The Massachusetts Senate is going to vote on bills today concerning sex education. I guess that this happens regularly when conservative senators want to stir up their constituents for conservative causes which may be harder to do in Massachusetts than elsewhere. Even conservatives are joining liberals against the recent Trump healthcare proposals so politicians need to rally their followers around something they can all agree on -- anal sex -- oops, I mean sex ed.
I have mixed feelings about Sex Ed curricula that try to educate about every which way sex can happen. By trying to say everything is normal, these sex ed programs are showing students that it is very important to pay attention to "what is normal" which is a question teens ask. And yeah they need some health information there or at least some web sites to go to for health information (many of which will be better than what their school sex ed teacher might know). But these conservative senators subtly seem to be saying that by talking about anal sex, they are introducing the idea to students, innocent students, guileless students who would never have heard of it otherwise. And with NO memory of the Virginity Pledge girls of a decade ago who chose anal over vaginal sex to protect their virginity, they are making the assumption that anal=gay.
Students today will have seen and heard about a lot more than anal sex. It's not just from their porn viewing, but it's joked about in TV shows and movies they see, comedians' routines, youtube videos, all over their media. And @cindycreem, the state senator from Newton, was wise to add an amendment saying that all sex ed needed a media component. Absolutely. We've been teaching about media since Day 1 with the SECS-C, from media and objectification, media and sexual stereotypes, pornography, sexting. That's where sex ed needs to go.
Just for a final laugh, SenatorCyr "has offered seven amendments, including one calling for replacing language regarding 'the importance of effectively using' contraceptives with the words “how to effectively use” said contraceptives." Doesn't that make you just want to scream, "Get your hands off my sex ed?"