Joanne Jacobs-I think that you are missing the bigger picture here. Going beyond the specific bill you link to, it is clear that:
1. Sen. Obama has gone on the record in the past as being for “age appropriate” sex education that includes kindergartners.
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3386492
2. When asked to clarify his comments then, a spokesman “issued a document showing that the Oregon Department of Education has guidelines for sex education for children in grades K-3 (which includes understanding the difference between a good touch and a bad touch), and that the Sexuality Information And Education Council of the United States has curriculum for those in kindergarten.”
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/19/277886.aspx
3. The SIECUS guideline defines as age appropriate for children five to eight years old:
a. Teaching the medically correct names of the male and female sex organs.
b. That “Vaginal intercourse – when a penis is placed inside a vagina – is the most common way for a sperm and egg to join.”
c. The general concept that there are herosexual and homosexual people.
d. Some boys and girls masturbate and others do not.
There is much more to those guidelines and in some ways much of it is not objectionable to me, except in the sense that I wonder if the topic should be discussed at all, in this kind detail, at the age of five or six. What some people consider “age appropriate” goes far beyond the “bad touch” stuff, and we deserve to know what Sen. Obama means in detail when he talks about “age appropriate” sex education to kindergartners. Perhaps he agrees with the SIECUS guidelines and perhaps he doesn’t agree, in all or part.
You can do a great service to your readers by delving deeper into this and I hope you do.
Regards,
Dave
