Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Sex and Montgomery County

Another very well-written article in the Weekly Standard, this time on the sex-ed curriculum in Montgomery County, Sex and the County:
An advisory committee was put together in November 2002 to recommend a new program of 'health education' dealing with 'sexual variation.' The program, when it was finally written, reflected the liberal orthodoxy of the education establishment. With the claim to teach in an authoritative way about health and sex, the program put forth a series of 'myths' to be corrected with 'facts.' But the myths were not all mythical, nor the facts all factual. And the authors could not restrain themselves from pronouncing on the moral dimness of people holding opposing views, including the theological backwardness of those religions that continue to honor the tradition of Jewish and Christian teaching on these matters.

(I forget whether this requires a subscription -- some of their articles do; others don't.)

One of the most alarming aspects of this controversy is the poor quality of theological reasoning this advisory committee endorsed. For example, the teacher resource materials argues for moral equivalence of heterosexuality and homosexuality in the Bible by pointing out that there are many heterosexual practices the Bible condemns as abominations: rape, incest, etc. The obvious reply to this is that the Bible never condemns heterosexuality per se, but it does homosexuality.

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