What's wromg with sex education including accurate information about contrception, as well as accurate information about the physical, emotional and social risks of sexual activity, which can be taught without bringing religion into it.

Well Dancer.
Sex is a highly private and emotional issue.
Its also been highly politicized in this day and age.
We are concerned with the overall morall enviroment that children grow up in.
When you have official adult sanction of ANY particular approach...it can set a very powerfull tone.

So...there it is

If the Rhode Island legislature proposed a law that barred religious doctrine (such as abstinence prior to marriage) from being taught at Christian schools, that is absolutely unreal.

I don't really understand the controversy over this issue - sex education taught in schools. It seems so clear to me that sex education should be taught in schools - this includes that abstinence is the safest and best way to protect themselves from pregnancy and disease. How anyone could object to passing that message onto teenagers is beyond me. I am also against the use of public funds of pass out condoms in schools. A role for social services? Sure. But public education ? No.

Yet, I don't agree with the thinking behind only allowing public school teachers to teach 'abstinence only' in sex education courses. That too is not the role of public education.

Well, what's wrong with sex education in Christian schools that teaches the Christian understanding of sex?

You seem to have a taste for turning everything around in ways that do not apply, Dan. Your response would make sense if I (or the RI legislature) were advocating a law that required sex ed. in all schools to teach about the spiritual pitfalls of sex. The news item to which I linked is the exact opposite.

Interesting. I wonder if the "rebel against oppressors" theme has so interwoven itself with the liberal mindset that liberals are incapable of accurately assessing the real circumstances on the ground.

Toche Justin,

Sometimes I write too fast without carefully reading everything I'm responding to. I apoligize.

Private religious should certainly be able to teach doctrine on any subject. State can impose standards on the teaching of math or reading, but I haven't yet thought enough about the First Amendment implications of imposing sex education standards on private religious schools to have a strong opinion on it. But I know that the state should NOT ban religious schools from teaching religious perspectives on any subject.

Justin,
I'm not sure it would be all that damaging to Catholic schools. I went to Catholic high school in Connecticut, and if my memory serves me correctly we were given a full and medically accurate treatment of sex, sexual development, even contraception. This was in our science and health classes. However, we were also required to take religion classes, one of which was morality, and it was made excrutiatingly clear what kind of damage our eternal souls were going to have if we had sex before marriage.

Michael said:

"However, we were also required to take religion classes, one of which was morality, and it was made excrutiatingly clear what kind of damage our eternal souls were going to have if we had sex before marriage."

You didn't really take that one to heart very well did you? (Given that in the eyes of the Lord, marriage is only between a man and a woman...)

Comments: Employing Young People as Fodder
I testified at this hearing as a proponent of the bill. What threw me off when I got to the hearing, was the opposition...the homeschoolers. I find myself in the precarious position of being both a homeschooler, and a parent of a publicly schooled freshman. (My son was homeschooled until Jr. High)I can relate entirely to the belief system of homeschoolers opposing the government inteference of telling us HOW to teach what we teach. That cannot be. But for our public schools, what cannot be is the law as it stands; without the clarifications that this bill provides, and the present reality of variations from district to district, our schools, intentionally or unintentionally, allow programs into our schools that have religion as their premise. Explore the text of abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula and what you will find is pure and simple. You will find intolerance to its' greatest extent - intolerance of single-parent households, intolerance of those single parents having a sexual relationship, intolerance of homosexuality, intolerance of sexuality at all, until married of course, intolerance of prevention of contraception (married or not). You will find skewed statistics and facts that are scientifically UNfounded. You will find sexual stereotypes, and your children will be asked to sign pledges - and join "clubs" . When you research the sources of the information compiled in the text, you will find RELIGIOUSLY, POLITICALLY motivated organizations. Dr. Miller was 100% accurate in his statement that our children are used as "fodder in an idealogical debate".
P.S. I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Miller after the hearing, and my son was the recipient of the condoms used in his efforts to support Comprehensive Sex Ed. As this method has already been taught in our home, my hopes are that IF my son does not choose abstinence, he will choose SAFETY. He knows the decision is his to make, and has been given the information to make educated decisions.
I will fight indoctrination into any way of life; I attempt to indoctrinate. Live and let live, but USE my children to further a cause, that isn't a decision they've made on their own. NO SUBVERSITY.
Separation of Church and State has been the premise of our country for over 250 yrs, and it wasn't founded on Christianity. Most of the Founding Fathers were deists.

SORRY!!!! My previous post should say..."I do NOT attempt to indoctrinate!!!!

Tracey: If I'm correct that this law will apply to certified Christian schools, then you do support indoctrination. Even if I'm not correct, I'd argue that you do; using the public schools to teach a view of sexuality to which traditionalist parents object is a form of subversion.

As for separation of church and state, I'd point out that our country is somewhat less than 250 years old. Moreover, modern notions of separation of church and state are much younger. As for the religions of our founders, you must take a very narrow sampling to find that most of them were deists. Certainly none of them thought separation of church and state was a matter to be imposed on individual towns by the federal judiciary.

No, Justin. I do not believe that the state should mandate any form or manner of instruction on private schools, religious schools, or homeschools. I do believe that I did not make the law that says Sex Ed must be taught in the schools, but the law is there despite the traditionalist parents and religious institutions out there. I am quite frankly saying, I do not want someone's theological views taught in a public school, overtly or in a subversive fashion. This bill clarifies what should NOT be present, as well as what should. I feel strongly that the exemption clause must be. That is the homeschooler in me.
As to our Founding Fathers, I do not believe the sampling of deists to be all that small. Thomas Jefferson for one, believed strongly that government not mingle itself with religion. He despised those who "preached", or attempted to impose their views on others, swearing "eternal hostility against any form of tyranny over the mind of man." Public education, as you know came much later, and served as the epitame of contradiction to those words. But in a nutshell, indoctrination into religion, has no place in the public schools. Nor should any program, or curriculum, with religious idealogy as it's premise, be allowed in the public schools.