The president may not like Winston Churchill’s bust glowering at him in the White House but given the manner in which the health care bill that he just signed treats abstinence education, the Obama Administration might approve of the way the British National Health Service (NHS) handles sex ed. “A school trip used to mean a day out at a local museum or nature reserve,” Laura Donnelly wrote in the London Telegraph in an article posted on March 28, 2010. “But now, classes are making visits to NHS sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics.”
“Clinic staff say the tours are an attempt to ‘demystify’ the consequences of unprotected sex, preparing many children for visits in later life.” Donnelly is the health correspondent for the Telegraph.
“The visits include examinations of diseases such as gonorrhoea under the microscope, demonstrations about how to use a condom and question and answer sessions about the risks of different sexual activities,” Donnelly reported. For example, “In Great Yarmouth, five schools now take part in a scheme involving groups of girls, aged 15 and 16, identified as at ‘high risk of teenage pregnancy’ being sent on visits to the STD clinic at James Paget University Hospital, according to Donnelly.
“Critics fear that the tours are ‘normalising promiscuity,’ creating a self-fulfilling prophecy which will further fuel the rise in sexually transmitted diseases,” Donnelly wrote. “The number of STDs diagnosed in children under 16 has risen by 58 per cent in five years, with chlamydia now the most common infection.”
Meanwhile, “In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph, 640 signatories, including Catholic bishops, parish priests, university professors, councillors and doctors, call for legislation to be dropped which will see children as young as seven taught about sex and relationships,” Julie Henry, the Telegraph’s education correspondent, reported in a dispatch that appeared on the same day that Donnelly’s story was published. “From September next year, primary school pupils will learn about puberty, sexual intercourse, marriage and the risk of abuse and domestic violence.”
“Ministers have argued that currently, sex education starts too late and that improved, earlier lessons are needed to counter teenage pregnancy, increasingly explicit storylines in films and television soap operas, as well as exposure to pornography online and through mobile phones.”
The ministers she refers to are, of course, are cabinet ministers ordained politically, not religiously. “Children need a childhood. I believe that we are losing opportunities for protecting the age of innocence,” Tony Butterick, the head of Holy Trinity, a church primary, in Woking, Surrey, said. “In many schools we manage to retain it but the Government are now dictating the extent to which we can do that.”
“They are trying to solve the ills of society through education,” Butterick told Henry. “But children are at school to learn and have a positive outlook on life.”
“It concerns me that at primary level we should be talking to children about sexuality. Joe Public actually wants children to have a conservative sex education programme.”
One week later, on April 6, 2010, LifeNews.com reported that “British pro-life advocates celebrated a victory today in Parliament as MPs agreed to delete clauses in the Personal, Social Health and Economic education (PSHE) in the Children, Schools and Families Bill.”
“The British pro-life group SPUC had been actively opposing the provisions.” SPUC stands for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. “SPUC warned that the PSHE clauses in the bill would make sex and relationships education compulsory from 5 to 16 years,” Steve Ertelt reported on the Life News site. “It also worried government-backed resources for teaching primary school children would include some for Catholic and other private religious schools.”
“Now that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called the May 6 election, the government has been forced to negotiate with opposition parties to get through some of their legislation on less controversial issues.” Would our own Tory parliamentarians seize the moment in such a fashion?
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
