An Appalling Case of Progressivism

This is precisely the reason I am a proponent of socially conservative values (h/t GayPatriot):

Officials in Basel [Switzerland] have agreed to rename the “sex box” after receiving some 3,000 letters of protest from parents angered by the controversial trove ofwooden penises and fabric vaginas set to be used in a new sex education programme for playschool and primary school kids. 

Christoph Eymann, Basel education minister and member of the liberal democrat party (LDP), responded to parent’s protests in an interview with SonntagsBlick. 

“It was no doubt stupid to call it a ’sex box’ – we will change that. But we will stick to our goal: to get across to children that sexuality is something natural. Without forcing anything upon them or taking anything away from their parents,“ he said. 

Many parents say they do not understand why sex education needs to be taught to children as young as four.

I can see the point of educating teens about sex, but four year olds?

Eymann said he understood that one line in the programme, “touching can be enjoyed heartily”, could be misconstrued, but insisted: “It is not about ‘touch me, feel me’. We want to tell the children that there is contact that they may find pleasurable, but some that they should say ’no’ to. Kids can unfortunately can become victims of sexual violence already at playschool age." 

Eymann said he would prefer if sex education was taught to children at home but argued that education officials needed to respond to the realities of today. 

“We currently live in an oversexualised society. There is uncontrolled distribution of pornographic material that can reach young children. Some primary school children know the TV schedule until 2am. We would like to offer these children firm support, which is often not available in the family. The box is only an aid. I trust the teachers to approach the material with care.”

Yes, we do live in an oversexualized society.  However, making it further oversexualized is not the solution.  And, this is perhaps the worst part:

Some parents have called for their children to be exempted from sex education. Eymann says he is strictly against exemptions, although he is aware this will not make him many friends: 

“Primary school may be the only big audience that our society has. The shared values that it teaches are very important. I would definitely like to keep this. The explanatory lesson can be portrayed in a way that doesn’t offend“, he said.

This is one of those things that would make me check the date if it weren't August (in case it were April 1st).  Still, I have a difficult time thinking any sane person would actually think this is the solution to anything.  While I am opposed to government intervention into the actions of people in private (as long as they are not causing harm to anyone), it is clear to me that children, especially children this young, are not rational, and cannot understand sex and what its significance is.  Sex is a natural thing, but, it has the capability of causing problems when it is not understood rationally.  I would prefer to live in a society where sex is not out in the open, where it is private.

In addition, it is totally unacceptable for parents not to be able to pull their children out of this program.

NOTE: I almost titled this post "Mental Porn for Pedophiles" but I decided not to.

Screw Diabetics

Apparently, Vancouver's public health authority believes catering to crack addicts is more important than catering to diabetics.  A new program in Vancouver will provide crack addicts with free crack pipes.  Vancouver is also the location of a controversial program that provides free needles to heroin addicts.  From CTV:

It's part of the city's harm-reduction strategy that seeks to reduce the transmission of disease while ensuring health-care and social workers are able to interact with hard-to-reach drug addicts. Currently, the city distributes clean mouth pieces for crack pipes, but not the pipes themselves.

"We want to do it in a way that we can evaluate this, because there's a couple of questions I hope we can answer by doing this," says Dr. Patricia Daly, the medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health.

"And not just about demand and numbers, but can we use this as an engagement strategy like we do with our other harm-reduction initiatives. If you can deliver them (harm-reduction programs) in a way where you can get people into other services, that's very beneficial."

Unlike needle-exchange programs for injection drugs, programs to ensure users who smoke crack are using the drug safely are uneven across the country and, in some cases, non-existent. That's despite a growing body of evidence that smoking crack cocaine increases the risk of diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.

In a small handful of cities, including Calgary and Winnipeg, local health authorities pass out crack pipes. Others prefer to only hand out mouth pieces, which users can place on their own pipes to avoid exposing themselves to others' saliva and blood.

And in others still, the job of distributing either mouth pieces or pipes is left to local community groups.

That uneven approach is needlessly putting crack users at risk, say experts and advocacy groups, who argue crack-pipe distribution should be a standard tool in every provincial and municipal drug strategy.

The widespread use of narcotics such as heroin and cocaine leads me to believe either education on the dangers of narcotics use is insufficient or a lot of people are just plain stupid.  Having said that, I am not completely opposed to this program.  Given the way Canada's healthcare system is structured, this makes sense if it reduces the rates of diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, which would therefore reduce the costs associated with treating those diseases.  I am strongly opposed to the program ideologically, but it seems to be the pragmatic thing to do (that is, as long as it saves money).  I think, if money is going to be spent at all, it should be spent on educating children on the dangers of drug abuse (which it already is).

If I were to allow my ideology to dictate my approach to this problem, the solution I would propose would be to allow the crackheads to pay for the consequences of their stupidity on their own.  What responsibility to taxpayers have to pay for other people's mistakes?

Simply put, I am outraged at the prospect of paying for someone else’s terrible choice.  This is one reason I am opposed to universal healthcare; people who make terrible decisions and do not properly care for their health are drains on the system.  That goes for drug addicts, alcoholics, smokers, overweight people, and people who practice unsafe sex, among others.  In an ideal private healthcare system, these people would have to pay for their own mistakes with higher insurance costs, thus proving them with a disincentive to continue their unhealthy lifestyle.  As for the specifics on what to do with crack addicts (and other narcotics users), I will get into that in a subsequent post.  For now, suffice it to say I have an idea that more so conforms to my ideology and, frankly, I don't give an [expletive] about people who are stupid enough to use drugs in the first place, particularly those who are stupid enough to risk contracting HIV by sharing needles or crack pipes, as long as taxpayers do not have to pay for their treatment.  

Furthermore, this program seems to treat crack addicts preferentially over diabetics, who must use their own money to pay for their equipment.  Diabetics' equipment may be more expensive, but, as a matter of principle, it doesn't make any sense to provide drug addicts with equipment they use to use drugs and not provide diabetics, whose condition is often genetic, with equipment they use to live.  

Gender Bending Diversity Training

Gender Spectrum Diversity Training sounds hideously politically correct on its own, but that was the name of a program targeted towards kindergarten students:

Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland, CA has joined the chorus of those wishing to mainstream 'gender-bending' by enacting a program this week that, according to a press release, tells kindergarteners 'there are more than two genders.'

 The kindergarten through fifth grade school hosted a 2-day program for students titled, 'Gender Spectrum Diversity Training,' in which single-sex Hawaiian geckos and transgender clownfish were brought in to teach children that 'there are different ways to be boys. There are different ways to be girls,' according to Redwood Heights principal Sara Stone. Students received gender diversity training as they learned about 'boy snakes that act 'girly'.' 

This is only the latest example of what seems to be a New-Age, gender-bending agenda pushed into the mainstream media by those who refuse to accept the traditional sex differences between men and women. A couple in Toronto, Canada has sparked outrage because they refuse to assign a specific gender to their infant 'Storm,' preferring instead to believe 'a child's sex should not determine his or her place in the world.

Firstly, I highly doubt kindergarten students understand what gender is.  If little boys act like girls sometimes, they are not self-conscious about it.  They don't understand that what they are doing is "gender bending."  Secondly, lizards and fish are not comparable to humans.  There are numerous species that exhibit transsexuality (called hermaphroditism in biology).  For hermaphroditic species, either having both male and female sexual organs simultaneously or changing sexual organs at some point is common, if not universal.  Clownfish, unlike humans, are hermaphroditic (they are born male, but may become female).  Obviously, kindergarten students would not be able understand that, but deriving a "lesson" from a flawed comparison seems unethical to me.  That is not to mention everything else that is horribly wrong with indoctrinating children with this politically correct "gender bending" agenda.  

In human culture, there is a reason for the social construct of gender: that males and females are fundamentally different and have fundamentally different roles.  I think women should have the same rights as men, but that does not mean that women are the same as men.  If small children have problems with their gender, then they should be allowed to deal with that on their own.  This is yet another example of the illusion that life is easy and everyone loves everyone that children are perpetually exposed to in schools.  Life is hard, and it is even harder when you think it is easy.  Instead of indoctrinating children with vile ideals and exposing them to sex at a disgustingly early age (see also, this post), schools should focus on teaching children things like science and math and let them establish their own ideals through their own experiences.  

Society is gradually becoming more accepting of deviance of gender roles.  What is wrong with the expectation that men act like men and women act like women?  In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with that.  School is a joke and parents are becoming so over-protective that their children are not mature enough that they can't function in the real world because they never had the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.  The world is gradually becoming an abhorrently progressive dystopia.  The traditional family unit is important to the health of society.  I will go into that in more detail in a subsequent post.  For now, I will conclude that, given that premise, traditional gender roles are also important for the health of society.  Exposing children to androgyny cannot be good.  

I also wanted to say something about this, the Toronto couple that is raising a "genderless" child that was mentioned in that article I linked to.  

A Toronto couple is taking their beliefs about parenting and gender stereotypes to new heights: They refuse to tell people the gender of 4-month-old Storm, reports the Toronto Star. Even the kid's grandparents are in the dark. “In fact, in not telling the gender of my precious baby, I am saying to the world, ‘Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s(he) wants to be?!”

I do believe that parents (not schools) should be able to raise their children how they want to, but this seems almost criminal.  This has to be some form of child abuse.

Militant progressivism has reached a new low.