration announced last week to improve the lives of black and Latino teenagers. According to city statistics, those teenagers are far more likely than their white counterparts to have unplanned pregnancies and contract sexually transmitted diseases.
Opposition to mandatory sex education was mentioned, but no critic of the mandate was quoted on Wednesday. Instead, only the opinions of four city school officials were cited. (On Thursday, Phillips filed another story on page A16 adding Catholic officials' objections to the mandate, along with approval from a local Muslim imam.)
A Times editorial called the sex-ed requirement "long overdue," since "Some youngsters are having sex at age 11. To protect their health and futures, as Mr. Walcott said, 'we cannot stick our heads in the sand.'" Objections to teaching eleven-year-olds how to wear condoms is apparently a "head in the sand" viewpoint.
On Wednesday, the Times described the involvement of liberal pro-abortion groups in promoting the integration of the abortion lobby and state in pushing 'comprehensive' sex education, which might also be described as sexual 'health' marketing and lobbying in the classroom:
Opposition from religious groups and school board members eventually defeated a city mandate approved in the 1980s for a sex-education curriculum. But a survey by NARAL Pro-Choice New York in 2009 found that 81 percent of city voters thought sex education should be taught in public schools.
High schools in New York have been distributing condoms for more than 20 years. In the new sex-education classes, teachers will describe how to use them, and why, going where some schools have never gone before. To others, though, the topic will be familiar territory....
Some schools have relied on nonprofit or community groups like Planned Parenthood and the Door to teach their sex-education classes, an arrangement that is likely to continue once the new policy takes effect.
Is Planned Parenthood simply a 'community group'? And if the targets of sex education are black and Latino teenagers, shouldn't it be asked if Planned Parenthood is targeting minorities to become customers of their abortion clinics? It's amazing that the same Bloomberg administration which wants the separation of sugary sodas and schools would allow abortion advocates to teach their newly mandated sex-ed to school children.
The Learning Network blog on the Times website is asking students 13 and older to respond to a survey on "How Did You Learn About Sex?"
