Dartmouth, N.S. – Some 250 people gathered here November 9-11 for the first Human Life International strategy weekend in the Atlantic area.
Randy Engel, editor, award winning journalist, and author of the recently published Sex Education: The Final Plague, was one of the speakers.
“There is no good form of classroom sex education, any more than there can be a good form of adultery; the tree itself is evil and cannot bring forth good fruit. It destroys the souls of millions of children,” she told her listeners.
“Sex education” is a misnomer,” says Mrs. Engel.
Soviet Union
In the first place, it is anti-education. As an example of growing resistance to it, she noted, “The Soviet Union, which has experimented with sex education for over a decade, has removed it because they found that it interferes with the intellectual development of the child.” This discovery should be on concern to the schools.
Secondly, the focus is not educational, but a form of psychotherapy, characterized by deliberate “sexual attitudinal restructuring” for both teachers and children. The aim is to free them from traditional sexual attitudes.
Mrs. Engel backed up her claims by referring to the report, The Effects of Pornography by David Scott. It states that children who had received sex education uniformly reported favourable changes in perceptions and attitudes regarding masturbation, sex between children, pre-marital sex, pornography, non-monogamous sexual relationships, homosexuality, oral and anal sex, and abortion as a method of contraception.
In all its forms, classroom sex education puts good kids at risk. Mrs. Engel said, Even a program that seems totally innocuous very soon goes through a number of recognizable and predictable mutations – each more explicit, more removed from Christian ideals, more deliberately desensitizing and more harmful than the previous one.
AIDS education
AIDS education is one mutation, she observed. It introduces the classroom instruction and discussion about unnatural sexual activity, desensitizing the children and removing their normal aversion to the unnatural.
Young people become disposed to accept, to experiment with, and participate in homosexual life styles and activity, she asserted.
“Parents of children in church-run schools often believe that school sex-ed is OK if surrounded with God language. They fail to realize that the teachers and the developers programs have themselves been subjected to programs of attitude restructuring and desensitizing,” she pointed out.
They also fail to recognize Planned Parenthood as the ultimate provider of resources and training and therefore the originators of almost all programs, church0sponsored or not.
Planned Parenthood’s touch can be easily recognized Mrs. Engle remarked. God and moral values are eliminated. PP trivialized the intimate, encourages open discussion of deeply personal matters, and ignores the resulting stimulation of sexual interest and appetites.
Chastity program?
In Mrs. Engle’s view, in school chastity programs based on the self-esteem movement – for example, ‘Sex Respect,’ ‘Fully Alive,’ and chastity spokeswoman Molly Kelly’s workshops – can be equally harmful despite their started good intentions.
They exclude the family. They often feature explicit descriptions and illustrations. They often treat the topic in an inappropriately casual and light-hearted manner, forgetting about respect for the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. And they generally feature group discussion of very private matters, she stated.
“Instruction in sexuality must be given by the proper people, at the proper time, in the proper measure, with the proper precautions. Classroom instruction and open discussion of such matters cannot possibly ensure these safeguards. It is important for parents to know that as soon as they’ve accepted a program, they’ve lost control of it.”
Gay Garvey, coordinator of two regional Chastity conferences held in Charlottetown, thinks Mrs. Engel was too hard on Molly Kelly and the other chastity promoters.
In the Maritimes, chastity programs are not part of classroom instruction.
“Kids are getting much of their sex education from TV programs like Degrassi High, she says, and points out that Planned Parenthood, Henry Morgentaler and their kind get their messages out with scarcely any opposition.
In her view, promoting chastity is absolutely essential to any anti-abortion campaign. Someone has to say something about it somewhere, sometime.
“In our youth, people were sometimes so ‘respectful’ that we weren’t sure what they were trying to tell us. Today, so much is said so openly, in the wrong setting and in the wrong way that people like Molly Kelly, Maureen Whelan, Bev Hadland and Alex Schadenberg have to be very clear. But they can lay it on the line and still be respectful.”
Mrs. Garvey would like to see more parents attending the chastity promotions, so they can build on the idealism the conferences inspire in their children.
Sixteen-year-old Canadian Youth Pro-Life Organization (CYPLO) member Jennifer Parent of Charlottetown agrees – I’ve heard Bev Hadland, Alex Schadenberg and Molly Kelly. They’re not a bit like some old ‘Mom’ sent in to talk to you. My family and my friends quite welcomed what they had to way about chastity. The way they approach it, they don’t stir up our curiosity, and it’s not like a lecture that makes people want to rebel.”
Anne Marie Garvey has also attended chastity conferences.
“Everywhere today there are so many jokes about sex, even among kids as young as Grade 2. They know so much, mainly from TV. All you hear is the crude, the negative. It’s so good to hear Molly Kelly and the others present sex as sacred and special. Love is a very important part of sexuality, and God is very much involved. It’s not to be used for fun,” she sold The Interim.
She adds, “I think both boys and girls want to keep in control of this part of their lives. People like Molly Kelly make us feel that we can do it. And now we can talk more openly with our peers about wanting live chastely.”
Randy Engel’s books, Sex Education – The final plague, is published by Human Life International, Gaithersburg, MD, 1990.
