A stealth campaign to bring radical sex education to Ohio schools is carefully designed to fly below radar. It almost worked -- and still may if public officials don't stop it and demand a statewide debate.
The response we've had from our readers indicates that Ohio is primed and eager for a battle.
Recently, Gov. George Voinovich asked the president of the Ohio School Board to justify why a model for health curriculum was being produced when there is no requirement for it. Ohioans rejected state sex ed in the 1970s. But now advocates are using regulations by the Department of Education and the Department of Health to promote their agenda without public scrutiny.
In our Forum last Sunday, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Linda Cagnetti reported plans for a proposed Ohio Model Competency-Based Program in Health and Physical Education and sex education training with federal grants since 1995 for Ohio teachers and others. The training, billed as "Programs that Work," includes five curriculums designed in part by the ultra-liberal Sexual Education Information Center of the U.S. (SIECUS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Training sessions use wooden penises, female condoms, props for anal sex and specific tips for "outercourse" (oral sex, heavy petting and variations unknown to many adults). It's an anything-goes curriculum, with instructions to desensitize "resistant audiences" such as parents, lawsuit-shy administrators and religious or conservative families.
Ohio School Board President Jennifer Sheets says the health model is being prepared to tackle urgent health problems among young people: a huge increase in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), AIDS and pregnancies.
The words "sex education" are not written anywhere in the model drafts. Instead, it has "sample instructional activities" such as:
- 8th graders should demonstrate ways to express caring for a friend or partner which do not involve sexual intercourse. CDC training suggests introducing kids to "outercourse."
- At grade 3, children should "discuss and report accurate information relating to human reproduction." Sounds harmless, but the graphic and detailed models used by trainers would shock parents.
- Third graders are also supposed to be able "to practice and promote behavior that reduces the possibility of contracting diseases . . . and discuss multiple ways to avoid becoming infected with germs or viruses."
Again, sounds harmless -- but CDC's answer is introduce STDs and condoms as early as possible.
Careful to deflect any controversy, the language in each new draft of the proposed health model is sanitized as it gets closer to board and public review. The July 27, 1998 draft, for example, removes all the "instructional activities."
Some officials insist the health model is not mandatory (districts such as Cincinnati and Lakota already have sex ed programs). But when a model is adopted as the state standard, schools usually align with statewide goals. Abstinence-only sex education, for example, won't fly if the state model requires "comprehensive" health programs.
Why have Ohio's health and education departments spent four years and nearly $800,000 in federal taxes preparing an army of trainers in curriculums that many parents would never allow? Why is our money being used for high-handed, liberal brainwashing on sexuality and behavior?
Training handouts boldly proclaim how the agenda will be spread, trainer by trainer, then to parents, professionals who work with young people, etc., and eventually "to more than 2 million school children, mostly through Ohio schools, public and non-public."
It's frustrating, even impossible, for citizens (us, too, in this case) to get all the information to credibly question and challenge this sophisticated subversion of the public will. Worse, some elected representatives were hostile to callers and angry that we provided phone numbers to the people they supposedly serve. A few officials accused us of lying. Others lectured that all of us should worry about school funding and achievement instead.
Nonsense. What kids are taught in school goes to the heart of family autonomy, individual liberty and local control of schools. This is an alarming example of government plotting to indoctrinate kids with what a few "experts" decide is the politically correct and only way to think. Anyone who objects is labeled anti-health, racist, homophobic, bigoted or backward.
Our Forum story uncovered manipulation by government officials -- "lying about sex," to use a popular phrase. And that has turned up the heat on a simmering cauldron of public protest. We urge readers to get more information and express their opinions to public officials who will listen.
This plan should be stopped. And the state officials who made it should answer: "What part of "No' do you not understand?"
