I would agree with you if you can reasonably explain how you can teach prevention of STDs to a 5-year old in an age-appropriate manner. Like I said, I don’t think teaching about inappropriate touching satisfies that criteria.

But I agree that this is more a matter of a sloppy bill rather than reflective of Obama’s philosophy. Still, Obama should not have voted for such a badly worded bill.

7 All sex education courses that discuss sexual activity or
8 behavior shall satisfy the following criteria:
9 (1) Factual information presented in course
10 material and instruction shall be medically accurate and
11 objective.
12 (2) All course material and instruction shall
13 be age and developmentally appropriate.
.

And this…

30 and prevention of unintended pregnancy,
31 prevention and control of disease, including age appropriate
32 instruction in grades K through 12 on the prevention of
33 sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention,
.

What does “age and developmentally” appropriate mean to you?

The guidelines were going to be defined in subsequent materials, but the bill didn’t pass.

What’s more, parents were going to be made aware of the specific materials taught in the class before anything was taught and could take their kids out of the class if they wanted.

Hardly bad legislation.

It’s politics. (A)nd I believe Obama when he says he intended inappropriate touching to be taught… but that doesn’t change the language of the proposed (and amended) bill which is very much more comprehensive than that; from grades K through 12.

This is what happens to politicians when they vote for (clearly imo) bad legislation.

Yeah, let’s look at the real issue underneath it all… Did abstinence work for Palin’s daughter?

Yes. She never got pregnant while she was abstinent. She only got pregnant after she fucked somebody.

Notably, much of the language you quoted regarded abstinence was removed from the final bill. It mentioned abstinence as “an effective method,” which is true, but I find it odd that the rest of the description of it being the most effective, and 100% effective, was for some reason crossed out.

Still, the point here is not whether we should teach abstinence only or not. It is whether teaching methods for “prevention of STD, including HIV” should include kindergarten. Yes, it’s probably true that Obama only supports teaching about inappropriate touching, but the fact is that that’s not what this bill says (regardless of what was intended), and Obama voted for it.

And FYI, to all the christian moralists and the right wingers that think your kids are perfect little abstainers: black-cherry popping and BJs are still sex.

but anybody who looks at the legislation knows that the kindergarten portion of the bill was meant only to educate young children on what the difference was between appropriate and inappropriate touching.

Jimmy linked the actual text of the bill, can you point me to where specifically excludes kindergarten-6 when it talks about specific requirements? K-12 seems to be lumped all together, with no exclusions for particular age groups. There’s one place that mentions “age appropriate instruction in grades K through 12 on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV”. Ok, I see “age appropriate”, but it’s a stretch to say that talking about “inappropriate touching” would meet the requirement for talking about “prevention of HIV”. I don’t see how you can talk about prevention of HIV without talking to some degree about sex. Are you going to tell them, “Don’t let strangers touch you. You might get HIV”?

Still, it’s probably true that the bill intended to only require talking about inappropriate touching, but that’s not what it says. So, your basically making this argument: “The text of the bill is so liberal, it must not mean what is says, therefore it’s not liberal.” Seems like kind of a hard argument to make to me. By this logic every bill is moderate.

“19 (b) All public elementary, junior high, and senior high
20 school classes that teach sex education and discuss sexual
21 activity or behavior intercourse shall emphasize that
22 abstinence is an effective method of preventing unintended is
23 the expected norm in that abstinence from sexual intercourse
24 is the only protection that is 100% effective against
25 unwanted teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases,
26 and HIV acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) when
27 transmitted sexually.”

Another goal of the bill was to begin to teach abstinence (not abstinence-only) to kids. Not necessarily a bad thing. Read the whole thing, it’s a shame the bill didn’t become law.

“Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.”

Notice how it used to be 6-12, but they changed it to K-12. Its probably just an oversight, and they didn’t intend this to be interpreted as teaching about STDs to 5-year-olds, but knowing “progressive” teachers agendas, this surely gives authority to them if they want to give a puppet show on how Elmo got AIDS. Technically, McCain didn’t lie, but its a reach.

What Obama was talking about was warning young children about sexual predators and explaining concepts like “good touch and bad touch.” A specific example would be teaching young children that it is inappropriate to touch ANYONE else without their permission, including other children. This is a very important lesson and one that should be reinforced by teaching the children how to comfortably ask for permission to touch someone and how to say “NO” when they are asked and do not wish to be physically touched in any way. In addition to the problem of sexual predators, children can be very disrespectful to other children and their early experiences, particularly in the public schools, often leave scars that last a lifetime.

Other industrialized countries that teach age-appropriate and science-based sex education in the public schools have much lower rates of unwanted teenage pregnancy, abortion and STDs. Also, many studies have shown that the more age-appropriate and science-based sex education a person has, ,on average, the longer they will delay the age of initial intercourse.

It is vital that we all understand the issues involved with this discussion (the very safety of very young as well as older children) and how important they are to all of us, our society and, especially our children.
—-
Gary Schubach, Ed.D., A.C.S.
http://www.DoctorG.com

“after a year of telling donors not to contribute to 527 groups, of encouraging strategists not to form them and of suggesting that outside messaging efforts would not be welcome in Obama’s Democratic Party, Obama’s strategists have changed their approach. An Obama adviser privy to the campaign’s internal thinking on the matter says that,with less than two months before the election and with the realization that Republicans have achieved financial parity with Democrats, they hope that Democratic allies — what another campaign aide termed “the cavalry” — will come to Obama’s aid. The Obama campaign can’t ask donors to form outside groups; it can only communicate, through the public and the media, with body language, tells and hints. The upshot: Obama’s campaign will no longer object to independent efforts that hammer John McCain, just as, in their mind, the McCain campaign has not objected to those efforts targeted at Obama. “I assume with their 527s stirring, some [Democratic] ones will as well,” another senior campaign official said.”

Interesting about the Obama campaign skirting campaign law to communicate through the public indirectly to get the 527’s ramped up.

I was going to post about it here, but I’ve been working on some housekeeping on my blog. Here is the post I did not write: Photoshopping Obama as Henry II shouting “Will no one rid me of this priest” then after the 527’s run off and murder Beckett, saying – “that is not what I meant – my hands are clean”.

We’ll have time to comment on this additional Obama hypocrisy when the ads show up.

The question for Obama is how to respond. It’s a tough corner to be in, because just about every kind of response has a down-side. It is exactly the problem that Kerry faced with the swift boat campaign. Obviously Kerry’s resonse was the wrong one – silence. I suggest the Obama camp come out strong against this one. Some emotion and outrage is justified, and will help his image by making him appear “human”, which he needs. The risk is sounding shrill and defensive. We’ll see.

It DOES NOT include discussions of sexual behaviors or contraceptive methods or other information that would not be age appropriate for five or six year olds. The ad referenced in the article is supposed to scare viewers by conjuring up images of sexually explicit material being presented to five year olds — nothing could be further from the truth.

Rev. Debra Haffner
http://debrahaffner.blogspot.com

Seems to me to be an admission that your guy has no honor or morality. Just win, baby.

When it comes to Obama encouraging the 527, the Huffington Report reported that last week and the Atlantic reported it yesterday.

Not sure if you call those reliable or not, but MW didn’t make that up out of thin air

Because he told us so time and time again?

The guy has proven he can be a mean sunuvabitch on more than one ocassion, and now when he is so close he can almost taste his life ambition, he has been lying his head off.

Big surprise

And no Avinash, his hands wouldn’t be clean if he were quietly encouraging them by not publicly denouncing them. He shut them down before and if he doesn’t speak out if they pop up again, it’ll be a major flip flop.

I’m not sure how much of a flip-flop it would be. I think it would depend on the content of the 527’s ads.

If Liberals started running patently false attack ads, then yes that would directly contradict Obama’s earlier statements.

However, the kind of help the Obama campaign could really use is an independent “fact check” type response to some the more outlandish ads.

These charges can’t just be left hanging out there. But at the same time, the Obama campaign should be wasting entire days talking about stuff that just doesn’t matter.

On thing that is kind of interesting …

These attacks that are coming directly from the McCain campaign are really more of the type that most people would have imagined the 527s running.

Does it surprise anybody else that McCain at the end saying “I approve this ad” ?