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| Hawaii State Representative Bob McDermott clearly very upset that he never gets in any of this. |
Hawaii’s state Department of Education announced on Saturday that its middle school sexual education program would only be taught to students whose parents explicitly opted-in.
The announcement was a victory for Hawaii State Representative Bob McDermott, who claimed that the program would “normalize” homosexuality. Rep. McDermott has long fought against sexual education programs like Pono Choices, which was developed by the University of Hawaii at Mānoa’s Center on Disability Studies using funding from the federal Office of Adolescent Health. (“Pono” is a Hawaiian word typically translated as “righteous.”)
“I am a little uncomfortable saying this, but this is what your children, your 11-year-old children, are being taught. To me, this is outrageous because it robs them of their innocence and it’s not appropriate,” McDermott said about the program late last year.
“I can assure you my 11-year-old girl knows nothing about anal sex, and one of the reasons is because she’s not exposed to Pono Choices.” (Yeah, well I can assure this uptight prick that his daughter knows all about anal sex, and could probably teach him a thing or two. These kids are NEVER as innocent as their parents think they are.)
After he made that statement, the Department of Education temporarily suspended the program until it could determine the curriculum’s “appropriateness.” It found that “the cirriculum meets department standards” and “is a culturally responsive curriculum that has resulted in positive outcomes for students.”
However the program was only reinstated on an "opt in" basis which means that parents have to sign a paper allowing their children to attend instruction, rather than the usual method of "opting out." Of course the result of this approach is that more children will miss the opportunity to learn and that is not good for fighting STD's and keeping teen pregnancy stats low.
Personally I am a little surprised that Hawaii is still struggling with this kind of thing.
Not only did they recently pass a law allowing gay marriage, but in my experience it is just about the gayest place on the planet.
Not to mention that everybody is dressed in brightly colored garb, wearing flowers around their neck, and that they have a long standing tradition of young men who dress like women to have sex with other men, called the Mahus.
Historically the Mahus are widely accepted in Hawaiian culture, and are also revered for their dancing and sexual abilities.
But leave it to some uptight haole to screw things up for the people of Hawaii.
