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SIECUS Redefines Humanity

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

May 9, 2005

 

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.                                  Thomas Sowell

 SIECUS is on the warpath.  If it could have its way, abstinence education would be outlawed.  That’s right.  While parents and legislators are working to develop ways to restore healthy sexual boundaries for our children, SIECUS is mustering its troops for an all-out assault on abstinence education.

SIECUS has a better idea.  As its name implies, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States is fighting to regain control of the definition of “healthy sex” first set forth in 1964 when Mary Calderone left her position as medical director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America to organize and lead SIECUS.

Fortunately for all of us, SIECUS has had forty years to spell out what it wants our children to learn.  At its initial press conference on January 9, 1965, Mary Calderone set out their plan.  SIECUS would “perhaps take positions on problems of sexuality in America.”

On the surface, SIECUS assures the public it wants children to develop a healthy respect for their sexuality.  It even suggests that SIECUS is “for abstinence,” too.  But the devil is in the details.  And we can be grateful that its long-time executive director Debra Haffner took time to spell out her ideas for raising teens.

A passage from Debra Haffner’s article “Safe Sex and Teens” in the September-October 1989 SIECUS Report is quite open about what it wants for our children.  “Colleagues and I have fantasized about a national ‘petting project’ for teenagers….A partial list of safe sex practices for teens could include: Talking, Flirting, Dancing, Hugging, Kissing, Necking, Massaging, Caressing, Undressing each other, Masturbation alone, Masturbation in front of a partner, Mutual masturbation.  Teens could surely come up with their own list of activities.”

Based on magazine ads, movies and television…yes…teens “could surely come up with” quite a list of sexual activities.  But is that what we want our children to do?  Indulge in sexual promiscuity?

Even more amazing than the list of extracurricular sex suggestions from Haffner’s article is the general premise of SIECUS that these activities are a form of abstinence from sex.  In fact, some creative educators actually coined a special word for this brand of abstinence…outercourse…as opposed to intercourse.

In the old days, before enlightenment by the likes of SIECUS and Planned Parenthood, these “outercourse” activities were just the types of activities that led many a teen into intercourse.  If avoiding intercourse is their true goal, one has to wonder why Haffner and her colleagues felt that empowering teens to explore highly charged eroticism is preferable to abstinence.

The history of SIECUS provides endless examples of this type of sexual conundrum…having more sex to avoid having sex.  In 1977, Time began its article, “Cradle-to-Grave Intimacy,” quoting Mary Calderone saying that a child has a fundamental right “to know about sexuality and to be sexual”.

“Cultivating” the sexuality of children was of prime importance to Calderone and others.  Adopting a Kinseyan philosophy that children are sexual from birth, few in this circle of “sexperts” saw any need to restrict the sexual behaviors of people…and children.  Their concerns actually focused on repelling any attempts to limit or restrain sex, seeing these as repressive and counter to human design.

In 1981, Calderone co-authored The Family Book about Sexuality that asserted, “The major effects of such incidents [molestation] are caused not by the event itself but by the outraged, angry fearful, and shocked reactions of the adults who learn of it….It is these immoderate reactions which may cause whatever psychological damage occurs.”

Today, SIECUS guidelines for sex education are 112 pages long.  Read carefully.  You will find Calderone’s and Haffner’s same philosophy on sex underlying the core ideas of SIECUS and the activities they recommend for children.

Is it any wonder that SIECUS would take offense at abstinence education?  Programs that encourage teens not to engage in sex and that present information demonstrating abstinence until marriage is the healthiest and happiest choice…SIECUS never has been fond of limiting sex.

Knowing SIECUS is the surest way to understand the reasons for their attacks on abstinence. And know this…it is also the surest way to understand the value of restoring the natural definition of human behavior.

Sex is a magical gift of bonding and procreation between a husband and wife.  Until then?  For our teens?  Abstinence is a choice that protects and empowers.

 

 May 2, 2005:  Who Is SIECUS?

November 19, 2004:  KINSEY: Brave New World?

 

Who Is SIECUS?

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

May 2, 2005

SIECUS has been at the forefront of attacks on abstinence education this past year.  Precious inches in mainstream newspapers have granted special privileges to claims by SIECUS that abstinence education is harming children.

Abstinence educators have used this as a positive opportunity to direct people to medically accurate information supporting their curricula as well as to research proving the successes of abstinence programs.  Yet an obvious question remains.  Who is SIECUS?

The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) had its official beginning in 1964.  But its history is best understood by going back to the 50s when two influential people were stirring the beginnings of the American sexual revolution.

In 1948, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was published by Alfred Kinsey.  It spent 43 weeks, just short of one year, on The New York Times bestseller’s list.  Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, followed in 1953.

At the publication of his books, Alfred Kinsey became a cultural icon validating virtually uninhibited sexual behaviors of all kinds.  Only decades after his ideas had made their way into mainstream media and college courses did the truth about his so-called research come to light.

Fully documented today by reputable researchers, Kinsey has been shown to be a man driven by his own extreme sexual urges to rewrite definitions of healthy human sexual behavior by manipulating data and violating basic tenets of sound research. For a starter, to “prove” “open minded” acceptance of data, members of Kinsey’s staff were expected to engage in homosexual, adulterous and promiscuous sex.  Things got worse.

Under Kinsey’s firm guidance, pedophiles were coached on how to record molestation of children, data from prostitutes was generalized to represent sexual behaviors of married women, and male data relied heavily upon prisoners including sex offenders.  Still locked  behind closed doors at Indiana University, this data was “analyzed” by a Kinsey team lacking any experience in statistics and has ever since been unavailable for independent analysis by outside experts.

As Americans were eagerly reading Kinsey, a New Yorker was building an enterprise that would change the face of America and sex forever.  In 1953, Mary Calderone began work as medical director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Politically a libertarian, she pushed for non-judgmental attitudes about sex.  In her preface to Sexuality and Human Values, a Siecus book she edited, Calderon had little good to say about religion, characterizing it as a “mythology” or “shibboleth” set “to hem sex in with attitudes and restrictions that prevent its full flowering.”  She exhorted scientists and religionists to “make it possible for human beings to realize their erotic potential in full and responsible conscience.”

Given an emphasis on eroticism, it is not surprising that Calderone was also a strong advocate for abortion.  Editor of Abortion in the United States (1958), she pleaded for years with the American Medical Association (AMA) to establish a Task Force Report and Resolution dealing with the responsibility of physicians to be a source of population control.

Kinsey and Calderone, each working to unlock “erotic potential” as the goal of normal sexual behavior absent the “repressive” norms of traditional morality and accommodated by legal abortion, needed only one thing to break the bonds of sexual restraint. It arrived in 1960.

Frank B. Colton, a biochemist with G.D. Searle and Company, directed research leading to the discovery of Enovid, the first oral contraceptive.  In 1960, a drug supposedly designed to help married couples plan their families, leapt across this artificial barrier and exploded full force into the American culture.

Only four years after arrival of the birth control pill, SIECUS was born.  Mary Calderone left her position with Planned Parenthood to become both the executive director and secretary of SIECUS.  Wardell Pomeroy, co-author of the Kinsey books on sexual behavior, joined the group of founders on the SIECUS Board.

Given the history of the founders of SIECUS, it is no surprise to learn where their seed money came from.  Years later Christie Hefner wrote, “Through the Playboy Foundation, Hefner put his money where his mouth was.  It made the initial grant to establish an Office of Research Services” for SIECUS in the late 60s.

At its initial press conference on January 9, 1965, Mary Calderone stated SIECUS would “perhaps take positions on problems of sexuality in America.”   Indeed, it did back then.  And it does today.

If you want to understand the positions SIECUS takes today on abstinence education, there is no better way to illuminate their statements than with the light of Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and Mary Calderone.  Like dominoes, in a predictable chain-reaction, one push toward “erotic potential” in 1964 has led today to an automatic reaction against abstinence.

Return next week to get a closer look at the ideas that formed SIECUS and defined the “erotic potential” at the core of its existence:  SIECUS Redefines Humanity.

 November 19, 2004:   KINSEY: Brave New World?

Governed by Faith

If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?  –Benjamin Franklin

April 25, 2005

From the Supreme Court, to Congress, to state legislatures, faith is under attack in America.  Or…more rightly expressed…certain faiths are under attack.  People of faith…certain faiths…are being asked to

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

go home…and stay there.

One state leader, questioned by a reporter this month about his faith, admitted the tragic truth.  This leader is informed by his faith.  He is what he believes.

The reporter went straight for the truth.  She asked Mr. Politician if he believed in God, which God, and why.  She asked him if he let his religious views affect his political life.  With simple candor, Mr. Politician stated he was a Christian and that his political views reflected Judeo-Christian moral values.

You would have thought the sky was falling.  The editor slapped a bigger-than-life headline on the interview:  Politician Wants to Convert You!  And readers responded.  A deluge of angry letters denounced this good man.

Culled from their letters, the tirade of invectives is amazing:  sanctimonious, supercilious piety, religious bigotry, quasi-Christian cult, extremist, radical fundamentalist mullah, theocratic fascism, chilling, the Crusades, the scariest person, religious dogma, Holocaust denier, neo-Nazi, creationist, astrologer, bigot, dictator, wacko, hell-bent on creating a Nazi-like theocracy, evil intention, theological fanaticism…and finally…duped by his religious fervor, circular logic and disinformation…the Inquisition!

Well, if Christians like Mr. Politician are truly duped by their religious fervor, circular logic and disinformation, they are not the only ones.  Overcome by hatred and distrust of Christians, these letter-writers have lost sight of what religion is…a worldview about man’s place in the world related to the universe, the earth, and his fellow man.  Everyone has a religious belief.  Everyone.

Friedrich Nietzsche had a religious belief.  God is dead.  Hitler had a religious belief.  There is no God.  Stalin had a religious belief.  From his deathbed, he literally shook his fist to the heavens in defiance of “the god” he didn’t believe in.

I have lived on both sides of the religious fence…without God…and with God.  My family and friends represent a wide rainbow of faiths:  Yogis, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Christians, agnostics and atheists.  And I can tell you…everyone is informed by their religious point of view.  Everyone.

Either deception or cowardice leads those who have a belief in the absence of God to pretend that they can separate their own politics from their religious beliefs.  Philosopher Richard Weaver has it right.  Ideas do have consequences.

In How Now Shall We Live, Colson and Pearcey expound on Weaver’s statement.  “It is the great ideas that inform the mind, fire the imagination, move the heart, and shape a culture.  History is little more than the recording of the rise and fall of the great ideas—the worldviews—that form our values and move us to act.”

Consider a small selection from the letters attacking Christian politicians:

  • They’ve found “the superior cultural norms”,
  • They want to highjack our political future and effectively end the possibility of intelligent political discourse and debate,
  • They want to take away my freedom to make decisions for myself…they are telling me what I can and cannot do according to their values, not mine.

One letter writer summed up the offense of being a Christian politician.  Mr. Politician was on a righteous quest of cultural change using thought control.  Another writer agreed.  It is not the right of any particular religious group to assert its moral principles on a society.

Yet, these are the very same people who want to force American society to conform to their own particular faith…the faith that God doesn’t exist, or that if by chance he does exist, he doesn’t care what on earth we do with our lives…or the lives of others.  This sincerely held belief is a faith-view, a worldview that informs every action of those who want Christians to leave public life.

And sadly, rather than engage in “intelligent political discourse and debate” about the consequences of political decisions based on their faith-view, they insist on “highjacking the political future” of all Americans by banishing people of other faiths to the stratosphere…most of all, those intolerant, bigoted Christians.

Somehow, the tolerance of this line of thinking escapes me.  Had these people held American politics in their tight little fists over the past two hundred years, we would never have benefited from the likes of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King, Jr.

All lawmakers pass laws that reflect their deeply held beliefs…their faith.  There is no truth to the idea that a man is divided, that somehow he enters politics and votes for laws that violate his worldview.

Thus, for the benefit of those who will be impacted by the laws that reflect the faith of all lawmakers, please do everyone a big favor.  Quit attacking people of other faiths.  Spend your time explaining your own faith.  And then…please explain the eternal consequences of laws that will reflect your own piety.

Your faith matters, too, if you expect us to vote for you.  Make no mistake about it.  America is governed by faith.  It always has been…and it always will be.

October 29, 2004:  Food for the Brain

A little philosophy inclineth a man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.                                                                                                     –Sir Francis Bacon

Why I Teach Abstinence

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

April 11, 2005

Years ago, reading endless attacks on abstinence education in the newspapers, I decided to see for myself.  I called up abstinence programs and asked if I could sit in on their classes.

From the beginning, abstinence educators were open and willing to share their message.  “Yes,” they invited me.  “Come, and sit in a class.  Talk with the students.  We would love to have you.”

It was a good thing I went.  Because I was shocked.  In less than five minutes of entering a middle-class, racially diverse high school classroom, I was struck dumb by what I learned.

Sitting discreetly in the back of the outside row, I read the student book as kids gradually finished chatting and took their seats.  Looking up to check for the teacher, I caught the eye of a pretty young girl.  We smiled at each other, and I decided to break the ice.  “What do you think of this class?”

“I like it,” she answered.  “I’ve never heard this before.”

“Really?”  I asked.  “What do you mean?”

“Well, like being abstinent and not having sex,” she clarified.

I blinked.  I tried to think of something to say.  “Really?” I commented, not expecting her to answer back.  It was just impossible to know what to say as I sat and contemplated a beautiful high school junior who was hearing someone for the first time in her life encourage sexual abstinence until marriage.

That class, and every abstinence class I have visited since, was a friendly honest room filled with open dialogue.  Medically accurate information reinforced possible consequences of having sex even as one or two highly charged boys made it clear they favored sex, even if there were consequences.  Even as talk focused on serious decisions, students and the teacher knew how to joke and tease.  It was a safe place where students could be challenged with the truth and encouraged to choose abstinence.

The young girl’s comment has stayed with me ever since I first heard it over six years ago.  “I’ve never heard this before.”  At first, I couldn’t believe her.  Then I started to attend to the movies, the music, the magazines, the news…and I understood how easy it is in the American teen culture to never hear abstinence validated and advanced as the healthy life choice.

When one considers American insistence on portraying sex as a recreational activity, it is amazing that abstinence education is able to impress students with its “new message.”  But it is.  Just this week, a series of student comments came to me from an educator friend.  Her students let her know their hearts.

“Before, I was practicing risky business. After this class I now realize how my behaviors affect my goals, so I am going to make a 180!  Thank you so much for showing me how to respect myself and my values.  I can definitely wait until I get married.”  A young girl, 16, heard…and changed.

“Realizing that having sex before marriage can be a major risk in my life, and that’s not what I want in my life, I want to enjoy my life and be risk free.  I enjoyed your class and learned a lot of things I did not know.  I will choose to live a risk-free life.”  Is this another student who heard abstinence affirmed as a positive choice for the first time?

“I think secondary virginity wouldn’t be a bad idea for me.  I haven’t had sex a lot.  I am going to stop.  I know now that I am worth waiting for.”  A male, 16, has been validated as a man for having the courage and intelligence to save sex until marriage.

Kids are learning…one by one…thanks to tireless teachers who care enough to affirm students and their ability to use self-restraint to make healthy choices.  And that’s enough to keep my friend going.  Her own comment says it all, “I love this soooo much!!!!!!!!!!”

Whether it’s the first time they hear it, or the tenth…abstinence from sex outside of a loving and healthy marriage is a message that empowers kids.  And like all truth, when students hear this message, they know it makes sense.

That’s enough to charge the batteries of at least one teacher.  It’s why she teaches abstinence.

April 30, 2004:   Condoms: A Failure to Protect

I remember the challenge from one female teen on my radio program who demanded to know, ‘Why can’t I have sex in a casual way with a number of people if it feels good?  My mother couldn’t give me any good reason.’  But, I asked, can you feel really good if you know that ultimately nobody cares about you, nor you about them, much at all?  Isn’t that a lonely thought–a lonely feeling?  She quietly said, ‘Yes.’

–Dr. Laura Schlessinger

 

Defending the Indefensible

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

April 4, 2005

Tina’s small table was inconspicuous in the back of the conference room.  Filled with brochures, posters and business cards, she was looking forward to sharing information about her abstinence program.

But, at the end of the day, packing to go home, she shared her frustration with me.  Here she was at a conference dedicated to problems caused by teen sex.  It had seemed reasonable to think that nurses and teachers would want her information.  Instead…she spent the entire day defending herself and the notion that teens could and should remain sexually abstinent until marriage.

At every turn, sexual restraint and abstinence are being challenged.  The Department of Health and Human Services has just launched a new website that helps parents promote abstinence to their children as “the healthiest choice.”  We should be thankful.  Instead the director of HHS must defend himself against attacks from the ACLU and gay rights groups.

On today’s news, reporters discuss candidates under consideration as the new Catholic pope.  They point out that some people are enthusiastically hoping for a pope who will “modernize the church”…a pope who will withdraw opposition to abortion, birth control, premarital sex, and divorce.  In essence, from his place in heaven, Pope John Paul II, must defend himself.

This week, an uncommon convergence of news stories gives shape to an ethic that has come to dominate our land.  America’s heart can be best be known by making a list of the beliefs and behaviors we oppose, by cataloging the great offenses that make us angry.

Maybe, instead of rejecting sexual abstinence, gay activists could speak out in loud and clear voices…not to mention angry and indignant voices…opposing individuals and organizations such as NAMBLA who advocate adult-child sex.  What a wonderful sight it would be to see a sit-in of gay leaders blocking access to bookstores that sell the two-volume book set, Loving Boys.

Or…when is the National Organization for Women going to take on the media and demand a return to respect for women…real respect?  Why did NOW pass up the chance to give a good tongue-lashing to NBC, Terrell and Nicolette over the prime-time striptease on Monday Night Football?  If anyone should defend himself, why not start with Commissioner Paul Tagliabue?

Where are the class action attorneys when you really need them?  No matter how much “protection” Planned Parenthood educators promise with a condom, there is no denying that the unacceptable incidence of genital herpes infections – accurately labeled an epidemic by experts – is due to the failure of condoms to protect.  Where is the attorney to represent the thousands of students betrayed by educators who labeled condoms “safe sex”?

What about journalists wedded to promotional packets put out by the ACLU, NARAL and Planned Parenthood, reporters who do not take the time to educate themselves and write about the basics of sexually transmitted diseases and fetal development?  Shouldn’t they have to offer a defense of their news stories filled with inaccuracies and bias for the sake of advancing the politics of these organizations?

The ACLU has a long history of spending millions supposedly to oppose injustice and defend our rights.  Maybe they could defend the right of helpless pre-born babies to make it through the birth canal in one whole piece, living and breathing as they were created to be.  Isn’t this a choice worth defending, the choice to be born alive?

And at the top of the defenseless mob are the judges who pass themselves off as arbiters of justice and sound reasoning.  Is there any serious person in America, much less a Supreme Court Justice, who can truly defend the notion that we are unable to determine the moment when life begins?

Defending the indefensible is big business in America.  We have an intricate set of laws, complete with elections, judges, courts and attorneys.  But it will all come to naught unless we can fix what is truly wrong with us…the list of things that make us angry…and those that don’t.

July 2, 2004:  Abused by Freedom

To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.                –Confucius