Editor’s note: Dr. Donohue’s letter appeared in the Wall Street Journal on August 17, 1993.
Kids and Sex Ed: War of Ideologies
Mr. Criner’s splendid article demonstrates both the folly and the malevolence of the sex-ed industry. There is by now an avalanche of data that conclusively shows how ineffectual it is to pursue the education-determines-behavior school of thought favored by the sexperts. It is values, not education, that determines behavior. If it were education, then surely we would have far lower rates of unwanted pregnancies today than we had in the “ignorant and unenlightened” 1950s.
But what is most disturbing about the sex-ed industry is its determination to monopolize the sex-ed curriculum through coercion. By going to the courts to cleanse the classroom of abstinence-based approaches, Planned Parenthood and its friends at the ACLU hope to shield students from a pedagogy that finds sustenance in religious doctrine. But this just goes to show how deeply ingrained is their religio-phobia. Believe it or not, even atheists have been known to prefer the efficacy of the abstinence-based approach.
And if the schools are to be purged of every teaching that was ever grounded in a religion, the commissars of the sex industry will be very busy indeed. For starters, we could ban all teaching that holds insubordination, theft and violence to be taboo. What’s next I do not know, but there’s a rumor about town that holds that a number of Catholic schools are actually teaching algebra. Better head for the courts now before we all fall victim to another round of religious indoctrination.
William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President
Catholic League for Religious & Civil Rights
