Sex-Ed Reform Provides A Compass Guidance Needed We’re Lost Without Ideals.

Societies that have lost their bearings tend to take offense at compasses. After all, efforts to assert the difference between north and south seem so moralistic, so judgmental, so intolerant …

So necessary.

American culture has lost its bearings about, of all things, sex. You know, the national sport. The omnipresent subtext for advertising and entertainment. The thing of beauty, a gift from the Creator’s hand, that has been cheapened and twisted by exploitation, familiarity and endless talk.

Signs of our confusion are all around: in sexually transmitted disease; in the degradation of women; in the loss of family stability; in teen pregnancy and its tragic fallout - poverty, child abuse, juvenile crime.

And now, in a weird re-enactment of past sex-education battles, those who hailed the oh-so-effective sex-ed programs of recent years are denouncing an attempt to test a new form of sex education. The modern critics, like the much-derided “Puritans” of yesteryear, find reform offensive. It would, the modern critics wail, cause offense to certain teens or parents. In particular, it would offend those who’ve engaged in high-risk sexual behavior.

The new approach? Abstinence education. Congress and President Clinton have decided to offer $50 million in grant money, to be dispensed by states for local programs promoting abstinence.

Senate Bill 5592, pending in Washington’s Legislature, would order the state health department to seek this grant money and make it available. Programs that qualify would be monitored for their results, and would do the following:

“Teach that mutually faithful monogamous relations in the context of marriage between a man and a woman is the expected standard of human sexual activity.”

“Teach young people how to reject sexual advances.”

“Teach that sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”

“Teach that abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems …”

C’mon, why is that so frightening? Sure, it’s idealistic. And ideals are like a compass. Without one, you’re lost.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see “Measures withhold needed facts, help”

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN, EDITORIAL - From both sides