One of the most crucial issues that Presidentiables will have to strongly face is regarding sex education that has obviously been ignored for so long a time by politicians who easily gets terrified from getting the ire of the pharisaic clergymen of the Catholic Church side-by-side the issue of Reproductive Health Bill which is also still in legislative limbo (this deserves a separate post though).

With our national population projected to reach 92 million this year, presidential aspirants, national institutions and individual families are faced with more complex challenges regarding food security, affordable quality education, health care, social services, employment, poverty, housing and national security.  But because the Catholic Church has since been exerting undue pressure threatening like an old powerful Italian mafia on lawmakers and top leaders of the government, sex education has not been given much attention and priority; letting it breed into pure ignorance of many uncontrollable forms.

Let Paris Hilton And Dr. Hayden KhoTeach Sex Education

Today, almost all of our youth have the easy access to the world wide web and many other forms of media.  Adult magazines, sexy and pornographic websites, cheap sexually-explicit tabloids, pirated pornographic CDs and pornographic videos on mobile phones are right at their fingertips.  Just a few buttons and clicks away.  These stuffs thereby expose them early into the wide array of pornography and the detailed human anatomy lessons on vivid amateur videos by Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Britney Spears, Hayden Kho, Katrina Halili and Mahal.

Curiosity, hormonal exhilaration, personal emotional void and a clouded understanding of sex and sexuality ultimately lead many to unchartered sexual encounters and regrettable situations:  sexual diseases, teenage pregnancy, sexual addiction and an erroneous understanding of personal sexuality.

But who are there to teach the teens about sexuality and sex?  Or process their feelings towards themselves, towards the opposite and same sex and all the funny natural changes that are happening in them?

Well, the Catholic Church is quick to preach that sex education is the primary and sole responsibility of parents to their children and not of the government saying that parents know how and when the right time to teach sex and sexuality is.  Sex education in the curriculum according to them will only teach the youth to engage into pre-marital sex and sexual perversion.

But this idea of sex education from the ranks of those in robes who by the way should have never experienced sex after professing their vows and ordination (crossing fingers) is very simplistic.  And a simplistic understanding in a complex times will always not fit together but cause more problems.

What they have forgotten by appropriating sex education as the sole responsibility of parents is:

1.  Teenagers at this stage are mostly confiding to their peers instead of sharing thoughts to their parents.  There is somewhat some tension at this stage on this relationship with the teen wanting to be more independent and discover the world while the parent wants to exert some level of authority.  Topics like sex, feelings towards opposite sex, love, identity are quite a difficulty for the teens to share to their parents.

2.  Here in our province, many students have absentee parents who are either separated or working abroad giving no chance for parents to say to his child:  “Hey, come over here.  Want to talk about sex and what you are feeling?”

3.  Teens at this age spend more time in school, with peers and many forms of media than actually spending time at home or have a good conversation with parents.

4.  Most parents do not even know what is sex and sexuality with many of them afraid to talk about it with their children.  Proof is:  many parents turn off the TV or tell their children that it is bad or it is a sin when two people are kissing on a TV show and are quite afraid to show their marital affection to their children.

5.  The Church has instilled in the consciousness of many Filipinos that sex is a sin and talking about it is unbecoming of a faithful warranting you a seat on a confessional box for entertaining impure thoughts.

Then who is going to teach the young about sex and sexuality without sex education from school or from parents?  Surely, it is Ms. Paris Hilton and Dr. Hayden Kho.  Can we turn on now the aircon?

Political Will Against Coitophobic Churchmen

Sex education is very important to a society that wants to live in prosperity, order and security.  Waiving the right of the state on educating its citizen on key issues about sexuality, sex and responsibility to a prodding institution that is actually outside the active dynamics of governance is like swallowing a pill given by a quack doctor that will only give more problems than putting a cure to one of the biggest ill of the nation.

Presently, many top leaders of the Church in the Philippines are trying to discredit and withdraw their support from presidential aspirants (Sen. Noynoy Aquino and Sec. Gilbert Teodoro) who are supporting sex education and the Reproductive Health Bill like old traditional politicians in robes, staff and miter doing their own political manipulations and black mailing.

The Church and the state are separate; and it is the primary duty of the state to educate and lift its people from the pit of ignorance back to a responsible understanding of himself, his surroundings and world.  It will be a great opportunity of nation-building if parents and the educational system will help each other in giving the proper education and guidance needed by the youth.

Well, maybe our padres see Paris Hilton and Dr. Kho doing a great job on teaching sex education by sowing sexual ignorance and perversion instead of trained teachers doing it.

It is up to the presidential aspirants now to have the political will or political yield.

Image by Babble


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