PERRY: Book ban fans burning through the facts and reality in a dangerous culture war against kids

Nonsense about sex is nearly as old as sex itself, and recent anguish over materials about sexuality in local schools highlights that.

Cherry Creek schools in Aurora have become the latest focus of hysterical culture-warriors determined to ignore reality, science and common sense about human sexuality,  even at the expense of innocent kids.

The Cherry Creek school board was ground zero this week when about 50 activists descended on a school board meeting to warn of the hellfire and damnation being unleashed because school libraries were circulating pornography to young children as part of a clandestine conspiracy to make kids gay. 

For the record, they are not.

Cherry Creek teachers, like those across the country, are openly and vocally trying to get your kids to just pay attention in class and do their damn homework.

Still, armed with fear and the lack of facts, groups like Moms for Liberty, Libs of TikTok and, locally, the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network and Turning Point USA, are torching up the school meetings and ready to start torching up some books.

The groups are pushing to ban a growing list of books dealing not just with human sexuality, but LGBTQ and gender literature especially.

Members of these groups say they’re not homophobes, they just think books about gay and gender identity or insecurity are the same thing as pornography.

Clearly, for many Americans, it’s bad enough the Supreme Court came right out and acknowledged not only that LGBTQ people exist, but justices even ruled that those Americans have the right to be that way, and even marry others like them.

Now, much to the dismay of many, adolescents have mustered the audacity to seek out information about gender identity and sexuality.

To get attention and support, these unhappy critics tell outright lies, for instance, that sexuality materials intended for young adults are being handed out to little kids.

Some of these critics clench their fists and jaws and insist that local high schools are perverting the masses by allowing teenagers, about to legally become adults, to read books about others who’ve questioned their own sexuality or even the meaning of their own gender.

They overlook this underlying and critical American principle that we want to teach our children: Free thought and free speech are paramount. No one is making anyone read these books. But for these parents to assert they know what’s best for other people’s children is anathema to the U.S. flag they keep wrapping themselves in.

They clearly don’t know what they don’t know.

Several lifetimes ago, I was a social worker. Fresh out of college, I worked for a teen pregnancy program in Denver’s Five Points and taught sex education in Denver Public Schools.

I was the one who got one hell of an education back then.

I would fill a bag with diaphragms, IUDs and plastic internal and external organs and set out each week to schools to teach kids about human sexuality.

Invariably, after explaining to kids the basic biology of human sexuality and how humans become pregnant, any number of kids would either ask sensitive questions during group discussions or linger after to get the answers they were looking for. They had lots of misinformation and were always looking for real answers.

Let me tell you this, no matter how frankly and frequently you discuss human sexuality with your kids, just about every one of them has unanswered questions. Too many of them don’t have a clue.

Oh, they know about the mechanics of sex. Since Americans are exposed to the media about 10 hours a day by age 8, they have sexuality right in front of their faces almost constantly.

It’s not very informative. 

I regularly heard that douching with carbonated beverages, especially Pepsi, just after sexual intercourse was an effective form of birth control

I regularly heard that it was impossible for a girl to get pregnant the first time she had intercourse.

I regularly heard that masturbation caused everything from blindness, to warts, to homosexuality, to thick ankles, to kidney stones, to life in hell.

I regularly heard that humans can get or give sexually transmitted diseases only if they have sexual intercourse, not oral sex.

I heard it all. But afterward, I would often hear kids who were scared. Many were afraid they were pregnant, afraid their partners were pregnant, afraid people would find out they were gay, afraid they had a sexually transmitted disease, or afraid their parents would find out what they were doing.

It was a lot of fear.

Kids unclear or uncomfortable about their sexuality need resources for support that help them understand homosexuality is not a defect, not a disease, not a crime and not a shame, regardless of what their parents, peers or religious contacts say. Anything less can cause a lifetime of mental anguish and even suicide.

That’s not a value judgment. It’s science.

More kids than you could ever imagine don’t have the temerity, the luxury or or the drive to seek out a responsible and helpful adult for accurate information, maybe even a kid you know.

They can turn to the internet, each other, or maybe a library book, but only if it’s there for them.

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