A Weak Letter to the Gazette

The Gazette had several letters this week about the sex-ed curriculum. One was from the leader of a Mormon group that opposes the new classes, repeating the same ... old ... cliches about the curriculum.

Here we go again:

While some may give Montgomery County’s new sex education curriculum an A for Acceptance of sexual variations, I would give it a D for Dishonesty because it is written from an advocacy perspective and omits health risks.

Mmm, yeah, a team of doctors from the American Academy of Pediatrics wrote it, they're child advocates, health advocates, research advocates. That's why they wrote it from an "advocacy perspective."

And it "omits health risks" because the health risks are in the Health Risk section of the Health Curriculum, which, I believe, is scheduled to start the day after the condom lesson. Some parts of the Health curriculum were recently overhauled; the Sexually Transmitted Disease section was not part of that, but it's there.

The condom video tells kids to use a condom for vaginal, anal and oral sex. A diverse group of 270 Montgomery County physicians signed a petition stating that a quote from a U.S. Surgeon General on the risks of anal intercourse even with condoms should be included in the curriculum. This petition was rejected by the Citizens Advisory Committee and the school board!

For some reason, the CRC and their friends are just dying to get the schools to talk more about anal sex. The video says to use a condom for anal sex because that's sound medical advice. There's no need to go into graphic detail in 10th grade about how you do that, they just need to know to use the condom correctly.

And the quote from the Surgeon General, oh come on. We've talked about that HERE, among other places. That was nearly twenty years ago. The guy wasn't even Surgeon General when he made the statement they want to include. There was a new, unexplained AIDS epidemic, something nobody'd ever seen, the country was in a panic. It was good advice then, it's bad advice now.

The doctor's petition, oh boy, here we go again; this is like whack-a-mole, one says it then the other one pops up and says it. We talked about that petition HERE, HERE, and HERE. Those doctors didn't know what they were signing. At least one wrote to the school district to retract her signature. I talked to another one, who said he and his partners felt tricked when they found out what the CRC's Ruth Jacobs had gotten them to sign. They did not agree with it, or with the CRC's position, at all. I know there are lots of others, but they're doctors, they're too busy to deal with it.

Would you reject the medical advice of 270 physicians and a U.S Surgeon General on a life and death health issue?

On several occasions the latest medical studies from the NIH Consensus Conference on condom protection rates were presented to the CAC and school board. These valuable statistics, which would motivate most teens to choose abstinence, failed to be included in the curriculum. Students are simply told ‘‘using a condom correctly and consistently greatly increases the chance that it will be effective in preventing pregnancy and many STIs/STDs.”

No, the "latest medical studies from the NIH Consensus Conference" were not presented to the committee. One sentence, taken out of context, was presented. You can read about that HERE -- scroll down near the end -- or see the report itself HERE. The report says, among other things:

... These data provide strong evidence for the effectiveness of condoms for reducing sexually transmitted HIV.

Which is one reason the curriculum recommends using them.

Would you define 85 percent protection from HIV/AIDS and a mere 25 percent protection from HPV, the leading cause of cervical cancer, as ‘‘effective?”

Uh, 85 percent, yes, that's definitely worth doing. (You should see how these numbers are calculated.) The 25 percent is nonsense. HPV can be transmitted by any skin-to-skin contact, it can be transmitted sexually or any other way. If you wore a condom over your whole body, it'd work. Covering a few inches of skin might not, but it sure won't hurt any.

Why would school officials hide the health risks of sexual activity from students?

They "hide the health risks" so students can "find them" in the STD section, the next day.

Parents would be wise to keep their children out of these classes.

RoseMarie Briggs, North Potomac

The writer is executive director of the Family Leader Network and a MCPS parent.

They just keep doing this, distorting, whining, complaining. That's why we can't let up. They substitute their slogans for facts, and people who pick up the newspaper can't tell the difference -- who (besides us) would go to the trouble of looking up all this stuff?

The petition was a hoax, the Surgeon General was a long time ago, the consensus conference supports the use of condoms, 85 percent protection is worth doing, the curriculum has a whole section on the health risks of sex.

If you don't care about your children learning how to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, then go ahead, keep them out of these classes. It's an easy option to take, just don't sign the permission slip. Please, really -- only sign it if you actually want your children to get this education.