Saturday, March 9, 2013

Sex Ed...in Kindergarten?!

March 5, 2013
Kindergarten Sex Ed Back in the News
Well, it’s back: the threat of sexuality education to children in kindergarten, this time in Chicago’s public schools.

According to an article last week from MyFoxChicago.com, the district has proposed adopting “national sexuality education standards” to address sexual orientation and bullying for the first time. The article explains that children as young as 4 or 5 years old will “learn about appropriate and inappropriate touching and feelings,” while students in fourth grade, in fifth grade, and so on, will learn progressively more.

But how can they be following “national sexuality education standards” if the Department of Education has no authority to issue nationwide standards for education in the states? As it turns out, the Department of Education has nothing to do with it.

The so-called “standards” that Chicago schools are eager to adopt come from FoSE – “Future of Sex Education” – a group of “sexuality education experts” who got together and came up with the standards they would like to see, then offered them to schools as a “national standard.” The guidebook has not ever been adopted by any authority that could make it truly a “national standard,” but that is beside the point. As long as enough school systems are willing to start robbing 5-year-olds of their childhood to promote sexuality, the “prophecy,” as it were, will eventually fulfill itself.

Which recalls to mind the very same thing going on at the international level through such United Nations bodies as the Committee on the Rights of the Child. These committees have been under review for the last several months in an effort to reign in the rampant abuses and inefficiency in the current process.

In the midst of this period of criticism, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has released a report in which she states that adolescent health depends on “comprehensive sexuality education and full access to confidential youth-friendly and evidence-based sexual and reproductive health services,” according to a report from the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, or C-FAM. But the report has itself come under fire from experts, organizations, and studies showing that the “comprehensive sexuality approach” may cause more harm than good.

C-Fam and their allies also contend that these bodies are taking on powers beyond their treaty mandates, anyway. The concept of “adolescent health,” for instance, is included in such instruments as the U.N.’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), but interpreting that to include “rights” to comprehensive sex education or to abortion without parental knowledge or consent is an authority the committee has taken upon itself. The nations ratifying these treaties provided the committees with no such authorization.

So let’s review. An unelected body of “experts” take upon themselves an authority to set sexuality standards calling on schools to provide students with certain types of information, whether the parents like it or not. We see it at the United Nations; we see it in FoSE; and now the Chicago School Board is ready to adopt those ideals and impose them on unsuspecting Illinois families.

Fortunately, parents do have a fundamental right to direct the education of their children. Fortunately, the Chicago School Board is willing to give a nod to this right by allowing an opt-out provision with their kindergarten program. At least for now.

But those rights are eroding at the federal level, and being consciously attacked at the U.N.

That’s why we need to see the right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children preserved in the U.S. Constitution. We need to ensure that international law will not become U.S. law through the adoption of these treaties – especially because “international experts” are using those treaties as authorization to change the rules for all of us. We need to ensure that the next time kindergarten sex-ed classes are discussed, the right to opt out hasn’t mysteriously disappeared from the table.
Action Items
1. Pass this email along to your friends, neighbors, and family members who care about what their children are being taught. Ask them to sign the online petition. Together we can preserve the right of parents to make those decisions. Spread the word to increase our voice!

2. Support us with your donation to ParentalRights.org*. As we fight to preserve parental rights by resisting these treaties, by passing a Parental Rights Amendment to prevent them permanently, and by passing better state laws for parents, your gifts sustain us.

3. If you are in Connecticut, we need you to call your state’s Public Health Committee to oppose SB 374. This bill is just like Proposed Bill 169 that we asked you to oppose a month ago, which would require mental health assessments for every student, whether in public schools or home schools, regardless of whether there were any signs that any concern was warranted. Please see this alert from our friends at HSLDA for contact details and what to say.

Thank you for standing with us to preserve childhood by protecting the right of parents to protect their own children from influences like those in the United Nations and the FoSE sex education standards.

Sincerely,

Michael Ramey
Director of Communications & Research

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