Anglican Mainstream

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It's that they can't see the problem. G.K. Chesterton

Society now appears to be realising what many have known for some time:   that increasing numbers of children and teenagers are being sexualised, cognitively and affectively, leading to sexual debuts years before the legal age of consent (AOC), which is 16. Indeed, we now know that the state essentially endorses the sexual behaviours of school girls 13 and younger through Primary Care Trusts’ confidential provision of contraception; thousands of girls have been offered such ‘family planning’ aid in the last year through school-based sexual health clinics and other initiatives.[i]

Contributing factors include the sexualised commercial worlds of retail and the media, critiqued in Reg Bailey’s ‘Letting Children Be Children’ (2011);  parental ignorance, denial or collusion; the ubiquitous porn industry; and de facto and (now) overt sexual messages communicated to youngsters in some schools and youth groups. These messages are conveyed through the powerful Sex Education Forum (SEF), ‘the national authority on sex and relationships education (SRE)’[ii] or the highly respected, mainstream sexual ‘health’ charities who work in partnership with the SEF and/or the NHS, and who market themselves as authoritative, comprehensive and reliable.[iii]

Anglican Mainstream has long been concerned about these matters and determined to raise the alarm. Last year, for instance, we sponsored Miriam Grossman MD, who spoke on the fallacies, omissions, partial truths and whitewashing present in Channel 4’s iconic ‘The Joy of Teen Sex’.  Further efforts to raise these concerns at a national level are ongoing.

I.            Children, schools and sexual ideology  

There is no uniform policy on SRE in primary schools in the UK today. Schools who use Channel 4’s highly-acclaimed DVD, ‘Living and Growing’ for 7-9 year olds (and I am informed that hundreds do so presently[iv]), are, in my view, inadvertently contributing to their children’s sexualisation. This DVD illustrates by means of a naked, apparently unmarried heterosexual cartoon couple, stages of sex: foreplay, arousal, and intercourse in two positions. In many classrooms children are also instructed in other sexual matters, e.g. anal and oral sex, orgasms and homosexuality.  See the Christian Institute’s ‘Too Much, Too Young’ (2011) for additional examples of material for children age 5 and up.[v]

Indeed, why foist these sexually ‘mature’ (for want of a better word) themes and values on our young, especially when many are challenged by the most rudimentary aspects of literacy and numeracy, struggle with fine motor skills (like writing with a pencil) or still believe in the Tooth Fairy?

We are informed that children must be sexually ‘educated’ or they will (later) get pregnant or catch a nasty STI/STD.  We are also told that this is part of a balanced, ‘healthy schools’ curricula; that it will keep children ‘safe’; and that this will combat endemic classroom homophobia and other forms of heterosexist discrimination. 

I believe that good sex education is very important and understand the concerns above.  However, all attempts to reduce pregnancy rates and STIs/STDs, relying on these policies, have to date been a marked failure.[vi] Further, in my view the educational responses to these concerns include aspects which are not just deeply misguided and misinformed, but function as stealth social engineering on a vast and worrying scale.     

Damaging effects on children

The kind of detailed, graphic sexual content currently employed flies in the face of what we know of child development principles, along the lines of Piaget, Ericson, Kohlberg etc.  It assumes children function like adults and organize and synthesize technical information as adults do. That is not the case, however, and ends up either confusing and disturbing children, or heightening sexual matters in the minds of pre-pubertal children.[vii] 

It is established fact that, before puberty, children are cognitively, psychologically and reproductively immature; they have other developmental tasks which must be attended to, and sex should not be at the forefront of their thinking. Indeed, we now know scientifically, what we have known historically. Healthy brains of kids (regardless of background) are designed not to process cognitively highly stimulating, emotionally novel sexual data.[viii] Indeed, the brain of the child, even the adolescent, is immature and unfinished in its development. 

The mirror mechanism

According to Dr Judith Reisman, showing such images to kids effectively sexualizes them.

Science magazine has reported for decades on the ‘mirror mechanism’, whereby the human brain links visual to motor neurons.  When we watch an event, our bodies physically mirror the excitement we feel were we actually involved in the event. Significantly, watching a film triggers the same neurochemical sites as watching an actual event [italics original]…

 Although the intensity is normally less, our ‘reproductive’ organs are similarly [the author is describing the notorious tarantula scene in Dr No] stirred as we witness sexual actions, even animal coital actions. As in ‘monkey see, monkey do’, our brains translate the highly intense or intimate actions we observe into our body’s neural and motor activity.  Therefore exposing children to animal or human mating is perilous premature ‘learning by imitation’.  In his research on mirror neurons, [neuroscientist] Miller reports:  ‘Actual touch and the observed touch elicited similar activity in the subjects’ secondary somato-sensory cortex, an area involved in processing touch … It’s as if the brain translates vision into sensation’….

Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust was a Neuroscientist, writes that pornography ‘works by convincing us that we are not watching porn. We think that we are inside the screen, doing the deed’. A study in Neuroimage also found that ‘looking at still pictures of naked people triggered our mirror neurons into action, as the brain began pretending it was actually having the sex, and not just looking at the smutty pictures in a science lab’.[ix]

Related concerns

Receptivity to the material is enhanced by being associated with the teacher, a trusted authority with a warm bond with the children. She or he has shown youngsters visual images (‘mentally stored facts, events’[x]) of sex positions and techniques. This emanation from a ‘safe’ ‘educational’ environment results in the normalization, legitimization and embedding of sexual topics in primary classrooms, meaning they become casual matters for mixed-sex discussion and banter, and it is not unlikely that ‘exploration’ will become part of the response. There is no mention of marriage, mother- and fatherhood, babies or families. Nor is there mention of the potential psychological, physiological or moral minefields of sex, which could lead vulnerable children to be groomed and abused—‘This is what my teacher showed me at school, so it must be okay’.[xi]

The equalities agenda

There are also issues surrounding the equalities agenda. Many are concerned about the promotion of homosexuality in the classroom, which is said to be needed in order to tackle homophobia. In my view one of the most pernicious effects of such promotion is that developmentally vital same-sex psychological bonding, friendship and intimacy becomes eroticized for the child. Sadly, we are hearing more reports of this phenomenon. A recent example was from a mother whose son came home announcing he was gay. He was 7. His teacher had been explaining how some people love people of the own sex, while others loved people of the opposite sex etc. He had raised his hand, said he loved his best friend ‘Joshua’, and so must be gay. The teacher responded by affirming that he could well be gay, a label and identity which he then appeared to internalize.  A natural and innocent childlike remark has burdened the child with an identity issue totally inappropriate for a seven-year old. 

In terms of the present push to promote transgender in UK schools (allegedly in order to tackle discrimination against gender-variant children), insights from child development again must be heeded. There are the crucial concepts of gender identity (‘I am a boy’); gender stability (‘I will grow up to be a man’); and gender permanence (‘I cannot become a girl even if I wear a dress and lipstick’) which children must internalise in order to develop a strong gender identity.[xii] Moreover, with the exception of those with intersex conditions (and they comprise a sliver of a tiny minority), every single cell in the bodies of boys and girls has either an XY or XX chromosome; the male brain begins to differentiate from the default female ‘setting’ eight weeks after conception.  As Miriam Grossman, MD, notes, ‘The cascade of hormonal effects [upon an individual’s development] are global and permanent’[xiii] leading to significant anatomical, physiological and psychological differences between the sexes. How then can gender diversity educationalists tell nine year old school children in California that ‘gender identity is a spectrum where people can be girls, feel like girls, they feel like boys, they feel like both, or they can feel like neither [sic]’?[xiv]

We return to these issues in Part II.  

The ‘science’ which buttresses child sexuality

Up until this point, I have been assuming that the promoters of this sexualising process are wholly or largely unconscious of this outcome; it has been an effect of actions undertaken on other (and beneficial) accounts.    

However, it is time to note an additional factor which may be operant here. I am speaking of the impact of Alfred Kinsey[xv], the Father of the Sexual Revolution, and his ‘scientific’ research, with its core claim that children are actively sexual beings from birth. If one had been influenced by the findings of Kinsey’s ‘science’, then there may be a perception that as children are fully sexual beings anyway, what is the problem? 

According to the well-known essayist, Joseph Epstein, one version of Kinsey’s legacy could be the memorable ‘fornicate early, fornicate often, fornicate in every possible way’.[xvi] Kinsey and those influenced by him do not fear ‘sexualising’ youngsters![xvii]     

However, according to Reisman, this is completely opposed to the research we have on how children develop.

Education historian Mary Shivanandan, PhD, summarized the key child ‘developmental theories of the 20^th century,’ psychoanalytical  theorists Sigmund Freud; Eric Ericson; Maturational theorists Arnold Gesell and Robert Havighurst; cognitive theorists Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Albert Bandura;  humanists Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow; and the child-cage-building B.F. Skinner. Not one [italics original] of these theorists ever advocated sex for children.[xviii] 

Moreover, the ‘science’ Kinsey quoted to assert that children were sexual beings and thus should be allowed—even encouraged—to be sexually active was based on the implausible/contradictory/illegal/horrific data of timed sexual ‘experimentation’ on the bodies of hundreds, potentially thousands, of babies, toddlers, boys and teenagers. 

As Michelle Cretella MD, notes,

Putting aside the criminal nature of this atrocity, to derive conclusions about child sexuality from the ‘data’ of pedophiles is like basing views about adult women’s sexuality on the ‘data’ of rapists. Yet, this is precisely what Kinsey and his associates did, and what SIECUS [premier  sex education organization in the US with strong similarities to SEF] continues to promote. It is based on this ‘data’ that Kinsey claimed to have disproven Freud’s period of sexual latency in childhood.[xix]

In Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), examples of this ‘research’ are presented. Table 34 includes entries where a 4 year old subject was timed by a Kinsey ‘researcher’ to have experienced ’26 orgasms/24 hours’, a 10 year old was recorded with ’14 orgasms/24 hours’ while the youngest entry (‘population’), a 5 month old baby boy, was said to have had three orgasms (time period unspecified).  As Kinsey was a sadomasochist who had to inflict pain on himself in order to be able to climax sexually, he interpreted the boys’ agonies—their cries, convulsions, fainting and attempts to flee—as ‘orgasms’, and maintained the above ‘research’ proved his point.[xx]     

Astonishingly, the findings of this ‘research‘ have been culturally embedded and institutionalized, remaining unchallenged by all except a few, like Judith Reisman. In the UK, though mostly these matters remain beneath the radar, examples such as the following come to mind:

Robie Harris, ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’ for primary-aged children (and approved by the Family Planning Association (FPA), a core member of SEF) informs them that ‘people of all ages masturbate – babies, children, teenagers’)[xxi].  In her ‘Trojan Horse of Sex Education’ (2005), Melanie Phillips describes how ‘one such video shown to nine and ten year-olds enlightens them about different positions for heterosexual, bisexual, gay and lesbian sex. Other programmes require children to act out sexual behaviour’.[xxii]  Agony Aunt and Chair of Brook, Dr Tricia Kreitman writes in Totally Pants (2009) (for boys 8+), ‘Some boys masturbate with other boys. They may enjoy watching each other doing it, compete to see who can get there fastest or ejaculate the farthest, or even touch each other’s penises to see what it feels like… [T]his sort of sex play is fairly common when boys are growing up’.[xxiii] 

Indeed, according to Family Education Trust’s Founder President, Valerie Riches, ‘It is impossible to underestimate the far-reaching influence these oft-quoted reports have had on sexual attitudes, sexual behaviour and sex education policies. The Kinsey reports provided the blueprint for sex education missionaries – and the long-term effects on Western societies are obvious’.[xxiv]

Sex education and children

Earlier I had stated I was not opposed to sex education and believe it is vitally important.  Given our present sexualized world, parents must not assume that their children will remain immune from exposure. Parents should begin educating their children about sex when they are still small. Questions Kids Ask about Sex: Honest Answers for Every Age, The Medical Institute for Sexual Health (2005), is a great resource, as is You’re Teaching My Child What?  A Physician Exposes the Lies of Sex Education and How They Harm Your Child (2009) by Miriam Grossman, MD. Miriam is a child and adolescent psychiatrist.  

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