the birds, the bees and monkeys
A mother in Denver petitioned her school district to remove a book about puberty from the school library.
It's Perfectly Normal: A Book About Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health is a book (which I own) that teaches kids about sex and puberty in a matter-of-fact way. The mother, Jeannie McAllister, views the book as "mildly pornagraphic" because it has pictures of nude people (the pictures in this book are cartoon-like).
I just have one thing to say to Mrs. McAllister: If you do not let your children learn about sex and puberty, they will have warped ideas of what sex means and they will grow up like this. Consider yourself warned. Let them learn right from wrong, normal from deviant, appropriate from inappropriate. If you don't, one day in the future you may find your son on tv, carrying around a monkey and dangling his baby from a hotel balcony.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Comments
"Mildly pornographic?" Well, I guess sooner or later a child raised in her world might find themselves "slightly pregnant" due to a lack of information.
Posted by: Joseph J. Finn | November 19, 2003 12:44 PM
...one day in the future you may find your son on tv, carrying around a monkey and dangling his baby from a hotel balcony.
You may also find him being arrested for child molestation.
http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=entertainment&cat=michael_jackson
Posted by: Val Prieto | November 19, 2003 12:54 PM
Teacher: "Billy McAllister! You stop playing with your penis right this instant!"
Billy: "What's a penis?"
It couldn't happen, of course. Any teacher caught saying the word "penis" would as likely be sued by the ACLU as by a radical Christian organization. Is this is a great century for lawyers, or what?
Posted by: ccwbass | November 19, 2003 12:57 PM
I won't say McAllister is right, because she isn't. But as a Catholic schooled student who never had any sex education nor any sit down talk from my parents, myself and my friends still managed to grow up, get married and figure out how to have kids (or at least how to try). Not having access to those materials didn't warp me as I've only occassionally dangled my kids over balconies.
Posted by: JohnO | November 19, 2003 01:27 PM
I can remember at age 8 or so having a conversation with my cousio trying to figure out how babies got started. None of our theories would have produced offspring....
Posted by: Full Auto | November 19, 2003 03:13 PM
Hah! When I was eight it was explained to me by my knowledgeble best friend that somehow the process included peeing into a girl's private parts, which, of course, we both knew all about, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Posted by: ccwbass | November 19, 2003 03:50 PM
Gad. Yeah, well pornography does mean writing about sex
As I recall, almost all of puberty was "mildly pornographic."
Anyway, I'd worry more about them growing up like this.
And maybe Rush woudn't be hooked on drugs if he knew of the healthy side of sexual fantasy.
And people call ME a wierdo!
Posted by: graphictruth | November 19, 2003 05:53 PM
"mildly pornographic"?
Has she watched any broadcast television lately by any chance?
::scratches head::
Posted by: perletwo | November 19, 2003 07:24 PM
Now if Robert Mapplethorpe had illustrated it with his photographs....
Posted by: alfredo stroessner | November 19, 2003 07:37 PM
Wait, wait, wait. Are you people trying to say that ridding the world of anything anyone remotely finds offensive is not healthy for our youth? Oh crap, I think things might be in bad shape.
Posted by: Ed | November 19, 2003 07:37 PM
Umm, it's likely that this woman is also of the "Adam didn't have a belly button" group. We don't talk about anything behind the fig leafs 'cause God says it's EVIL.
Grrrrr.
Sex ed. ain't all about kids having sex, folks(gasp)! It's also about girls not freaking out in the bathroom thinking that they are bleeding to death because they got their first period and didn't know a thing about it. It's also about boys knowing that just cause an erection pops up at an odd time, that it doesn't make them a pervert. Or any of the other myriad of things that kids encounter in their changing bodies. PLEASE let's not let the Freaky Fundies screw up our kids' access to good basic information about sexual health!
Posted by: doctorfrau | November 19, 2003 08:29 PM
Saw this story on the local news last night and considered blogging it. The best quote is from the Greeley Tribune (that's about 50 miles ENE of Denver):
McAllister, a 33-year-old mother of four, said she usually screens her kids' library books. But the day they grabbed "It's Perfectly Normal," they chose too many for her to check, she said.
That's right - the library failed to watch her children for her. The horror!
Posted by: andy | November 19, 2003 08:45 PM
Yep. Clearly they can read faster than she can look at the pictures... :>
Posted by: graphictruth | November 19, 2003 09:20 PM
Yep. Clearly they can read faster than she can look at the pictures... :>
Posted by: graphictruth | November 19, 2003 10:01 PM
why do you fools go and do queer things and bug us with pornographic monkeys?
Posted by: Anonymous | February 27, 2004 07:30 PM