Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science by John G. West

Author:John G. West [West, John G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Science
ISBN: 9781933859323
Google: xLzaAAAAMAAJ
Goodreads: 1252775
Publisher: ISI Books
Published: 2007-01-15T08:00:57+00:00

13

Sex Miseducation

In Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Alfred Kinsey excoriated existing sex-education efforts as too little, too late. He disparaged female teachers assigned to teach the subject for being mothers who were probably much less sexually experienced than their male students. “Many of these women, including some high school biology teachers, believe that the ninth or tenth grade boy is still too young to receive any sex instruction when, in actuality, he has a higher rate of [sexual] outlet and has already had a wider variety of sexual experience than most of his female teachers ever will have,” Kinsey snapped.1

He then acknowledged that “whether there should be sex instruction, and what sort of instruction it should be, are problems that lie outside the scope of an objective scientific study”—but that did not stop him from offering advice. “It is obvious,” he explained, “that the development of any curriculum that faces the fact [of adolescent sexual behavior] will be a much more complex undertaking than has been realized by those who think of the adolescent boy as a beginner, relatively inactive, and quite capable of ignoring his sexual development.” Kinsey suggested that sex education begin no later than “ten or twelve, and in many instances at some earlier age.”2

Kinsey’s vision of a transformed sex-education system began to be realized after his death when, in 1964, Mary Calderone and Lester Kirkendall cofounded the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) to promote comprehensive sex instruction in kindergarten through high school.3 (The title of the group was later changed slightly to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.) Early SIECUS board members included Kinsey associates Wardell Pomeroy and Harriet Pilpel. Pomeroy was coauthor of Kinsey’s original published reports, and Pilpel was a lawyer who worked on a sex-law-reform project for Kinsey.4 She later served as a vice president of the American Civil Liberties Union.

SIECUS forged ties with liberal members of the clergy, and one of its founding board members was a minister affiliated with the National Council of Churches. Like Kinsey, SIECUS cultivated a public image of probity and moderation, assuring parents and journalists that its goal was to educate people about the medical and scientific facts of sexuality so that they “may be aided toward responsible use of the sexual faculty.”5 Far from promoting permissiveness, SIECUS claimed to be on a crusade to protect the nation’s children from the destructive effects of unwholesome sex. Its purpose was to champion “wholesome knowledge about sex … and to counteract the violent, dirty, threatening images of sex thrust at children from all sides.”6

Executive director Mary Calderone reinforced her organization’s image as an upholder of society’s mores. A Quaker (a fact she did not hesitate to point out to reporters), Calderone spoke of her “profound belief that sex belongs primarily in marriage” and belittled as “blind alleys” such sex behaviors as “compulsive promiscuousness, homosexuality, ‘fun and games,’ and exploitation” (she later changed her mind about homosexuality).7 Calderone emphasized that discussions of sex should not—indeed, could not—ignore the importance of values.

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