Unnatural Sex Education & Its Deadly Consequences

*Some of the topics discussed involve explicit material that may not be suitable for younger readers*

Few things provoke more righteous anger in me than the increasingly common sight of ideologically minded adults hyper-sexualizing children, whether for their own gratification, or in the cause of spreading the doctrines of the sexual revolution.

One sees this perhaps most overtly in the growing “drag queen” movement, which has gone from being a phenomenon confined to seedy adult bars, to something that children are invited to participate and compete in.

Thus, to choose one example among many, we get the heart-rending spectacle on CBC, Canada’s government-funded network, of a show called “Drag Kids.” What’s most galling is the utter shamelessness of the activists behind the show. A teaser article about the show declares, “[A] new type of queen is emerging on the scene: she’s fierce, she’s living in a time of unprecedented access to queer culture and she’s younger than ever before. She’s a drag kid.”

A child, “younger than ever,” who is living in “queer culture.” And CBC is celebrating this!

The same promo article celebrates the fact that one nine-year-old “drag kid” featured in the show sells themed merchandise at a “local fetish store” (in other words, an X-rated sex shop). Another one of the stars, an 11-year-old, is supposedly looking “for opportunities to connect in the 19-plus world of drag shows” (in other words, the adult world of sexually explicit drag performances!).

Meanwhile, one need not look far to find clips of young children at “Pride” or drag events, dancing in ways that used to be confined to strip clips, while grown adults cheer them on, even throwing money their way. A few weeks ago, I briefly mentioned a new “educational” television show on Dutch TV, in which adult participants (including “transgender” individuals, people struggling with gender dysphoria, who have undergone body-mutilating surgeries) strip naked and parade their bodies in front of children.

There is no other word for all of this than “diabolical.”

Hyper-sexualized Sex-ed

However, while the overtly sexual displays such as the ones mentioned above are indeed becoming more common, there is an even more broadly influential way in which adults are inculcating children into their perverse sexual worldviews – namely, the massive funding and deployment of sexually explicit and morally libertine “sex education” programs all around the world.

Take, for instance, this recent article on Fox News about how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. However, as the Fox reporter notes, IPPF has been committed to the sexualization of children for several years. For example, it released a sex-ed tool kit in 2017 in which the organization states that children under ten should be taught that “sexual activity may be part of different types of relationships,” including “commercial sex work” (i.e., prostitution).

The tool kit also states that children should be taught that, “As you grow up, you might start to be interested in people with diverse gender identities.” As well, sex educators should have an “[u]nderstanding of young people as sexual beings.” “[A]ll people are sexual beings with sexual rights, regardless of their age,” the IPPF document states, adding, “Sexual rights include… the right to say yes or no to sex; the right to express sexuality, including the right to seek pleasure; the right to enjoy bodily autonomy…”

This is all very disturbing language, emphasizing the “sexual” nature of children long before they have even reached puberty. One wonders, what possible reason could there be for telling pre-pubescent children about prostitution, or about the “sexual nature” of children and the “right to seek pleasure,” other than to plant certain seeds in their head?

Similarly troubling language can be found in the World Health Organization’s recent sex education guidelines, which suggest that children should be given sex education “from birth.” In the whole document, the word “marriage” only appears a handful of times, and not once in the context of suggesting that sexuality might have a special role to play in marriage. Instead, the emphasis of the document is on such things as negotiating sexual boundaries, consent, learning to use contraceptives, respecting privacy, and choosing to have “sexual experiences.”

Ultimately, this utterly shallow type of sex “education” is designed to indoctrinate children, teens, and young adults into a profoundly immoral understanding of sexuality. In such programs, one scarcely finds more than a hint that sexuality might have any deeper meaning or purpose, or that there might be better or worse ways to express one’s sexuality. Instead, the focus is heavily on sexual pleasure as the most important (sometimes the only) value, with “consent” and “enjoyment” being the yardstick for what is acceptable. Conjugal love and procreation are merely peripheral features of sexuality, with the latter (i.e., begetting of children) viewed often as an unfortunate and regrettable side-effect of sexual behavior, generally to be avoided like the plague by means of a full arsenal of contraceptive weapons.

Parental Rights

In many cases, it is quite clear that the designers of these programs know perfectly well that the parents of the children they are teaching would not support many of the lessons being taught. However, these ideologues believe that it is their moral responsibility to override the desires of such “backwards” thinking parents, and to indoctrinate children into the new creed of sexual libertinism. And so, they go ahead and teach highly controversial views about gender and sexuality, often without even informing parents or providing a chance for the parents to withdraw their children from objectionable classes.

This is profoundly contrary to the Catholic Church’s views not only on sexual morality, but also on the fundamental primacy of parents as educators of their children. By parental rights being primary, I mean that they are prior to the state’s authority over children. This primacy is grounded in the very nature of the parent–child relationship, not in any way derived from the authority of the state.

Since parents have given children their life, they are bound by the most serious obligation to educate their offspring and therefore must be recognized as the primary and principal educator” (Gravissimum educationis, no. 3).

As Article V of the Vatican’s Charter of the Rights of the Family states, “Since they have conferred life on their children, parents have the original, primary and inalienable right to educate them; hence they must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children…”

In no way does this mean that children should not receive education in sexuality. Quite the contrary. It means simply that any such education must be given by or guided by and approved by the parents. As a document from the Pontifical Council for the Family, entitled “The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality,” begins, “Among the many difficulties parents encounter today, despite different social contexts, one certainly stands out: giving children an adequate preparation for adult life, particularly with regard to education in the true meaning of sexuality.”

However, the document goes on to decry that the school, in teaching sex education, has overtaken the family as the source of information on sexuality, and often of a kind that “leads to the deformation of consciences.” Sadly, the document continues, this is often a result of parents having “given up their duty” to take the lead “because of the difficulty and their own lack of preparation.”

Fundamentally, notes the document, sex education should be an education in truth and virtue, forming young men and women who are empowered to live the virtue of chastity, whether in the single or religious life, or within marriage. While “[o]ther educators can assist in this task,” it adds, “they can only take the place of parents for serious reasons of physical or moral incapacity.” This only makes sense. While public school systems and government programs can teach how sexuality works, we clearly cannot expect the public-school systems to teach sexuality in an integrated way that is consistent with the teachings of the Church and its understanding of the human person and human dignity.

Yes. The State has a legitimate interest in children’s well-being. However, because parents have the most direct responsibility for their children, the State’s role in promoting children’s welfare is secondary to the parents’ role and should consist in providing services and resources that assist parents in fulfilling their responsibilities, not usurp them.

Dire Consequences

Sex information without moral values, of the kind promoted by the IPPF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, together with unlimited availability of contraceptives, has led to an explosion in promiscuity. Many young people, steeped in the sex education propaganda, engage in sexual activity early, naively trusting in the “protection” of the contraceptive technologies that have been sold to them as a great tool for liberation.

However, many quickly learn to their dismay that there is no fail-safe contraception. Even when contraceptives are used “perfectly” (which studies show they rarely are), they result some of the time in “unintended pregnancies.” Studies consistently show that a majority of women seeking abortions were using contraception at the time they became pregnant. As the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reported in a 2018, 51% of women who sought abortions in 2014 were using contraception the month they became pregnant.

However, pro-abortion organizations consistently overstate the effectiveness of contraception in sex-ed materials, basing their statistics on “best case” scenarios, with the result that children grow up thinking that sex is little more than a consequence-free “good time,” so long as you use “protection.”

However, when those same children find themselves unexpectedly pregnant after adopting the sexually promiscuous lifestyle that Planned Parenthood so enthusiastically promoted to them, Planned Parenthood is again ready at hand, with the offer of another “easy,” “consequence-free” solution, i.e., abortion.

As former Planned Parenthood President Dr. Alan Guttmacher once stated,

As has been pointed out, those who use contraceptives are more likely than those who do not to resort to induced abortion… evidence that has been surveyed in this and preceding chapters points to the fact that induced abortion services are most needed by those adopting any form of fertility regulation… No developed country has brought down its birth rate without a considerable recourse to abortion and it appears unlikely that developing countries can ever hope to see any decline in their fertility without a massive resort to induced abortion – legal or illegal.

And so “comprehensive” sex education leads ineluctably to the breaking of taboos, which leads to sexual libertinism, which leads to the murder of the innocent children produced by careless sexual acts. And this doesn’t even take into account the emotional and physical pain and suffering, disproportionately suffered by women at the hands of predatory men, when sexuality is unleashed from the moral standards that, in a healthy society, direct sexual energy towards authentic self-giving love through the formation of marriages and the producing of families.

A Global Pandemic

Our youth are being victimized by perverse individuals and groups, who have no interest in true human flourishing. To promoters of the sexual revolution and sex-obsessed ideologues, who can find no higher purpose in life than the pursuit of indiscriminate sexual pleasure – advocating for more sexually explicit sex education lessons, more propaganda to confuse our youth, judgment-free choices, more sexual identities, more daily sex drugs, more hormones, more body-mutilating surgery – children are simply means to an end: the end of shaping the world in their image.

We know that so-called comprehensive sex education is the foot in the door that helps transform the moral and cultural moorings. The widespread acceptance of such forms of sex education have led to the moral breakdown in modern-day culture. One need not look any further than the spectacle of even the youngest children being sexualized by sex-obsessed adults, even on national TV, to realize that something has gone horribly awry.

The Church is not, nor ever has been “anti-sex.” As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, the sexual union of husband and wife is “noble and honorable,” and “enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude.” However, unlike the world, the Church has always insistently reminded people of the immense power of sexuality, the woundedness of human nature, and the appalling parade of misery that follows when sexuality is taken out of the context of marriage and misused for selfish ends.

The hyper-sexualization of children, leading to a breakdown of fundamental moral norms with all the negative practical consequences that follow, is a global pandemic. It must be resisted. We must be willing to fight fearlessly for the innocence of children, for their right to develop their personalities, interests and aims far from the predatory influence of the sexually depraved adults who can find no better use for their time than to lure children into their dark world.

Now, more than ever, parents must have the courage to take the lead in educating their children, nowhere more so than on the issue of sexuality. No longer is it possible to get away with giving your child “the talk” once he or she hits puberty, and then leave it at that. The world is awash with sexual propaganda. Christian parents must concertedly oppose this propaganda by educating themselves on the Church’s rich teachings on sexuality, seeking training and advice about how to begin and maintain an open, morally grounded, and fruitful conversation with their children, with the aim of creating confident, knowledgeable and moral adults who can direct their sexuality in a way that produces life, love, and holiness.