You're Teaching My Child What?

Dr. Miriam Grossman is a board certified child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist who worked in a campus health clinic at a large university and then wrote Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student (Penguin, 2006). She originally published the hardcover edition under the name "Anonymous, M.D." out of concern about possible backlash in her profession. The paperback edition, however, was published under her own name.

Now she has a new book: You're Teaching My Child What? A Physican Exposes the Lies of Sex Education and How They Harm Your Child (Regnery, 2009). This book discusses the sex education movement today, particularly SIECUS (the Sexual Information and Education Coucil in the US, the Canadian counterpart is SIECCAN), Planned Parenthood and Advocates for Youth, three groups that stand at the center of the movement. This movement has been successful in infiltrating public schools to a very great extent and it has also influenced public opinion and government policy.

But the sex education movement is not providing up to date scientific information to teens; instead it is in the grips of the 1960's free love ideology that sees all forms of sexual pleasure as the "right" of people from birth to death. Anything that limits the individual's experimentation or indulgence is bad. Any form of sexual activity that one finds interesting or pleasurable is good - with anyone at anytime. Children must be liberated from parental domination and contol by activists, teachers and health care professionals: this is the social revolution toward which the sex education activists are working. Their primary concern is not the health and well-being of children, youth and adults, but rather the spread of their anti-traditional ideology throughout society. Whereas in sports, diet and other areas of life, restraint and self-control are seen as leading to many benefits, the sexual impulse must not be restrained. When it comes to smoking, fear tactics such as commercials showing a throat cancer victim in gruesome detail are perfectly acceptable behaviour modification techniques, when it comes to sex all we can do is 'accept' that young people will be sexually active and try to 'reduce the risk,' but we must never resort to fear tactics.

Grossman's book is full of examples of the bizzare advice given to teens on websistes like Columbia University's "Go Ask Alice" where we find advice on how to get porn magazines through the mail, the names of good erotic videos for lesbians and how to get the pill without your parents knowing.

According to Planned Parenthood, we are sexual from cradle to grave and so children as young as five need to be told that "everyone has sexual thoughts and fantasies" and that "people experience sexual pleasure in a number of different ways." (p. 8-9) Third grade is the time to find out about wet dreams, masturbation, rape and "sex work." Nine to twelve year olds should be taught that male and female are not defined by biology but that everyone has an "internal sense" of his or her identity. (p. 9)

Grossman notes that almost all parents believe that teens should be encouraged to delay sex until after high school. But the sex education movement believes that information should be given to teens and they should be encouraged to make thier own decision for themselves because every individual should decide as an individual. (p. 55f)

Chapter 4 is very disturbing because it discusses the stonewalling Dr. Ruth Jacobs ran into when she tried to educate her local school board about the STD epidemic and the dangers of infertility, cervical cancer and other disease-caused problems that are caused by a too-casual approach to early sexual activity and promiscuity. One message that is not getting through is the high risk of anal sexual intercourse - with or without a condom. (p. 87) She pointed out that the National Institute of Health says:

"HIV/AIDS can be sexually transmitted by anal, penile-vaginal, and oral intercourse. The highest rate of transmission is through anal exposure." (p. 90)

The Food and Drug Administration says:

"Condoms may be more likely to break during anal intercourse than during other types of sex because of the greater amount of friction and other stresses involved. Even if the condom doesn't break, anal intercourse is very risky because it can cause tissue in the rectum to tear and bleed. These tears allow disease germs to pass more easily form one parnter to the other" (p. 90-91)

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said:

"Condoms provide some protection, but anal intercourse is simply too dangerous to practice." (p. 91)

Are students being told any of this? No. Why not? Ideology.

At a certain moment in the 1960's three factors came together. First, there was the invention of the pill, which seemed to solve the "problem" of pregnancy. Second, there was the invention of antibiotics that were effective against the few types of STD's then in circulation. Third, there was the revolution against traditional sexual morality and the rise of the "free love" movement. Today's sex education "experts" were indoctrinated by the "new morality" that arose at that time and they now have institionalized their ideology into society as a whole. The result is an earlier age of first intercourse, an epidemic of sexually-transmitted disease, a jump in abortion rates, a rise in infertilty and heartbreak, emotional problems and depression.

Dr. Grossman discusses how recent discoveries in cellular and mocecular biology enhance our understanding of how humans bond and how the chemicals in our bodies affect our behaviour. It turns out that "we are hardwired for close, lasting attachments." (p. 52) The science discussed in this section is too complicated to cover in a brief review, but it is real and it shows that males and females are different - not just because of socialization after birth - but because of the make up of our bodies and processes that occur before birth. But the ideology that boys and girls are the same except for a few biological processes is in denial about recent scientific discoveries that confirm the inherited wisdom of the human race.

Dr. Grossman urges parents not to sit back and allow outside influences to determine what their children will be taught. She urges them to be proactive, inform themselves and not be afraid to set appropriate boundaries for their teens. Her message is that science is on your side, not on the side of the sex education establishment. And she wants you to know that this is a crisis and that apathy can kill. Every parent needs the information in this book desperately.