Sex Ed Gets Too Extreme

Sex Ed Gets Too Extreme by Betsy McCaughey at The Daily Signal. Sex ed in middle school now includes graphic lessons on anal sex, oral sex, and masturbation, with stick figures to illustrate body positions. Supplemental reading in middle school libraries includes “Sex, Puberty, and All That Stuff,” a book explaining foreplay and how to rub the clitoris to produce pleasure. Massachusetts’ curriculum tells seventh graders how to use cling wrap as a dental dam around their teeth for safe oral sex.... Planned Parenthood, the largest producer of sex ed curricula for public schools, argues that children are entitled to know how to “experience different forms of sexual pleasure.” Read

Religion, Patriotism, and Having Children Diminish in Importance for Americans: WSJ Poll by Jonah McKeown at Catholic News Agency. Only 30% of 2023 respondents overall said having children was very important to them, compared with 59% in 1998 and 43% in 2019…. Only 43% said marriage is very important (this question was not on the 2019 and 1998 surveys). The only value that increased in importance in respondents’ minds from 1998 to 2023 was money, which increased from 31% to 43% over the time period. Read

Pope Francis Mourns ‘Senseless Act of Violence’ at Nashville Christian School by Hannah Brockhaus at Catholic News Agency. Pope Francis has expressed his sorrow over a shooting at a private Presbyterian Christian school in Nashville. A person took the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members at Covenant School March 27 before being shot in a gunfight with Nashville police…. Police on Tuesday confirmed the shooter was 28-year-old Audrey Hale, a biological female who identified as transgender and had previously attended Covenant School as a child. Read

Catholic-School Alumni ‘Come Home’ to Work at Their Alma Maters by Susan Klemond at National Catholic Register. Alumni said they wanted to pass on the education, spiritual foundation and inspiration to find their life’s calling that they received at their Catholic schools to new generations of students. Read

For the Teachers Who Helped Make Me Who I am Today by Jim Schroeder at Aleteia. I prayed and reflected on… so many teachers who had graced my life, and so many people who had been God’s hands and feet so that a little boy would become a man, and that man could once again become a little boy again, in awe of God’s wonder and love. I found myself praying for those who hadn’t experienced a village that wrapped their arms around them as it had been for me, and for all the challenges that teachers persevered through in answering this sacred call. Read 

Bishops to Biden Administration: Keep in Place Federal Rules to Protect College Religious Groups by Kevin J. Jones at Catholic News Agency. Religious student groups on many college and university campuses will lose key federal protections for their ability to organize on campus and set their own standards for leaders if the Biden administration’s proposed rule change is finalized, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has said. Read

Catholic University of America Professor Pushes Back Against ‘Conversion Therapy’ Studies by Joan Frawley Desmond at National Catholic Register. I became a Catholic because I was willing to pursue truths that did not jive with my then-current beliefs. I am inspired by the thought of Cardinal Newman, who wrote that faith and reason can never contradict each other, but they may often appear to be contradictory. The role of science, in such cases, is to explore the apparent contradiction deeply enough to discover, if possible, the underlying unity of thought…. In today’s situation... we are barraged with a flood of false, politically motivated findings, so even the assertion of gentle, strongly supported truths, for example that children fare best in the care of their own mother and father, or that people can and do desist from a homosexual life, is met with vociferous objection. If they could rebut these ideas by reason and evidence, they would. Read

Catholic University to Host Lecture by Lesbian Professor on ‘Ending White Christian America’ by Stephen Kokx at LifeSite News. Villanova University near Philadelphia is set to host a lecture by a black lesbian LGBT activist on “the end of white Christian America.” …. A promotional flyer for the event, which is titled “A Womanist Path to Ending White Christian America,” claims that the “murders” of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and other African Americans are the consequences of a “white supremacist system,” one that is “grounded in Christian history, texts, ideas, and institutions.” Read

McCarthy Makes Good on Parental Rights Platform with House Passage of Legislation by Jeremiah Poff at Washington Examiner. "The answer to an out-of-control education system is not turning more control over to the federal government," [Congressman Matt] Rosendale [R-MT] tweeted after the vote. The legislation would require all public school districts to disclose their curriculum materials to parents, mandate parental consent for participation in student surveys, and prohibit schools from selling student information "for commercial or financial gain." Read

Parents’ Bill of Rights Is How Congress Can Help State School Reformers by Kevin Roberts at The Daily Signal. The stunning success of conservative education reform across the country in the past few years is the result of a moral fact: Parents are children’s primary educators. Until very recently, this was not disputed, let alone controversial. But lately, it has become clear that progressive elites who run teachers unions and school boards, the Democratic Party, and the corporate media no longer share this view. Their contempt for parents’ rights has fueled a long train of abuses, from racist curricula to a war on girls sports and bathrooms to darker episodes of criminal cover-ups and student grooming. Read

Arkansas Governor Signs Bill Banning Biological Males From Using School Girls’ Bathrooms by Mary Margaret Olohan at The Daily Signal. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, signed a bill Tuesday that bans biological males in public schools from using girls’ bathrooms…. The move makes Arkansas the fourth state to ban biological males from girls’ bathrooms…. Iowa and Idaho also have similar bills waiting to be signed by their respective governors, and Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee have enacted similar laws. Read

Florida Governor DeSantis Signs Universal School Choice Bill by Jeff Zymeri at National Review. Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law on Monday that will expand school choice vouchers to all students in the state. Speaking at a Catholic all-boys school in Miami, DeSantis hailed the move as a major and historic victory for school choice. Read

Throwback Thursday

Circular Letter to the Presidents of Bishops’ Conferences on Religious Education in Schools by the Holy See’s Congregation for Catholic Education on May 5, 2009. The Second Vatican Council “reminds parents of the duty that is theirs to arrange and even demand” for their children to be able to receive a moral and religious education “and advance in their Christian formation to a degree that is abreast of their development in secular subjects. Therefore the Church esteems highly those civil authorities and societies which, bearing in mind the pluralism of contemporary society and respecting religious freedom, assist families so that the education of their children can be imparted in all schools according to the individual moral and religious principles of the families.” Read