If there’s one thing middle-school students don’t need it’s sex education. Because sex is icky and makes some people uncomfortable. It also makes some people gay.
At least that’s the missionary position being taken by Hawaii Rep. Bob “Anus” McDermott, who was so freaked out by the state’s sex-ed curriculum, which is called “Pono Choices,” for the tween set that he threw an 18-page tantrum over it, which he titled “Sexualizing the Innocent.”
Let’s turn our attention to section 3.1 of his report: “Mischaracterization of the Human Anus.”
“The Pono Choices program defines the word ‘genitals’ to include the anus, and the term ‘oral sex’ to include ‘mouth on genitalia,’ with the anus included among ‘genitalia,’” McDermott writes. “The anus, however, is not a genital. The anus has no role in human reproduction.”
Ah, I see. If you can’t make a baby with your sexing, then it’s not sexing, it’s some kind of deviant act for perverts. Which is why McDermott is totally going to stop all butt sex forever in Hawaii.
For evidence, McDermott’s research skills mimic those of the eighth-graders he is trying to save from a life of anal. “A simple search on WebMD.com reveals an article that plainly states that the anus was designed for feces, and that it lacks the natural lubrication for intercourse,” he writes.
Ah, yes. “A simple search on WebMD.com” is all you need as evidence that you are right about butts and the rest of Hawaii is wrong, so help you God. Not coincidentally, the phrase “a simple search on WebMD.com” likely appears in “reports” about why ObamaCare is terrible and how folks had been doing just fine diagnosing their own cancer via “a simple search on WebMD.com.”
In any case, McDermott’s stink eventually ended up changing the middle-school sex-ed program from “opt out” to “opt in.” In other words, previously if a parent was also afraid of the anus and of “normalizing” homosexuality, that parent could exempt their child from having to learn about their bodies and a pretty big part of human life.
But now parents have to opt in, which means they need to tell the school that, yes, they don’t want their children to be uneducated and knocked up before they are 15.
This might not seem like a big deal on the surface, but “opt-in” programs are much harder to manage than “opt-out” ones. Compare it, for example, to this country’s organ-donation program. If you want to donate your organs to help another human being stay alive, you have to opt in to the program. It isn’t hard, but there are a shit load of people who might be fine with donating their organs but don’t bother to do it. Thus, plenty of healthy organs are pitched and we have plenty of people on organ-transplant lists who die. Countries that use an opt-out system for organ donation have a far higher rate of donors.
And so, it is likely that Hawaii middle-school students will see a similar plunge in the number who receive crucial sex education, resulting in even more teenage pregnancies (the rate in Hawaii is pretty high already) and STDs.
So congratulations, Bob “Anus” McDermott. You have earned your nickname.
D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock and roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister and teaches writing at the University of Michigan.