If Only

by tristero

So far, I haven’t read anyone who’s noticed that McCain played the race card in his filthy lying ad about Obama and sex education. But he most certainly did. Anyway…

Of course it isn’t true that Obama wants to teach kids about sex before they learn to read. This country should be so lucky. But then, Obama’s a moderate.

We liberals welcome early education on human sexuality. My daughter could barely read when they started sex education in her school. Fine with me. And her parents have also had many conversations with her to explain things that were confusing. By the time she’s sexually active, she will be very familiar with important information about contraception. This is in sharp contrast to the teen daughters of christianist parents who, having been taught abstinence-only and receiving no organized, accurate information about condoms, pills, diaphragms, and so on, find themselves, much to their dismay, pregnant. And are then coerced into giving birth before they are mature enough to raise a child.

Liberals believe in contraception for teenagers. Moderates don’t want to discuss it. Conservatives, fearfully clutching their pearls when the word “sex” is pronounced, are disgusted by the entire subject.

Sure enough, since this country is ruled by a conservative and is scared stiff of dealing with sexual topics in anything resembling a responsible manner, the US has one of the highest, if not the highest, rate of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world. And despite the unique exceptions in our own lives we celebrate, conservatives, moderates and liberals all agree that pregnancy by immature teenagers is a serious problem (even if conservatives conveniently forget that it is when it becomes politically expedient to do so).

In truth, we pay an enormous price, both in terms of human potential and in real dollars, because conservatives like McCain, Bush, and Palin won’t support comprehensive sex education. I’ll leave you with the Obama campaign’s superb response to McCain’s sick ad:

“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why.”