Thursday, April 29, 2010

John Moore: Hide the kids, the Liberals are coming

Posted: April 27, 2010, 10:30 AM by NP Editor

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty suffered an uncharacteristic defeat last week. He was challenged on a matter of policy and he folded: In the face of public hysteria fomented by a previously powerless coalition of religious culture warriors, he shelved a perfectly reasonable sex-education pedagogy. The warriors are happy. The rest of us may live to regret the Premier's moment of weakness.

The new education regime was actually little more that a tweaking of the existing one, which was enacted by the Conservative Mike Harris government some 15 years ago. Changes were to include slightly more graphic language and the acknowledgement of the existence of gays and lesbians. Hardly worthy of the firestorm it precipitated.

The package was posted on a website three months ago as part of the new transparency many governments have embraced. And yet even that came back to haunt McGuinty: His critics claimed that the new policies had been buried on a government website. Somehow, making policy available on a medium that can be accessed from any home at any time is a means of hiding it.

Religious conservatives came out swinging. They were so eager to bolster their numbers that they welcomed conservative Muslims into the fold. So now the hijab is a good thing?

They slammed the policy for sexualizing innocent children. For luring them into homosexuality, anal and oral sex. For teaching them to masturbate. For denying parents the right to talk to their kids about sex and morals. The message was further twisted that the policy had been developed by activists with an agenda and with no consultation. None of this was true, but that doesn't matter in a political world that now runs not on a daily news cycle but on one that goes hour by hour.

McGuinty first stood his ground and then hastily beat an embarrassing retreat. Once his opponents had put out the message that liberals wanted to seduce your kids, the game was over. The premier was defeated by talk radio, sound bites, Twitter and Facebook.

Many were astonished that the Premier seemed to know so little about the new sex ed package. But policy generally does not originate with the leader, nor even with his cabinet. The regime was formulated over a period of years by bureaucrats consulting with thousands of sex and learning experts, kids, teachers, parents and religious leaders. That's right, there was a nun involved in producing what would be decried as a devious attack on faith.

The regime mentions gays and lesbians because they can legally marry in Canada and because your kids go to school with a child who has two mommies. It discusses masturbation because your kid might masturbate and then cry himself to sleep because he thinks it's going to make him sick. It warns against the perils of oral and anal sex because around the age of 12 some smooth operator is going to tell your daughter she can swing with the cool crowd and stay a virgin if she yields on either one. Or maybe the smooth talker is your son.

The new program was developed for a modern world where kids now spend more time on the Internet and exchanging text messages than they do talking to people face to face. Conservatives are fooling themselves if they think their kids aren't Twittering and Googling words like "anal", "oral" and "masturbation." Try it yourself and see what comes up. Then get your computer scrubbed.

When parents truly realize what their kids are up to these days, they may find themselves wishing for the simplicity of an educator who doesn't blush at the word "vagina" working from a professionally developed pedagogy in an old-fashioned class room.

National Post

John. moore@newstalk1010.com - John Moore is the Host of Moore in the Morning. Outside of southern Ontario he can be heard at newstalk1010.com.

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