FAIL Quote of the Day: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t (teach contraception)

Wisconsin attorney Scott Southworth, dumbass

A law was passed in Wisconsin in late February, called the Healthy Youth Act, that requires sex ed classes in public schools to teach kids about the proper usage of contraceptives, amongst other things. This is a great move, of course, one that will ensure that as many kids as possible will be made aware of the possible consequences of their little escapades and will know how to best protect themselves from the risks. However, not everyone’s happy with this law, including Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth, who sent a letter^[PDF] to the county’s five school districts threatening to sue them unless they broke the law and refused to include contraception in sex ed. Seriously.

"To encourage children to have sex in any way, shape or form is egregious," Southworth said. "It's one thing to instruct students about human biology, human physiology and reproduction. It's quite another to cross that line and start teaching students on how to engage in sex for pleasure."

He said teachers who know students are having sex and then teach those students the use of contraceptives could be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

"It's akin to saying we need to teach kids how to make mixed drinks because some kids are going to illegally drink alcohol," Southworth said.

This sort of reasoning is quite typical from anti-sex twits, in that it’s both massively stupid and quite bizarre, if not to say downright clueless. First, no-one is “encourag[ing] children to have sex”; that is an absurd distortion of what sex ed courses do and teach. Sex ed is all about teaching kids and teens about sex, how reproduction works, and especially, how to protect themselves from risks such as STDs or unwanted pregnancies. To the best of my knowledge, while kids aren’t exactly told to keep their libido down to a near-zero level, they certainly aren’t being pushed to have sex, either. The thing is that sex ed teachers are probably intelligent and wise enough to realize that you just can’t stop hormonally driven kids from bonking their brains out sooner or later, so they might as well teach them something useful about it and how to do it safely.

It’s mildly amusing (in a how-stupid-is-that? sort of way) that he asserts that teachers who teach kids about contraception, thereby ensuring that more kids will be able to “do it” safely and responsibly, will be charged with, of all things, “contributing to the delinquency of a minor”. When they are in fact accomplishing the exact opposite. The logic, it fails, here.

Finally, you just know you’re dealing with a complete moron when they use an analogy as pathetic and retarded as, such as in this case, comparing education about sex and contraceptives to teaching kids how to mix alcoholic beverages and turn into little drunkards. It’s rather more akin to telling kids who plan on downing a few drinks to plan ahead and enlist a designated driver or call a cab. Really, when you start comparing instruction on safety precautions to worst-case scenarios, you’re a fool.

Scott Southworth, you’re a fool. An idiotic, self-serving and pointlessly litigating fool.

(via The Agitator)