Sex is a significant aspect of life. People should be educated on the subject. The consequences of not understanding the subject can be significant. I understand that some people have religious concerns surrounding the issue. But, the default should be that we educate our kids on human sexuality. So, SB 65 is definitely a move in the wrong direction. It prohibits schools from educating students about human sexuality unless parents specifically opt-in to the instruction. This means we’ll have a population that’s more ignorant than it needs to be on this important subject and schools will have more administrative work to do. The best case scenario is that they’ll have to handle the opt-in paperwork for the million or so kids who go to our schools.
The likely scenario is that they’ll still have to handle hundreds of thousands of copies of this paperwork and huge swaths of our population will go without proper education on the subject — not because of fierce religious objections but because of apathy or squeamishness over the subject. Sure, parents can teach their kids about sex. And they should. Even if schools teach the subject, parents should teach their kids too. But, lets face it. Our society is awful about talking about sex. We use mostly naked bodies to sell every product imaginable. The scope of sex jokes is boundless. With the Internet, there is a vast amount of readily available pornography. But, try to have a serious, straight forward conversation about sex and most of us Americans get incredibly awkward. We need schools to teach this stuff. An opt-out system sufficiently accommodates religious concerns over instruction of human sexuality.
“a population that’s more ignorant than it needs to be”
And there you have Indiana in a nutshell.
The GOP likes it that way. Informed people don’t vote against their own interests.
I was just ready to post the exact same message.
The irony is that the pro-life folks pushing this law … are doing something that will lead to MORE abortions.
(Go check Texas.)
Some substantial portion of people who characterize themselves as pro-life and talk a lot about abortions are really opposed to unsanctioned, “consequence free” sex. A reduction in abortions that doesn’t result in less sex holds no appeal for those folks.
The birth control pill in 1960 changed the nature of sexual behavior and relationships between men and women of child-bearing age irrevocably. A good number of people have still not accepted that fact. And likely never will. What man has put asunder no god can put together. Or something like that.
There is also some number of “pro-life” folks whose interest in people’s lives seems to wane after childbirth. Really hard to take “the sanctity of life” seriously when the response from these folks if someone is born with a health condition that will affect the rest of their lives is “well, sucks to be them. Thoughts and prayers.”