Sexy

Primer for today’s unsolicited opinion can be found here.

The caveat should be offered that I have not seen the curriculum change that is in the process of being adopted. I don’t know, specifically, what it means that teaching tolerance towards homosexuals is being folded into the curriculum. But from the sound of it, the goal is to foster tolerance for people of different beliefs and lifestyles, and, more concretely put, to ensure that the kid with two moms or two dads isn’t hated on.

My personal belief is…what’s the big deal. I was fortunate to be raised in an environment where tolerance for most things was the norm, especially for gays. I don’t see how someone being gay threatens you, Mr. Homophobe, and I don’t see what opening up to different kinds of marriage does to sully your relationship with your wife. But that’s just me. So when I first read this, I tried to do the devil’s advocate thing. I tried to put myself in the shoes of some hater parent. And I tried to recognize their rights to raise their kid however they see fit.

But do you know what? It didn’t take. I just can’t see that side of the argument from any angle. Because if my reading of the curriculum’s intent is correct, then this lesson has to do with families and not with sex or the various alternate sexual positions a gay person might find more useful than missionary. It has to do with understanding that there’s nothing wrong with having two mommies or two daddies (or one aunt and two grandparents, or one big brother, or whatever for that matter) instead of one mom and one dad. It has to do with love, and understanding that families are groups of people who love each other. Despite the massive numbers of people who don’t know how to love or are afraid of love, you’d be hard pressed to find a parent who would fight curriculum because it included I’ll Love You Forever And Like You For Always or some other such children’s book.

The problem here is that we, as not-so-innocent adults, associate love with sex, and we project that onto our kids. But your kid doesn’t associate love with sex (unless s/he does, in which case the cat’s out of the bag and you have no argument for sheltering them from it). If you want to keep your child sheltered from sex until s/he is 35 (can you tell how I feel about that one?), by all means do. This shift in curriculum will do nothing to stop you.

And besides all that, folks, how uptight do we need to be? Shelter your kids from sexually transmitted diseases: yes (by educating them). Shelter your kids from violent sex offenses and power plays: yes (by teaching common sense, respect, and self esteem). Yes. Do those things. But shelter them from the concept of sex itself? From something we’re hardwired to do, on which the survival of our species relies, and that they’ll figure out on their own anyway? Really?

I got an email from a friend about a festival that I’d sure never heard of called Honen Matsuri. It’s a fertility ceremony.

Now I have no idea who took this photograph, and normally I would refuse to place a photograph I didn’t take in my posts, but I have no idea who took this and it’s too good to pass up. So if you took it, by all means shoot me a message and I’ll give credit where credit is due.

But, come on folks:

[Imagine that what you see here is a picture of a shellac-ed, erect, wooden penis, at least twelve feet long and two feet in diameter, next to which a mother holds her two-year-old up to 'pet' the penis while they pose for a photo. I took it down because this particular post was getting way too many hits from people I don't know all over the world and I never obtained permission from the unknown photographer (or its subjects) to post it in the first place. I know. What a kill joy.]

Ok. First, yes, I have to admit I totally giggled. And that isn’t even the best picture. It’s just the one that best illustrates making my point:

If these people can be so far beyond a puritanical moral crisis that it seems to have not even occurred to them that some might find it wrong to put their two year old daughter up to petting a giant phallus, maybe it’s time we take a teensy little step back from our massive shit fit.

Maybe it’s time to shift our energy towards having a shit fit about the fact that while your kid hasn’t ever seen a breast on television, thank god, he has watched hundreds of characters get shot or beaten to death instead.

Or even maybe, MAYBE, we just put the shit fit away for awhile. No?