On December 7, Lisa Andersen, PhD and Lauren Bialystok, PhD presented a webinar at the National Sex Ed Conference called “Should Parents Have Rights in Sex Education?” It insinuated that the very concept of parental rights was questionable at best, and that parents must share authority over their children with other so-called “stakeholders,” including teachers and the government.
slide from “Should Parents Have Rights in Sex Education?” webinar
BACKGROUND
The National Sex Ed Conference, at which the webinar was presented, is a project of the Center for Sex Education, which, in turn, is operated by Planned Parenthood of Northern, Central, and Southern New Jersey. Its executive director, Bill Taverner, has a controversial history; he has advocated for exposing children to pornography and has argued that children are “sexual beings.”
Similarly, Lisa Andersen has recommended the controversial, frequently banned, and sexually explicit (some have even called it pornographic) book, “It’s Perfectly Normal” – which was written by a former Planned Parenthood National Board of Advocates member – for ages 10-14. She has also recommended the pro-abortion, quasi-pornographic, animated sex-ed website AMAZE for ages 14 and up, noting that the site is “great for younger kids, too.”
In other words, at least one of the webinar’s presenters has a history of promoting sexually explicit content as being good for children; meanwhile, the webinar was hosted by an organization that has a history of doing the same.
“PARANOID” PARENTS
It is understandable that parents might object to their children being exposed to sexually explicit content. But that didn’t stop Andersen from calling all parents “paranoid” and stating that some concerned parents are really just “trying to somehow trap or catch” sex educators, rather than sincerely advocating for their children’s best interests.
Andersen also criticized the idea that family stability is essential to national/societal stability, calling it “outright weird” and “a conspiracy.” Research, however, has consistently demonstrated that family stability is directly correlated with social stability, and that unstable families contribute to social problems like crime and poverty.
PARENTAL RIGHTS: A CLOAK FOR HATE?
But the most concerning statements were made by Lauren Bialystok. She claimed that the invocation of parental rights constitutes a “blur[ring of] categories in ways that … are pretty deliberate and nefarious.” This implies both that parent advocates are devious and dangerous, and that parental rights are not even real. Bialystok further emphasized the alleged make-believe nature of parental rights by stating that they “are not a function of universal human rights,” and that “rights language is a bit forced in [parents’] case.”
She insinuated that parental rights language and advocacy is merely a cloak for an anti-LGBTQ agenda, stating: “A lot of so-called parents’ rights groups are really taking aim at the rights of other specific individuals and groups of individuals. LGBTQ people are a favorite target.” She further claimed that legislation designed to protect parental rights is “really just a cover for trying to unroll decades of progress in LGBTQ inclusion and rights.”
PARENTS LABELED INCOMPETENT AND DANGEROUS
Bialystok went on to assert that parents are often incompetent, neglectful, and even dangerous when it comes to instructing their children. “[P]arents who say that teachers and schools shouldn’t be teaching their kids about sexuality and gender, they don’t really teach their kids either,” she stated. “They are often misinformed or not up-to-date about topics in sexuality education,” including “information on contraception or STIs,” Bialystok claimed.
“There are dangers in outsourcing sexuality education to parents,” she said, adding that parents who “try[] to reduce the children’s [access] … to one particular message tend[] to put in danger children who don’t have access to other views and other sources of information.”
Bialystok argued that parents who object to public school sex education work against the best interests of their children. According to her, the contention that parents have rights that “trump the authority” of the government and teachers “tends to deprive children of their due regard.”
Screenshot from webinar
CHILDREN PORTRAYED AS SEXUAL BY NATURE
But Bialystok’s idea of what children should be taught is questionable at best. She insinuated that it’s okay for children’s sex ed to be graphic, because most children have already been exposed to pornography via the internet anyway. “Increasingly in the last 10 years … parents across the political spectrum drastically underestimate their children’s exposure to pornography and sexually graphic material, because with smart phones, game’s over,” she stated. “You may think you can shelter your kids from pornography, or that school sexuality education is pornographic — we’re too late, the kids are exposed to it whether they’re looking for it or not.”
She also stated that “children have the right to privacy in their sexual behavior,” which presumes children are sexual by nature.
The idea that children are born sexual can be traced to the work of Alfred Kinsey, who based his conclusions regarding children’s alleged sexuality on his supposed “research” involving the exploits and anecdotes of predatory pedophiles. As one Kinsey critic noted, however, “Looking to sexual molesters for information on childhood sexuality is like drawing conclusions on the sexuality of adult females from the testimony of rapists.”
In spite of the nonsensical and deeply offensive basis for his ideas, Kinsey’s assertion that kids are sexual by nature has been widely and uncritically adopted by contemporary sex educators. Andersen and Bialystok’s statements betray this fact; they also illustrate the sex ed establishment’s hostility toward parents who attempt to push back against the children-are-born-sexual dogma.
