Religious right, others exploiting fears over comprehensive sex education

The American Family Association's One News Now (and several other religious right and right-wing sources including Fox News) is exploiting a controversy over a Montana sex education program in order to further stigmatize the lgbt community.

From One News Now:

A proposed sex-education curriculum in Montana is drawing outrage because it would teach young children about subjects like same-sex intercourse.

Under the proposal for the Helena school district, kindergartners would learn the proper names of sexual body parts, first-graders would be taught that sexual relations could happen between two men or two women, and fifth-graders would learn the various ways people can have intercourse.

Jeff Laszloffy, president of the Montana Family Foundation (MFF), contends that the proposal "tramples" on parental rights. "It places government squarely between parents and their children," he claims, "and the outrage that we're seeing in Helena, we understand well, because in Montana we understand what happens when you get between a mother grizzly and her cubs."

He relates that reaction to the "level of outrage that we're seeing from these parents that feel like their children are being indoctrinated rather than educated."

Of course Laszloffy is the only person quoted in the story, which is typical of One News Now's bias and intentional inability to get the full story.

From CNN, we discover that parents were involved in the development of the program:

Bruce Messinger, Helena's school superintendent, said the guide was drawn up by a committee that included parents, teachers and administrators. That committee used local practices and examined national guidelines, including those put out by the American Academy of Pediatrics, he said.

We also discover that parents have a right to opt their children out of the program and  that some parents also support the program:

Cathy Areu, publisher of the Latina women's magazine Catalina and a former high school teacher, told HLN the standards sound defensible and age-appropriate.

"It sounds like they are teaching body parts and things that are facts of life," Areu said. "I feel more comfortable with my daughter learning about this in a classroom than from a boy in the hallway."

Lastly, the following is the full program, another detail which neither Fox News nor One News Now bothered to tell folks:

The proposed curriculum guide is part of a broad range of health courses that also teach nutriition, disease prevention, anatomy and environmental health. It would teach students as early as second grade that using anti-gay slurs is hurtful and teach children in older elementary grades about sexual harassment and abuse.

Students would be told as early as kindergarten to properly name body parts. The concept that people "can love people of the same gender and people of another gender" would be introduced in first grade, though homosexual relationships aren't discussed until fifth grade.

Fifth-graders also would learn that sexual intercourse "includes but is not limited to vaginal, oral, or anal penetration." Teachers would start discussing pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and drugs and alcohol with middle-schoolers, while high school students would learn about sexual orientation and the "legal implications" of some decisions.