Say No to New Health/TEKS Standards

This is a call for action, something I don’t do on this blog very often. It’s mainly for Texans, but others may be interested in the issue, because this is going on all over.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, September 8, 2020, the State Board of Education is meeting to decide whether to adopt new standards for Health/TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills). This is the first time health education standards have been up for review since 1997. You can review the draft here. 

In the new Health/TEKS, the undefined
"committed relationship" is equated with marriage.

It’s being used by those in opposition to civilization to promote—without any local opt-out or dissent—their version of sex education. If you think those who don’t want this to happen are just some old-fashioned prudes, exaggerating any negatives, maybe you need to do some research.

So I’ll share some of that here, plus a sample of what you can say to SBOE members.

We’re already too late for you to sign up to testify; that deadline was this past Friday. But for several days following the meeting, SBOE members will be accepting written statements on the issue. (I don’t know when the actual vote takes place, so immediate is best.)

The abortion industry is behind the new Health/TEKS standards; that can’t be good. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but ever since they said student needed to be taught comprehensive sex education, so they could make wise decisions to prevent out-of-wedlock births, teen pregnancy went up and teen sexual activity went up. If you don’t think that’s intentional, you may not have been paying attention. (Read here and here.)  

Right now, the law leaves decisions about sex education to local districts, where parents can have input. If the new Health/TEKS standards are passed, all districts will be required to teach to the standards—at every grade level.

Fetal development is removed entirely; postpartum mood disorders are discussed at grade 7.

Here’s my sample letter. Feel free to adapt from this for your own, choosing what you feel is most important. Note also that an individual letter will have more influence than a copied one, so for that reason I do not recommend simply lifting my whole letter. (Where to send it is below the letter.)

 

Dear [SBOE Member’s Name],

I ask that you do not adopt the new Health TEKS. While there are some changes that are acceptable, there are enough problems that simple edits will not do. According to Texas Administrative Code §74.1, any standards/TEKS that are approved must be taught, and cannot be deleted or omitted; this directly contradicts Texas law. Be aware that the SBOE has no authority to approve Sex Education Standards/TEKS; Texas Education Code 28.004 requires that the local community has the right to determine the if, what, and when of sex education in their local public schools. In addition, the Texas Family Code 151.001 makes clear that any new standards must not violate deeply held religious beliefs, along with parents’ natural rights to direct the moral and religious teachings of their children.

Among the changes that ring alarm bells are the following:

—Human fetal development has been removed—from the section on human reproduction! This is not only a deletion of important scientific information, it removes the concept that the baby in utero is a human being—something very important to people who believe pre-born humans deserve protection. If there were no other problems with the Health TEKS, this deletion is so egregious that no parent should allow their child to be taught health at a public school when the mindset of the program directors did this on purpose.

—The word “risk” is used, an abstract, in relation to behavior that could lead to something as life-threatening as HIV, or to something as life-changing as pregnancy. Instead of simply saying, “This behavior is not appropriate for teens,” period, “and here’s why,” teens are told to assess what amount of risk they’re willing to tolerate (with behaviors they’ve never considered or imagined listed in detail for them)—in the same program that has already talked about teenage brain development. So it’s not like the curriculum developers don’t know this approach is inserting risk and chaos into the lives of teens.

—In three places, the phrase “or committed relationships” is added to “marriage,” meaning some relationship outside of marriage is equated to marriage. One of the most settled concepts in the social sciences is that outcomes for children are best when they are raised by their own married parents[i]. This should be taught as the norm.

You have not defined “committed relationships,” but let me simplify that for you: if there’s no ring, no public commitment announcement, with signatures witnessed and filed (a marriage), it’s not yet a commitment; it’s a hook-up or a shack-up.

You’re asking teens to define “commitment” that could qualify for sexual activity as something as amorphous as “going steady,” or dating just each other for the time being. This can and is confusing. For example, some San Antonio school districts use a program called Draw the Line/Respect the Line, which asks 13-year-olds to “List three important reasons for teens not to have sex.” Possible answers include: “want to wait until married or in a committed relationship.” This program’s version of “abstinence” is telling 13-year-olds it’s OK to have sex if you’re “going steady.” What happens to that 13-year-old when she gets pregnant, and the boyfriend is both unready and uninterested in parenting their offspring? The program replaced the word “trauma” with risk in this setting (p. 53 of the draft). Trauma is more accurate.

Maybe you should, instead, point out that there’s a formula for getting out of poverty in America. Do these things in this order: graduate from high school, get a steady job, get married, then have children. This is practically a guarantee of moving into the middle class, with or without college. But having sex when unmarried is the most common cause of generational poverty; it almost guarantees it. And you’re teaching them it’s just a little risky.

—Multiple times the term “parent or trusted adult” is used, to encourage children to confide. This is used as early as kindergarten. Children this young are not qualified to determine which adults can and cannot be trusted; getting children to trust them is what grooming behavior of pedophiles entails. Young children should be encouraged to talk to their parents; only if a child has no parents, then the term “legal guardian” could be added and explained.

—Additional information can be added to the Health/TEKS without clearing the additions through the SBOE or even a local parent committee. For example, where “consent” is the concept beginning at grade 6, Planned Parenthood produced “Consent” video series, available online for no cost (see, for example: here) could be used as supplemental material. This could happen even when parents across the state have been very clear that they want no Planned Parenthood material, in any form, used in their schools.

—Material is often not age-appropriate. For example, gangs are discussed in grade 3; sexual harassment, abuse, sexual assault, and sex trafficking are discussed in grade 5 (10-year-olds); options for unmarried pregnant teens, as well as post-partum issues, are discussed in grades 7-8, as though these are normal concerns of 12-13-year-olds; HPV vaccine is pushed (pushing any vaccine is inappropriate) in grades 7-8, even though the vaccine is unnecessary for women who are not yet sexually active and it has been untested and may be dangerous for girls under 20.

Let me say again, reject the new Health/TEKS standards. We Texas parents absolutely do not want this material forced onto our children.

I would appreciate a response letting me know how you plan to vote on these materials.

Thank you,

[My signature]

 

You can submit your comments to TEA at teks@tea.texas.gov and sboesupport@tea.texas.gov. Use "Health Education TEKS Review Final Recommendations Feedback" in the subject line.

You can also send your comments directly to your own and all the other SBOE members. Here’s their contact info:

District	Member	Party	Email
District 1	Georgina Perez	Democrat	georgina.perez@tea.texas.gov
District 2	Ruben Cortez, Jr.	Democrat	rubencortezfortexas@gmail.com
District 3	Marisa Perez-Diaz	Democrat	marisa.perez@tea.texas.gov
District 4	Lawrence Allen, Jr	Democrat	sboesupport@tea.texas.gov
District 5	Ken Mercer	Republican	sboesupport@tea.texas.gov
District 6	Donna Bahorich	Republican	donna.bahorich@tea.texas.gov
District 7	Matt Robinson	Republican	matt.robinson@tea.texas.gov
District 8	Barbara Cargill	Republican	sboecargill@sbcglobal.net
District 9	Keven Ellis	Republican	ellisSBOE@gmail.com
District 10	Tom Maynard	Republican	tom@maynardfortexas.com
District 11	Patricia Hardy	Republican	pat.hardy.1109@gmail.com
District 12	Pam Little	Republican	pam.little@tea.texas.gov
District 13	Aicha Davis	Democrat	Aicha.Davis@tea.texas.gov
District 14	Sue Melton-Malone	Republican	smelton51@gmail.com
District 15	Marty Rowley	Republican	marty@martyrowley.com

---

[i] See “Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences,” 2002, along with citations listed in that publication. See also, e.g., Mark R. Rank and Thomas A. Hirschi, 1999, “The Economic Risk of Childhood in America:  Estimating the Probability of Poverty Across the Formative Years,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 61(4):  1058ff. [81 percent of children living in non-married households will experience poverty during the course of their childhood, but only 22 percent of children living with married parents will experience poverty; 52 percent of children in non-married households will experience dire poverty (income 50 percent or less of the official poverty threshold), but only 10 percent of children in married households will experience dire poverty.]  Also, David Blankenhorn, “The Marriage Problem,” American Experiment Quarterly, Spring 2003, citing Suzanne M. Birch, Lekha Subaiya, and Joan R. Kahn, “The Gender Gap in the Economic Well-Being of Nonresident Fathers and Custodial Mothers,” Demography 35, no 2 (May 1999):195-203. “One of every three divorces in the US resulting in the physical separation of a father from his children plunges the mother and children into poverty. Father absence due to marital failure is a primary cause of poverty in the US.”

No Means No When Parents Speak

Last spring I wrote a couple of posts (here and here) about what we learned from Kelly Litvak about human sex trafficking—and how one of the steps of recruitment was desensitization. That is, introducing things that are gross, ugly, taboo, socially unacceptable, to condition a dulled response, and finally acceptance of the aberrant behavior as normal. 

Courtney and Kelly Litvak
image from Epoch Times

There’s a follow-up story about Litvak’s work and experience from a couple of weeks ago, here. 

But I’m looking at another story, out of Austin, Texas, where the school district voted unanimously—over the outcry of parents—to instigate a sex-ed curriculum for children in grades 3-8 that looks designed to do what Litvak says sex traffickers do to normalize the unacceptable.

The Texas legislature, earlier this year, passed legislation intended to prevent this type of sex ed. SB 22 made it so that schools could not contract with abortion providers. This thwarted Austin Independent School District’s plans to adopt a Planned Parenthood-provided pro-LGBT sex ed curriculum called Get Real. Not to be deterred, they assigned internal staff to write their own. They did this in a hurry, without expertise in the subject matter. Mostly, it appears they borrowed large portions from a Canadian program.

The writers failed to alter details where laws are different. For example, the Austin ISD program tells 6^th graders (who are 11-12 years old) that the age of consent is 16; in Texas, however, it is 17.

The program labels disagreement with the homosexual agenda as simply homophobia, and is categorized “along with other forms of discrimination,” and says such views “should be challenged.” In other words, if you’re a Bible believing religious person who saves sex for within traditional marriage, you are simply a homophobic bigot, and your beliefs should receive public scorn.

The program does spend a large portion, however, on not accepting bullying—toward LGBT-believing people.

But Christians are used to the schools dealing unfairly with us. And we have been able to mostly counter the attacks with good teachings at home. So, can this new sex ed be as radical as all that? Is this just alarmist? You judge.

You can find more commentary on the Austin ISD program here, which includes links to the actual 6^th-8^th grade curriculum. But I’ll share a few of my impressions.

There’s a graphic aimed at the younger students. You’ll note that there is nothing scientifically accurate about it. It doesn’t clarify; it confuses. According to the program, there are four aspects of sex:

·        Your sexual identity, your woman-ness or man-ness, which is what your brain tells you that you are, which can be male, female, or whatever else.

·        Your attraction, which is what your heart tells you to be attracted to, which can be to women and/or feminine and/or female people; or to men and/or masculine and/or male people.

·        Your anatomical sex, which isn’t necessarily related to your attraction, but can be to women and/or feminine and/or female people; or to men and/or masculine and/or male people.

·        Your expression, which is your femininity or masculinity as you choose to appear to others, regardless of your biology, the gender you identify as, or whatever type(s) you are attracted to.

They say that identity ≠ expression ≠ sex; gender ≠ sexual orientation. And that sex is assigned you at birth based on the appearance of your genitals—which they’ve just told you is not related to your gender, identity, expression, or whatever.

graphic from Austin ISD's sex ed curriculum
image found here

They fail to note that every cell of your body has contained the DNA determining you to be either a male or a female since you were an embryo. They fail to note that 99.98% of humans recognize themselves and others based on these inborn characteristics—so to say there is no correlation is not only confusing; it is a lie.

Lying would be bad enough. But among the evils that they do in this effort to sexualize young people is to expose them to the details of perverted sex, without ever countering with an example of a married couple—as though normal was whatever LGBT people do, but what the students’ parents do would be so abnormal as to not get a mention.

What the overwhelming majority of us actual normal people want our children to know is the basics about how their bodies will change during puberty, and why—so that they can have children when they are grown and ready for that step in their adulthood. They don’t need to be confused. They don’t need to be exposed to what qualifies as pornography in any other setting.

In our Texas Republican Party 2018 platform, we had a plank that would remove the pornography exemption for schools. That means, if it would be ruled as porn in any other setting, it is not exempt in a school setting. This would disallow many of the visuals and demonstrations included in the curriculum—and other versions like it. But that didn’t come out of this legislative session; there were a great many other SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) issues to deal with.

In the Austin ISD 6^th grade sex ed, drawings of male genitalia are beyond diagrams to very realistic. 

In the section for this younger age group about abstinence, it goes into what behaviors qualify as abstinent and what doesn’t—including descriptions of vaginal sex, oral sex, and anal sex—because, I guess, they think a pre-adolescent can’t get through the 6^th grade sexually abstinent without knowing what those various things mean. Descriptions of which body parts fit where for each were included. But at least I didn’t see them diagrammed.

There’s a section of the Austin ISD 8^th grade sex ed that focuses on why women are paid less than men. Not whether they are, but only why. However, the fact is, when you compare apples to apples, women and men are paid virtually equally for equal work. And women at this time are more likely to have college education opportunities for higher paid work. So—why this section?

There’s a section for 8^th graders (age 13-14) to help them figure out who/what they are. Because, they tell your child, you might not be what your biology tells you, or what you’ve always thought you were. And you might not be attracted to whichever types you thought, because now you're being introduced to this new array of types.

Can I just say, this is not information that would lead my child to a healthy, happy marriage relationship in which they can bring children into the world. So, no, I would not want it inculcated into my children.

And, by the way, there’s a pretty strong assumption that pregnancy is just one of those bad risks, like STDs. And while abstinence works 100% of the time (the only time I saw this is mentioned in the 8^th grade curriculum), there are many many options for contraception to suit you and your teenage lifestyle, because we know you’ll be choosing to have sex (wink, wink).

There’s a section on being able to tell flirting, which is legal in schools, from harassment, which is illegal. It comes down to whether it is two-way. In other words, if a person flirts—which in most generations has meant putting oneself out there in a playful way to encourage a similarly playful reaction—and the person doesn’t respond, then it’s harassment. But you won’t know that until you’ve done it. Not helpful information.

The program spends a large portion telling the students of the various combinations of gender, identity, expression, and orientation—with an emphasis on “and they’re all OK.” Nevermind that there’s only one combination that leads to procreation, and only one place—within marriage—that it creates a family. The youth are told these various forms are all equally acceptable. Marriage isn’t mentioned.

There’s a small portion of one lesson that talks about values and where they come from, including from family and church. This is followed by an exercise in which the students label various beliefs with Agree, Disagree, or Pass—in front of their peers. So that there is peer pressure to agree with the lessons and beliefs of peers, even after being told pressuring for agreement is unacceptable. That’s not realistic. The school authority tells them what to believe even though it may differ from what the family or church has taught them, and then challenges them to share publicly whether they dare to disagree with what the school authority has told them.

I thought the California version, Teen Talk, was more explicit than what I’m seeing (outside the videos, because I didn’t view them all) in the AISD program. But it’s still definitely not what I would want my children to be taught.

Parents resist in Downey, California
image from here

Everywhere these things are incorporated in schools, the implementers count on parents not being informed. Because informed parents always object. What an inconvenience for these people who claim to know more than you do about what your child should be taught!

Think about this: Whose values on sex do you want to be inculcated in your child? Yours, or LGBT activists? It’s an either/or question. Do you want your child to understand the way abstinence before marriage followed by complete fidelity within marriage is the path to a healthy and happy love life—which has been known for millennia and which social data confirms? Or do you want a radical pro-sex-without-consequences of all types and in all situations.

By the way, the original instigation of sex ed in schools was ostensibly to lower rates of out-of-wedlock births. Those rates were at that time on a downward trajectory. But rates went up from that point on, while abortions rose as well, until plateauing in recent years. When schools say, “Think how bad things would be if we hadn’t acted,” think again.

You need to be willing to remove a child from school to avoid their exposure to the normalization of perverted sex. When parents do that, schools cave to the pressure. But you have to actually stand strong. Be informed. And take action to protect your child.

Besides those I’ve linked above, here are additional places I’ve written about explicit sex ed in schools, as well as a couple of the news stories I mentioned above.

·        “Growing tide of outraged parents move to demolish perverted California sex ed program,” LifeSite News 

·        “Planned Parenthood Sex-Ed Not Radical Enough, AISD proposes Canadian Curriculum to Indoctrinate Children,” Texas Values 

·         “Worth Standing Up” 

·        “Teachers’ Unions Harm Education” 

·        "Too Much Savagery" 

·        “Worse than We Imagined” 

·        “Worse than We Imagined, Part II”         

·         “Surprise at Old News” 

Stop Throwing Out the Baby

There are some ideas that have been around a very long time, experimented on, varied—and then it turns out the original was the best idea all along.

We’re about to talk about some truths that are very nearly lost in today’s society, because of unwise throwing out of ideas, simply because they’re old. And this has led to some literal throwing out of babies with the proverbial bathwater.

An article was brought to my attention that I thought might be worth reacting to. The piece is for an online forum called Human Parts, which I hadn’t heard of before. Gabrielle Blair writes “Men Cause 100% of Unwanted Pregnancies.” 

image from here

Technically, she’s right. If you go ahead and read her piece, be forewarned that it’s explicit—not in a prurient way, but still not something you want to have up on your computer screen with a nine-year-old looking over your shoulder.

Blair points out that men can cause pregnancy with every orgasm, while a woman can only get pregnant, all things being healthy, during about 48 hours a month. Nature is not equal.

She also accurately points out that contraceptives for women have lots of negative side effects. Meanwhile, the most common contraceptives for men, condoms, are cheap, plentiful, and free of side effects. But men don’t like them. Because they cause slightly less pleasure. Here’s how she puts it:

Imagine a pleasure scale, with pain beginning at zero and going down into the negatives. A good back-scratch falls at 5, and an orgasm without a condom is a 10. Where would sex with a condom fall? A 7 or 8? So, it’s not that sex with a condom is not pleasurable, it’s just not as pleasurable. An 8 instead of a 10.

Let me emphasize that again: Men regularly choose to put women at massive risk in order to experience a few minutes of slightly increased pleasure.

She comes up with a rather radical solution: all men should get a vasectomy, which they can have reversed once they’re married and want to have children.

Yes, that’s radical. No, it’s not likely to catch on. Her point is that men ought to take on the responsibility, rather than women.

But here’s where we differ. She’s talking about which way men should go about mitigating the natural consequences of having irresponsible sex. That does nothing but perpetuate the actual root problem: men having irresponsible sex—and women allowing men to have irresponsible sex.

Here’s something that might seem mind-blowing for young people today: this issue has been part of the human race for all the millennia we’ve had the human race. That means people have had plenty of time to work out solutions. And there is one solution that actually works: absolute monogamy. (We've talked about the research of  Vico and Unwin before, here.)

That means no sex outside of marriage, and absolute fidelity within marriage. Not just for women, but also for men. In another word, that means chastity for both women and men.

Candace Owens (left) and Lila Rose on the Candace Owens Show
May 19, 2019 screenshot from here

This past weekend, Lila Rose, pro-life advocate, was on the Candace Owens podcast, and they had a conversation about this old idea of chastity. Lila Rose got married within the past year; she was a virgin up until marriage. She is 30. Owens is also 30. Her journey to conservatism comes from another direction.  She lost her virginity in high school. She lives differently now and regrets that:

Candace Owens: Because the person meant absolutely nothing to me, and I was doing it because I wanted to fit in. I was doing it because this was the normal thing to do, and you were considered weird if you didn’t do these sorts of things.  

And it’s not even just peer pressure from other students; it’s peer pressure from society. It’s everything that you’re seeing on TV. It’s everything that you’re being taught by your teachers.

Now I’m engaged. I wish I had waited. And that’s a really sad thing, and a weird thing, to say now, obviously, because I live a different lifestyle. But that guilt started creeping up on me before I got engaged.

Before I met my fiancé, I was in a relationship, and I had this conversation where I was, “I think I kind of want to recommit myself back to God.” And my boyfriend at the time said, “No.” Like, if you don’t have—  And this is when I knew something was really wrong. Right?

Lila Rose: Meaning, “I’ll love you if you have sex with me.”

CO: That’s what I heard.

LR: That’s not love.

CO: I think his excuse, what he said to me was, “Sex is how people connect.” Right?

LR: It is, but with someone that you’re going to love lifelong, and you’ve given everything to. It’s more than that.

It ought to be more than that. Think about the difference between giving sex to a man who isn’t committed to you, in the hopes that he might come to love and commit to you—and to earn this chance, you risk pregnancy (not to mention STIs) without his support, just for a hope. Meanwhile, to him it means nothing but temporary pleasure.

Compare that to sex with a man who has already committed to stay with you forever—and has declared that to the whole world with a signed covenant. Then sex becomes the enjoyable expression of that love and commitment, founding an actual family. The social science data shows that sex is better for married couples, and enjoyed more often, than it is for singles. And among married couples who are religious and attend church regularly, they have the most enjoyable sex of any demographic.

As Lila Rose points out, outcomes are better for both women and men when they wait for marriage:

Outcomes meaning, your relationship happiness, your economic happiness, physical health—because of STIs, the potential for pregnancy when you’re not prepared for it. So I think that—  First of all that’s just the social data on that. But from a spiritual perspective, if we think sex is just an act you do, right, and all that matters in consent—  It’s all about consent today, right? All you need to do is consent, and then you’re good, right? That’s the #MeToo movement: as long as there’s consent, that’s good. We need consent. But consent is not enough. Sex should be about love. It should be about commitment. It should be about responsibility. And it is built to be about children.

This next part I thought was most telling:

And it’s only because we sterilize it. I mean, we use women—  Think about it. All these women our age and younger are taking birth control pills. They’re being told, “You need to sterilize yourself. You need to shut down your hormones in order to be sexually available to men.” I mean, that’s what that message is.

There’s something really wrong with a society that values sterility rather than fertility.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s was not progress; it was the repeat of a rebellion that has occurred in every failing society in world history.

A young man who’s a friend on Facebook (used to be a missionary here in Houston—and he’s an eligible bachelor saving sex for marriage, and good looking, strong, and outdoorsy, so there are such men available, just saying) said this wise thing a couple of days ago:

You can judge a culture on how they treat their offspring.

In other words: High rates of abortion is evidence we are not committed. Not committed to those we express we love. Making the most intimate activity a lie. Taking advantage of others. Willing to take a life to justify a lie.

This is our culture.

Abortion has never been about empowering women; it has been about causing women to do unspeakable evil in order for men to have irresponsible sex without consequences.

Of course we need to be against abortion—which is used for a reason other than inconvenience in only about 4% of cases. At least 86% of women having abortions are unmarried—and of those, it’s hard to know what percentage are nevertheless because the man doesn’t want to support offspring. Married women are seldom selfish enough to kill their offspring when a man is willing to work out a solution to give that child a family.

The vast majority of abortions happen because a woman has allowed a man to have sex with her when he is not willing to stay with her and raise a child, when he is not committed to her or her offspring.

The sexual rebellion is touted as freeing men and women from the restrictions on sex of former, old-fashioned times. But look at what has actually happened. A woman used to have the support of society when she expected a man to respect her and wait for sex until after he had committed to love her and stay with her. Now women are expected to pretend, along with men, that sex is meaningless pleasure that they of course want to indulge in. Consider the idea that a woman is expected to “put out” if a man has paid for a nice dinner. She’s expected to give her body to him, risking all that nature brings with it, because he fed her one meal? That’s all she’s worth? And it’s a monetarily determined exchange? That’s what we’re supposed to believe is sexual liberation for women?

Compare this to a man respecting a woman’s reputation so much that he would never compromise her; he loves her and asks for her to marry him before he offers or expects sex in their relationship. And then they work together to have a happy family life together from then on. Not only is the woman happier—and freer from negative life outcomes; the man is also happier and lives a more meaningful life (with better sex as a bonus).

We don’t need men to come up with more and better ways to get away with irresponsible sex with women. We need men to respect and love women so much that sex is returned to its proper place within the sanctity of marriage.

This—men who never have irresponsible sex—is the answer to ending sex trafficking—and the pornography industry related to it. It would be the end to rape. It would be the end to abortion except to save the life of the mother when saving both isn't possible. It would be the end to unwanted pregnancies. It would nearly be the end to children raised without fathers in the home. It would bring about the end to more than 90% of poverty in our society.

Chastity is one of those simple but not easy solutions. But it is possible. Been there, done that, lived that life. And it is what we should be teaching.

Teaching birth control in schools, while failing to teach the meaning of sex, says, “Of course you’ll have sex; of course there are consequences, but our society wants to ignore them. So try these sterilization methods while you’re too young to know better.” And we shouldn't ignore that this approach doesn’t get good outcomes. More than half of women getting abortions were using some form of contraceptives during the month prior to pregnancy.

If you’re cynical enough—and about Planned Parenthood, which provides a large portion of sex education curriculum, this is a natural assumption—you’d think they were touting contraception knowing full well pregnancies would result, so they’d get more money from abortions.

Is more sex education in schools the answer? No! Heck no! We need real sex education, controlled by the parent, and preferably taught by the parent. There may be good programs parents can use. I'm told Utah recently adopted a good program, but I haven't seen it yet. If it's good, wouldn't it be best as a resource to parents? Churches can help. But promoting sex without morality is a bad experiment we need to end.

Nor do we need sexual repression. We don’t need to pretend it’s bad or disgusting. But we do need to celebrate it as the extremely important thing it is, and therefore keep it within marriage.

Let's stop, as a society, valuing sterility as a means of getting more irresponsible sex. And return to valuing fertility—which is a sign of health and vitality not only for women, but for all of civilization.

Chastity—for both men and women—leads to thriving civilization wherever it’s tried.