Category Archives: Media

Teaching Denial and Ignorance

July 9, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

America is caught in a battle for the health of our youth.

When left to the common sense of parents, informed and supported by medical facts, clearly the health of our youth depends on their ability to maintain sexual abstinence until marriage.

Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirms this sexual abstinence message…although…to avoid public castigation by liberals bent on social re-engineering, the CDC couches their approval in careful linguistics:  The surest way to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases is to abstain from sexual intercourse, or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has been tested and you know is uninfected.

The average person attests to the wisdom and truth of this message, citing their own life experiences…both the bad…and the good.  Sex is a wonderful gift, if treated with respect.  Boundaries for behavior are protective.  But wait.

If liberals could have their way, young people would be taught that all sex is created equal (uninhibited), and that you can do anything (absolutely anything) you feel you are ready to do with another person (or persons) who feel they are ready to do it, too (consensual sex), hiding behind a bit of latex (protection), without fear of consequences (free and natural).

If liberals could have their way, this message would begin early…in kindergarten…and be legally mandated and federally funded.

But wait.  The only way to proceed with the liberal message of free sex is to live in denial and ignorance about the costs of free sex.  And, yes, if liberals could have their way, they would have our children do just that.

The battle over sex education, from the liberal perspective, is really a battle to deny truth and to live in ignorance.  Truth about sex is being reaffirmed by research.  Only a person who insists on living in denial can escape the reality of the cost to our youth of promoting “free sex.”

  • Condoms do not adequately protect against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).  Incurable virus and infectious bacterium live on areas of the body not covered by condoms and not visible to the human eye.
  • Even when treated and cured, STDs can exact a permanent cost.  Infertility is a painful lifelong consequence of several STDs that wreak havoc on the reproductive system.
  • Incurable genital herpes, a virus that condoms cannot claim to prevent, now infects at least one in six over the age of 12.  This is one facet of an epidemic of STDs that infect over 70 million Americans today and leads to 19 million new cases each year.
  • Victims of STDs are not created equal.  Women, with their internal reproductive system, are more susceptible to STDs and their serious consequences.  Teen girls are at an even greater risk, with their still-developing tissues and organs especially vulnerable to STDs.
  • Emotional consequences of sex are rooted in the chemical makeup of human beings.  Oxytocin, a chemical released during sexual activity, creates emotional bonds and vulnerability for women which may explain the higher rates of depression in sexually active female teens.
  • In spite of all the HIV/AIDs awareness campaigns over 20 years, HIV infection continues to occur, with approximately 40,000 new infections annually.  Seventy percent of new infections are in men, and half of all new infections are in people age 25 or under.  Condoms are not recommended by manufacturers as “safe sex” for anal intercourse.
  • The CDC reports that “[i]n the United States, HIV infection and AIDS have had a tremendous effect on men who have sex with men (MSM). MSM accounted for 71% of all HIV infections among male adults and adolescents in 2005 (based on data from 33 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting), even though only about 5% to 7% of male adults and adolescents in the United States identify themselves as MSM.”

The list could go on…and on…and on.  Yet, safe in their world of denial, liberals in partnership with the media chide medical experts and educators for speaking the truth about the costs of sex.  Preferring denial to truth, liberals dismiss these facts with epithets such as “fear-based”, “shame-filled” and “morality-driven.”

Further still, not content to live in denial themselves, liberals insist on teaching denial to our children.  The consequence of their educational plan is to send our children into the world totally ignorant of the truths that could motivate and help young people make the healthiest choice to abstain from sex until marriage.

No wonder that college students Dr. Miriam Grossman (Unprotected) counsels at UCLA are surprised when they realize their emotional and physical pains are linked to current and past sexual activity.  Reared in a liberal culture that spent years cultivating ignorance, these students were denied the information they needed to make the best possible choices for health and happiness.

America is caught in a battle for the health of our youth.  If you want to know where you stand in this battle, consider the cost.  Who is the winner when we teach denial and ignorance?

Technically Speaking

October 9, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

MS Magazine has once again given cover placement to a story about abortion.  Its October 10 issue is a megaphone for women who are announcing, “We Had Abortions.”

Ironically, this new effort to defend abortion points out the failure of the pro-abortion movement during the past thirty years.  As Kathleen Parker points out, past arguments defending American abortion policies have focused on the technical aspects of abortion.

Eleanor Smeal, publisher of MS Magazine, loses no opportunity to point out the obvious to Tucker Carlson.  Technically speaking, she reminds him that abortion is “a medical procedure, that’s obvious.”  She can point to a long list of technical terminology that has been crafted to describe the indescribable.

The litany of techno-talk is, “It’s a woman’s right to choose a medical procedure that removes a small clump of cells from her own body…a simple surgical procedure, the D & E, dilation and evacuation, where the physician extracts the products of conception from the uterus.”  And, technically speaking, they have described abortion.

In a natural progression, much of the dialogue describing the sex that leads to the product of conception that leads to the surgical procedure…all of this talk about sex…has also turned technical since Roe v. Wade.  Sex education, as liberal abortion proponents would have it, is all about technique.

Going into the classroom with boxes of condoms and things to put condoms on, they have reduced sex to technique…ways that children can be taught technically how to have sex and be somewhat, moderately, possibly and hopefully saferrrrrrrrr.

If humans were cars, and if we were installing a muffler on a child car, perhaps we could let these educators get away with it.  But we are not.  And children are not.  Cars, that is.

Cars are things.  Humans are living things.  Living, breathing, hoping, dreaming and loving.  We are not meant to be handled by technoids who describe invasive “procedures” and erotic “actions” with detached language devoid of emotion.

My mind is seared with the memory of a Planned Parenthood educator who demanded allegiance to the language of technique.  Speaking to a friendly National Organization of Women (NOW) audience, she decried the national acceptance of the “medically inaccurate” term partial-birth abortion.  “That’s not what it is!” she declared.  “It’s a D&E.  That’s the accurate medical terminology.  There is no such procedure as partial-birth abortion.”

In the next breathe, she launched into a speech against abstinence education.  “Those programs are terrible…talking about differences between men and women, emotional consequences of sex and promoting marriage.”  Technically speaking, she demanded a return to procedural instructions on how to install a condom on a teen.

Technically speaking, the rationale of the past thirty years is that we only have to perfect the technical aspects of having sex without consequences and then describe that technique in a perfectly technical way.  And it works…as long as you have a heart that is unmoved by a single human tear or the love expressed in a kiss on the cheek.

Why else would MS Magazine, Planned Parenthood, and NOW work so hard to ignore the real pain of people who bought into the false promises of “safe sex”?  Where are the articles describing the experiences of women who refused to be “Silent No More,” the women abused by an abortion industry that hides behind technique?

Already, commentaries responding to the MS Magazine article are pointing out the obvious.  Technique is never well-used to deal with matters of the human heart, the matters of sex…and love…as people have known them since Adam and Eve.

The magazine has invited women to open their hearts.  And as the women describe why they “chose” abortion, readers are asking the many obvious questions that the editors left unasked…and unanswered.

Technically speaking, describing a medical procedure and the events of my life leading up to the surgery, leaves the most important questions unanswered.  How did I close my eyes to the product of conception that could have held my hand and given me a hug?  Where is the man who promised me love and protection?

Great women of courage have told this story.  But you won’t read about it in MS Magazine.

Willing to deal truthfully with what sex and the consequences of sex are, courageous women have humbled themselves to reveal the lies of technical lingo.  They lead important national movements on college campuses, in state legislatures, and in sex education programs.

This, Ms. Smeal, is a story worth telling.  Consider it for your next issue.  Technically speaking, though, I’m not holding my breath. 

 December 26, 2005 –  Small Acts of Courage

June 6, 2005 –  Planned Parenthood’s War Against Choice

  See Archives for past editorials.

 

Poisoning Childhood

September 11, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

She stands with her arms folded resolutely across her chest.  In the background of the photo, you can see playground equipment.  She is the mom protecting our children in this lead magazine article about the dangers of pest control spraying in the nation’s schools.

On the Internet, a website tracks reports of school pesticide exposure incidents.  In 1995, case #94415050501, records parents’ complaints that their children had been exposed to pesticides on the school playground.  One child in 5th grade broke out in hives.  However, medical reports did not substantiate any claim that the child’s hives were due to pesticide exposure at school. Investigators also documented chemical applications on a neighboring farm the day before.

Another website links dangers from pesticides to “hazardous environmental exposures” in general.  Their “Guiding Principles for Children’s Environmental Health” is a model of militant insistence on the right of children and adults “to know about proven and potential hazards to their environmental health and safety.”

This type of advocacy related to health issues, especially where children are concerned, has become commonplace.  In the 1950s no cigarette smoker could have envisioned a complete city-wide ban for smokers in public buildings and restaurants.

Food police are building campaigns to crack down on fast food establishments…in spite of the fact that no one is dragged through a drive-in against their will and forced to order a fat-laden super-sized order of fries.  If groceries go the way of cigarettes, one day we might be buying cookies with bold warnings from the Surgeon General printed on the side.

Thus, it is no surprise to read a top story this morning about a group of renowned psychologists, academics, teachers’ leaders and authors who say that “action is needed now in order to prevent the death of childhood.”

The 110-strong lobby group has written a letter to the Daily Telegraph asking that the Government intervene.  Without immediate action, children will “suffer irretrievable psychological and physical damage.”

The letter insists that children “still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed ‘junk’), real play (as opposed to sedentary screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.”

It is no surprise that they point their fingers at marketing forces for making children “act and dress like mini-adults.”  Sue Palmer, former head teacher and author of Toxic Childhood passed the letter.  “I think it is shocking,” she said.  “We must make a public statement.”

The news story headline pounds in the message…”Poisoning Childhood.”  It is reassuring to see the experts calling adults to account for the welfare of children.  Then, again…

With health at the top of every agenda in public policy and the media, one must wonder why there is one health epidemic that is being shoved under the rug as part of a campaign of political correctness.

A child chooses a snack food laced with trans fats, and we call for the jailing of corporate executives.  A child chooses to have sex, with or without a condom, and we herald her as a “responsible” and “mature” person who is “finding her sexual identity.”

We pinch out cigarettes across the room because we don’t want junior to be brain damaged by second-hand smoke.  Then, at school, as part of a liberated sex education program, we hand out the address to the local abortion clinic where kids can get tested for one of the 25 rampant sexually transmitted diseases, some of them fatal…all under the shield of confidentiality…out of the purview of parents.

Go figure.  Poisoning childhood?  Maybe if someone could link trans fats to sexual dysfunction, our children might have a fighting chance at entering adulthood with their health and well-being in tact.

On the other hand, perhaps it is time for adults to attend to teen sex with the same intensity they give to cigarettes in the next room.  We are poisoning childhood, and it is time to stop.

 

July 10, 2006 –  How Young Is Too Young?

 See Archives for past editorials.

Fear-Based Sex Education

September 4, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Much has been said about fear-based sex education in the past few years.  And I finally think I have figured out what they are talking about.

Yes, there is a lot of fear out there in the world of sex education.  It literally leaps off the pages of newspapers as editors willingly print the sound bites fed to them by people who are afraid of abstinence education.  One gigantic fear, built on lots of big, big fears:

  • Fear of admitting to differences between men and women…hormonal, physical, and emotional differences.  Any hint that men and women see sex and relationships from different perspectives is denounced as stereotyping the sexes.
  • Fear about medically accurate information on fetal development.  Any hint that students might think the “blob” inside the womb is a baby…this is denounced as teaching a moral value.
  • Fear about medically accurate information on failure rates of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.  This is denounced as too much information.  Fear-mongers prefer to wrap up all this information into one vague promise called “protected sex.”
  • Fear of typical use rates about the real failure rates of condoms and contraception.  This is denounced is the wrong type of information.  Fear-mongers prefer teaching the laboratory rates of failure which occur when a stainless steel machine wears a condom installed carefully by a dispassionate lab tech under bright lights.
  • Fear of defining sex as absolutely inappropriate for youth.  Instead, fearing to set a line in the sand, these “sexperts” have decided to let children decide for themselves when they are ready for sex: “Are you ready to have sex, dear?  Go ahead and think about it.  You decide.  Don’t ask me.  Are you mature enough?  You are mature enough when you think you are mature enough.  Don’t ask me.”
  • Fear of scrutiny on sex education lessons such as those that promote mutual masturbation, redefined as outercourse (as opposed to intercourse)…fear of parents and medical experts exposing this type of “education” as a violation of sound judgment and medically accurate truths about its high-risk nature.
  • Fear of concrete language which sets unambiguous standards based on unambiguous information about healthy sexual behaviors.  Instead, fearing fear itself, they prefer to hide behind vague, undefined terms such as saf-er-er-er-er sex…and “protected sex”…and the all-important “responsible sex,” terms that children, once again, are left to define for themselves.
  • Fear of letting parents have control of the health and well-being of their own children, these advocates of saf-er-er-er-er sex prefer to hide behind “confidentiality”.  This conveniently allows them to provide STD testing and abortions to students, without the knowledge of parents, never having to deal truthfully with what happens when saf-er-er-er-er sex is not saf-er-er-er-er sex.

And finally…when all else fails…the champions of fear can scrape all the way down to the bottom of the barrel of their fears and dredge up fear of religion.  They make sexual intercourse into a religious value.  They make marriage a religious issue.  They make everything a religious issue.  And not just any religion.

Tapping into the deepest fear of Americans, these fear-mongers promote the idea that supporters of abstinence education are members of a draconian conspiracy conceived by Catholics and adopted by Protestants to teach religion, to have kids genuflecting before they graduate.

Yes, fear is rampant in public discourse about sex education.  Afraid that their version of liberated sex will be revealed by medically accurate information as a threat to the health and well-being of young people, fear is the major tool used by those who spend every waking and sleeping moment figuring out ways to derail, disembowel, and disenfranchise those who support abstinence education programs.

The greatest fear of those who promote fear-based sex education is that the truth will get out.  Waving their arms, like scoundrels crying “fire” in a crowded theater, they are hoping parents and legislators will close their eyes and run away from abstinence education, in a mindless panic.  But, in the light of thoughtful discourse, truth will endure.  It always does.

Abstinence education promotes healthy attitudes about sex for young people, attitudes and behaviors founded on medically accurate information about sex and healthy relationships.  Abstinence education advocates that sex be reserved for a time in life when it will produce the healthiest outcomes for our children…and their children…sex at the right time, for the right reasons, with the right person.

If this is a message that generates fear, then you have to wonder if these fearful “sexperts” deserve the right to teach our children.

 

July 17, 2006 –  Curing a Disease that “Wasn’t”

 See Archives for past editorials.

Starting With the Back Page

August 28, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Two and a half inches, the letters on the top of the front page reach out and grab passers-bys on the college campus. NEW TIMES.

Although it proclaims its Times as NEW, the paper is actually over 35 years old, a living legacy from the Age of Aquarius when I used to grab copies on my way to Psychology 101 on the campus of Arizona State University.  Back then, the cultish paper made its name as a counter-cultural option to the staid, traditional big city newspapers like The Arizona Republic.

Now, just one more cultural mainstay, the New Times holds onto its liberal traditions while setting standards of journalistic excellence envied by the mainstream press.  This week, the cover story is about a Phoenix cathedral built by nationally-known Pentecostal preacher Neal Frisby.

Sarah Fenske’s story on the stunning Capstone Cathedral belies the newspaper’s reputation as a stronghold for liberal politics. From page 14 to page 33, Ms. Fenske details a 30-year history of family, fortune and religion, with the thoughtful journalistic judgment needed to tease out truth from interviews with a series of rivals in religious conflict, fueled by family strife and hidden in sealed court documents.

It’s the kind of story that might earn Ms. Fenske a well-deserved award.  The NEW TIMES boasts its share of coveted awards in journalism won through the years.

Still, respectability is married to the avant-garde.  This is the Back 2 School issue.  A special pull-out section targets the nearly 60,000 students who inhabit the 700 acre Tempe campus of Arizona State University.  College coeds are told to “forget all that ‘The Wall is Your Canvas’ crap.”  Dry erase boards on dorm room doors are clearly “childish and unattractive and frankly very 1967.”  Opposite the article, an ad by Vince Lentini screams from the top, “Make Sure Your Stuff is Insured!”

Under Vince, a female beauty is tightly laced up in a red bustier.  Holding a slice of watermelon, she winks at the reader.  Bold font tells you It’s Just Sooo…Juicy!  Only a careful reader who can tear away from the buxom beauty will be able to tell that this is an add for Juicy Jav’s flavored rolling paper available at “your local Convience [sic] Store or Smoke Shop.”

Triangles is “your one-stop bikini shop.”  One page over, an apparently serious article on Higher Education quickly launches into its real topic…reading, writing, and (hic!) drinking games.

The article’s intro makes it plain.  “Some people actually attend college to learn something, to ensure their future and advance their eventual careers.  For the rest of us, college is all about cocktail hour.  Here, then, are lesson plans for the serious-minded drinker: a primer to the hottest drinking games being played on campus this semester.”

Games called Movie Star, A**hole, Name Game, Fuzzy Duck, and Quarters rely on hooch, rotgut, filthy language, scotch, wine and tequila.  Make sure you have a couple of college coeds.  Victory comes when the winner, depending on the ‘game’ ends up vomiting, passing out, or barfing.  Winners in the Name Game are announced the following day, depending on who has “the worst hangover.”

Appropriately, burlesque lingerie is advertised on the facing page…with a dancer discount!  Turn the page, and the full page Bud Light ad seems incredibly tame, two brown bottles… splashes of icy cold water…Always Worth It.

If one makes it through 140 pages of the New Times, they may not be sober enough to read the back page.  But will they care?

After all, there are no buxom beauties, and all of the 85 adds on the back page are written in small font.  Marijuana Lawyer, sympathetic expert trial attorney, Cocaine Anonymous.  STOP Foreclosure!  Don’t WAIT!  WITHDRAWAL…FREE DETOX…FROM ANY ADDICTION.  Bankruptcy 4Less.  $200…and more… 

Paternity and Infidelity Testing…30% discount with this ad.  HIV 10 Minutes♦$69.  STD Doctor-Viagra-Cialis-Levitra.  Criminal & DUI…Little or $0 Down.  Vehicle Cash Loan.  All Accidents & Serious Injury. 

The times are not really new.  And neither are the consequences of bad choices.

If your student is entering college this year, it might be worth getting a copy of the college newspaper to read with your precious child.  Just remember to start reading from the back page.

 

September 5, 2005  – The Gift of Fear

August 27, 2004  – Is Your Child Ready for School?

 See Archives for past editorials.