(3571)   Thu 17 Aug 95 18:45                             
By: LARRY SITES
To: ALL
Re: Sex ed news 1
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@EID:c267 1f1195a0
Reposted with permission from droogoy@aol.com

ONCE MORE WITH FEELING

Baltimore, MD

In the last issue of this Newsletter, we noted the brouhaha that 
erupted at 
(Catholic) Loyola College in Baltimore, after students complained 
about 
sexually explicit videos being used in a human sexuality workshop 
course. 
This resulted in a general review of the course, and the likelihood 
that 
the offending materials would no longer be allowed as an integral 
part of 
it.

Now, following close on the heels of this debacle is another - this 
one 
centered on Notre Dame Preparatory School for Girls, also in 
Baltimore. The 
culprits this time - to hear their critics tell it - would seem to 
be a 
bunch of secular  humanist religion teachers who, for the past ten 
years, 
have been making use of a 68 minute 'porno' film  entitled Not a 
Love 
Story: A Film About Pornography (issued by the National Film Board 
of 
Canada no less!) to explore the 'links' between pornography and 
sexual 
violence to women.

According to an article appearing in The Baltimore Sun (Notre Dame 
Prep 
Ordered to Stop Using Video on Sex, March 22, 1995, p. 1B), the 
controversy 
erupted when the mother of two school alumnae, sent a letter to 
parents of 
600 of the school's students and the school's Board of Trustees. In 
the 
letter she charged that certain memebers of the school's Religion 
faculty 
had "failed to support traditional Catholic values." by showing the 
video.

The clamor for the teachers' collective heads grew exponentially 
when 
another parent - an investment broker name Paul Van Sant, actually 
screened 
a copy of the video for a group of concerned parents. In the wake 
of this 
viewing, Mr. Van Sant described himself as 'flabbergasted' over the 
film's 
vulgarity which - according to the Sun article "contained many 
examples of 
hard-core pornography including close-ups of genitals, sexual 
intercourse, 
masturbation and sado-masochism". The lead paragraph of the same 
article 
noted:

"Reacting to complaints from parents and alumnae at Notre Dame Prep, 
Cardinal William H. Keeler announced that an 'appalling' and 
'inappropriate' video containing explicit pornography would no 
longer be 
used by teachers there."

In fact, however, the video - as part of a particular Religion 
course for 
senior girls - had been used for no less than ten years prior to the 
uproar. One was certainly left to wonder about the reason for the 
lack of 
outcry all those previous years. Were all the parents comatose? Or, 
were 
the parents currently in uproar mode merely overreacting? Letters 
appearing 
subsequently in the Sun's Op-Ed page made the latter submission, and 
claimed that the controversy was instigated by a small core of 
"right wing 
fundamentalist" parents, with the express purpose of 'censoring' the 
education of the others' daughters - thereby rendering them 
ignorant and 
vulnerable to many real sources of danger in the modern secular 
world. 
Teachers responsible for the showing the video, argued in their 
defense 
that the film provided a 'no nonsense' way to examine modern issues 
surrounding sexual violence to women'.

Nonetheless not all the media mavens were happy, even the liberal 
columnists. In his March 23  Baltimore Sun column, the usually 
liberal John 
Olesker noted(p. 1B):

"This is sensitive territory. American schools have done a delicate 
dance 
with sex education, trying to take the uncomfortableness out of it 
for kids 
 while calming skittish parents.  But there's a difference between 
telling 
kids it's all right to have those funny feelings in their tummies , 
and 
showing them the latest in bondage fashion.

So, why no complaints after ten years? For the parents, maybe they 
simply 
placed complete faith in Notre Dame's long and honorable history as 
a place 
of education and of refuge for some of life's rougher edges.  For 
the young 
ladies, maybe they're just not so easily shocked anymore. They've 
grown up 
with cable, where sex is as near as the dial"




 Larry Sites <LGSites@connectnet.com> JC's Fireman: Luke 12:49 
 Freq FORGERY.ZIP, Falisfy Fundi father fakery
___
 * WR 1.31 # 398 * A narrow mind, stretched by a new idea, shrinks!
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(3572)   Thu 17 Aug 95 18:47                             
By: LARRY SITES
To: ALL
Re: Sex ed news 2
----------------------------------------------------------------------
@EID:c327 1f1195e0
For atheists grounded in the philosophy of Materialism, it seems 
that much 
is being made about nothing. Indeed, a recent feature on ABC's 20-20 
revealed Dutch children learning all manner of details about sex 
education 
- including from graphic (plastic) models as well as films, from as 
early 
as the age of 12.  One of the Dutch teachers, when asked to comment 
about 
such early exposure, displayed a very pragmatic attitude: "Well, 
why not? 
They have sex all around them, they should know about it. They will 
find 
out anyway - and we prefer it be through educational channels." 
Interestingly, the Dutch populace is nearly 56% professed atheist by 
composition, as compared to barely 4% in the U.S. 

For those atheists who are former Christians (especially Catholics) 
there 
is really no mystery in the obsessive denial of sexuality that 
resides 
within these religions. Indeed, the history of the fear of women, 
and sex - 
extends far back into antiquity, and minimal effort is needed to 
uncover 
the salient historical facts. For example, on consulting the 
Inquisitor's 
Handbook, The Malleus Maleficarum of Kramer and Sprenger  (ed. 
Montague 
Summers, Dover), one finds, e.g.:

p.47: "...all witchcraft comes from carnal lust which is in woman 
unsatiable"

and (p.26): "The power of the Devil is in the private parts".

Marina Warner (Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth And Cult of the 
Virgin Mary, 
Picador, 1985) observes with the clarity of a laser (p.71):

"The foundations of the ethic of sexual chastity are laid in fear 
and 
loathing of the female body's functions, in identification of evil 
with the 
flesh and flesh with women."

Noted French novelist and friend of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de 
Beauvoir 
(The Second Sex, Penguin, 1972) notes caustically on p. 129 how 
traditional 
Catholicism is a religion that "holds the flesh accursed".

In his work, Nature, Man and Woman (Vintage Books, 1970), 
Philosopher Alan 
Watts observes (p. 149):

"The general tenor and attitude of supernaturalism to sexuality is 
unmistakable: it is overwhelmingly negative.."

Finally, Elaine Pagels (Adam and Eve and The Serpent, Random House, 
1988) 
has this to say about the four century transition period of the 
Roman 
Empire - during which it went from persecuting Christians to being 
absorbed 
by Christianity via Constantine:

"Certain Christian moralists of this period insisted that sexual 
intercourse should not be pursued for  pleasure - even among those 
monogamously married - but should be reserved solely for 
procreation."

Moreover, these attitudes are as alive and well today as they were 
in 1300. 
I a recent Baltimore Sun piece (May 16, 1995, p. 1D) on the 
Ineffectiveness 
of the Birth Control Pill, one Catholic "moral theologian" (a 
priest you 
might know) - the Rev. Robert M. Friday was quoted as saying (p. 8D):

"There's no question that the pill has been a contributor to the 
breakdown 
of sexual ethics in society." (How 'bout those sexually abusive 
priests, 
Padre?)

He then went on to claim that the primary effect of the Pill has 
been to 
"trivialize sexuality". Now, to the Materialist this makes about as 
much 
sense as saying that "eating a McDonald's hamburger trivializes 
eating".  
The point: How exactly does one "trivialize" an inborn, animal 
appetite?? 
Because, when one examines sexual activity dispassionately, that is 
all 
there is - nothing more and nothing less.  The fact is we are 
talking about 
the reproductive habits of one mammalian biped species on one 
pathetic 
little planet whirling around a dwarf star in an obscure conrner of 
one 
galaxy among billions. This is painful to acknowledge - but 
sometimes 
humans need to come down out of the ozone of their own delusions 
and get 
real. That this is extremely difficult is reflected in the words of 
one 
letter writer Lori Vogel (Baltimore Sun, May 25, p.22A), in the 
wake of the 
Notre Dame brouhaha:

:Secularization of so much in Western society that was once 
considered 
sacred - particularly in the area of sexual matters - is what is at 
the 
heart of this issue.."

But what is the "sacred"? It is precisely the perceived 
supernatural basis 
of a normal human activity. It is the attribution of "special" 
properties 
(e.g. "divine") to the activity by virtue of such association. So, 
why is 
sex "sacred" and eating (evidently) not? Religionists would reply 
that "in 
sex,  humans share the creative power with the divine". Horse 
pockey and 
malarkey! Because the process of reproduction is not peculiar to 
humans 
alone but is shared by the most menial of organisms. Hence, it is a 
general 
attribute of biological systems. It is the perennial need to 
embellish 
normal human activities with "divine dross" that prompts 
descriptions of 
sex as "a gift from god".  The sooner humans can grow up and out of 
their 
pet fantasies - namely being 'god's gift to the universe', the 
sooner 
issues such as the Notre Dame sex videos will be relegated to the 
lower 
priorities they deserve.



 Larry Sites <LGSites@connectnet.com> JC's Fireman: Luke 12:49 
 Freq FORGERY.ZIP, Falisfy Fundi father fakery
___
 * WR 1.31 # 398 * Heretics are people who see with their own eyes.
--- FMailX/386 1.0g
 * Origin: The Open Forum SD CA (619)284-2924 <v.32B> (1:202/212)
SEEN-BY: 102/2 138 435 752 835 890 943 1013 1326 147/7 270/101 
280/1 9 10 25
SEEN-BY: 280/31 45 52 115 135 333 378 398 290/627 396/1
@PATH: 202/212 201 777 3615/50 396/1 280/1 102/2 835 943
