I would like to respond to a column that appeared in the Tribune on May 7 by Jennifer Vogt Erickson entitled, “Comprehensive sex education arms students with facts.” While good people can disagree on whether or not comprehensive sex education is helpful or harmful, the facts point strongly to the latter.

Since the 1950s, a big push for compulsory sex education in public schools took root and became a reality. Dr. Brian Clowes, a Ph.D. researcher from Human Life International, wrote: “Washington, D.C., was the first major city to incorporate mandatory sex education programs and has the highest teen pregnancy and abortion rates in the country. There can be no question that value-free and morals-free sex education has had a profound effect upon our society.” Likewise, Dr. Donald McDonald, former administrator of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration, has said, “Asking schools to teach morally neutral sex education is asking for failure.”

You don’t have to have a Ph.D. to see that the more value and moral-free sex education we throw at our children, the greater the damage has been to society as as a whole. The empirical evidence for this is overwhelming. Abortions, contraception, cohabitation, divorce, single parent families, out-of-wedlock births, and yes, sexually transmitted infections, have skyrocketed since the advent of sex education programs in our schools. Organizations like Planned Parenthood aggressively push their agenda to put these type of programs into classrooms, and the younger the better. Remember that this organization profits mightily from performing abortions. In 2018, they performed nearly 333,000 of them. One could deduce from this that it is in Planned Parenthood’s best interest to promote programs that encourage sexual activity among young people. Do we really want Planned Parenthood, along with their liberal allies in the government and the media, dictating to parents their failed and value-free methods of presenting this critically important topic?

I will close by offering another way. I have had the great joy of teaching Theology of the Body to ninth-grade students in our parish for the past seven years. Though an in-depth explanation of what that means is not possible in this letter, I encourage everyone to immerse yourselves in its beauty and richness. It quite simply is the answer to all of the lies, mass confusion and shattered lives that our hyper-sexualized society has sadly wrought. The website chastity.com/ is a great place to start. Be not afraid!

Scott Bute

Alden