About Changes That Are the Same

Aunt Bea just made a comment in the comments section here, which I'd like to bring to the top. As background, you should know that the new MCPS sex-ed curriculum includes an MCPS-produced video about how to use a condom, and the new video says, in different ways, "Remember to use a condom for oral, anal, and vaginal sex." This is good sound medical advice, the CDC says so, any doctor will tell you this is a good idea.

Well, the Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum pretend that "anal sex" means gay sex, and so this gives them an opportunity to be self-righteously offended. It doesn't: a government survey you can read HERE shows that about forty percent of adult Americans have had anal sex with someone of the opposite sex, and less than 4 percent of males have had anal sex with another male (as for women ... there's a plumbing issue there).

Anyway, the mention of anal sex throws the nuts into the fire, you might say. It just sets them off. They're sure that recommending a safer procedure to fifteen-year-olds is the same as telling children that they should try being gay. Exactly the same.

Remember, this video is new, but there are videos in the classrooms already. And the CRC has said repeatedly that they like the current sex-ed classes. The standard MCPS video for more than a decade is called Hope is not a Method.

Here's what Aunt Bea said:

As of their latest complaint, CRC fully supports the "status quo" curriculum, which includes the condom demonstration film, Hope Is Not A Method. That film, from the curriculum CRC fully supports, contains the following medically inaccurate statement:

Condoms not only prevent pregnancies but they are the only method that prevents the spread of sexually transmissible diseases like syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, condyloma, and of course, HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Now we’re going to be talking about other methods of birth control as well but remember, whether you’re having vaginal, oral, or anal sex, condoms should be used to protect both you and your partner.

Yet in their original 2007 appeal to the State Board of Education CRC stated:

4. Pursuant to COMAR Section 13A.04.18.03 (B) (3): “Erotic techniques of human intercourse may not be discussed. Discussion of anal and oral sex in the condom lessons and video clearly and patently violate this standard.

So tell us [...] were they in support of the statement that condoms should be used for vaginal, oral, or anal sex before they opposed it, or did they oppose it before they supported it?

The CRC is going to have to make up their minds on this one. It is perfectly inconsistent to praise the current curriculum while you criticize the new one for content that is exactly the same. If you're going to say that the new curriculum should be stopped because it teaches "erotic techniques of human intercourse" (what a joke), then you really should be insisting that the curriculum that's already out there should be stopped, too.

For most of us, an inconsistency in our beliefs would make us think further. Either we'd reconcile the inconsistency by changing a belief or we'd find a reason to say it's OK to teach this now, but it would be bad to teach it in the future. You or I would think up a rationale for contradicting ourselves, to justify it, or we'd change something. But let me tell you how the CRC will deal with the contradiction: they just won't mention it. They'll point to the new curriculum and say, loudly, "It says use a condom for anal sex," and their highly educated following will gasp indignantly, and that will be that. Nobody will ask the question, what does the curriculum say now? Even if you point the inconsistency out to them, they'll just look at you with those spiritually inspired glazed eyeballs. Because reason doesn't support them, God does. Why would it matter if their point doesn't make any sense? They have a Higher Calling, higher than reason, higher than logic, higher than facts.

As a historical note, when MCPS first presented a draft of the new video, the CRC actually liked it. It was perfect, from their point of view. There was no music, no personality, no scenery, the narrator's face was hidden, it was all men -- basically it was a video showing a guy how to put a condom on another guy. It was impersonal, uninteresting, uninformative. The citizens advisory committee -- yes, including me -- insisted on putting some information into it, like what to do if it breaks, what to do if you start using it inside out, how to dispose of it. If you use a condom correctly, it can prevent both pregnancy and disease quite reliably; if you use it wrong, you might as well not use one. So now the video shows how to use it correctly.

Our sex-ed controversy here in MoCo has not been a debate between two reasonable points of view. It could have been. It is entirely possible that reasonable people would want to go slow, want to protect children from information they're not ready for, and it is entirely possible that reasonable people would believe that students should be given accurate and complete knowledge about sexuality, including the risks and how to deal with them. I would love to see our community discuss these topics, liberals and conservatives pushing the standard in opposite directions until a satisfactory compromise is found. That's what should have happened here. But people like the CRC don't want to do that. Like three-year-olds, they want to stomp their feet and make everybody play by their rules. It's demeaning to the rest of us to have to deal with them, but you have to. Thanks to Aunt Bea for clarifying the point about the video in the comments.