Arkansas Blog

Eminent sense -- Dr. Elders is another of those African-American heroes with Arkansas roots whom we need to be celebrating now in a time of increased racial strife in our state. Everything she says makes such good sense that a person has to wonder what universe we live in, when we think that denying good sex education to young people will lead to anything other than hardship for them.

There's one point I would add. Dr. Elders says, "The reason why we have so much AIDS and STD's in Southern states is because we are less likely to have sex education and talk about it as part of our schools and a part of our system."

I'd add that the reason we're less likely to have sex education in schools in the Southern states is because the church itself -- in both the black and white communities -- combats frank, open discussion of sexual issues. A key reason AIDS has become a serious problem in the African-American community is that the black church has refused to address, honestly and openly, the reality that there are black gay men in the world.

Man of whom live on the down-low....And, in turn, have transmitted HIV to female partners who have unwittingly thought they they could never contract HIV if they sleep with exclusively "heterosexual" men....

This is not to play black church against white church. The white churches have been, on the whole, just as skittish about addressing these issues, and often actively hateful and toxic. Think of the church in TX that just refused to allow a funeral for a veteran who, it turns out, was gay. Or of the remark by the influential Baptist pastor in California that we ought to be engaging in blood and gore prayers for our enemies....

Even in white churches that do want to address "the gay issue" and welcome (if not actively affirm) gay members, gays are talked about or talked to, but not allowed to speak in the first person about their experiences as gay persons and gay believers. Just as with race a half century ago, our churches have a long way to go before they begin to practice real inclusivity, real compassion, and real justice on these issues.

I admire/respect Dr. Elders...always have, always will. If only there were more Dr. Elders working for the rest of us...

I appreciate much of Dr. Elders' message; however, if I were a parent, it would be my job to teach my child/children about sex/sexuality. We place too much of a burden on schools----teachers can not do everything for our children. And, too, many parents want to instill and promote their values, as opposed to granting the job of parenting to some exterior agent or school system. Parents should always investigate that which is being taught to their children--the basics, health care, etc....I would like to think this is the message Dr. Elders 'preached' to her two sons during their formative years.

I love DR Elders , it was great to work with her in Washington DC when I worked/ served on the board of NAPWA, National Assn of People with AIDS ,she is so on the money with sex education and condom use and teaching children to protect themselves, I wished I could of afford her talk yesterday at the Hilton it was $99 bucks to attend , I retired from non profit work in 2006 after I was DX with lymphoma , after 20 years working in the HIV communities ,DR Elders has saved lives with her talks and plan to prevent diseases ,she is truly one of my heroes.

Could anyone in America better represent the exact opposite of those in the Cheney-Bush administration than Dr. Elders? Waco and firing Dr. Elders remain the black spots on Clinton's legacy. Ignorance is a chink in a kid's armor that could cost them their lives on down the road.

Some things are embarrassing to talk about with your children, it's true. But talking to them is much easier than speaking kind words over their dead bodies. It is both the parent's and the school's responsibility to make sure our kids have all the info they need to launch into life as safely and as successfully as possible. Knowledge doesn't kill, ignorance does. Thank you Dr. Elders.

Honestone, do you really think many or even most parents do have that take with their children? I wish I could be confident that this is the case. I also sometimes wonder whether some parents are even really well-equipped to talk about sex to their children. We live in a society that is in many ways profoundly ignorant about matters of sex, where a lot of misinformation circulates around as gospel truth even in adult circles.

Times may have changed, but here was my Arkansas home sex education as a child:

1. I'm memorizing the 10 commandments, perhaps around age 5. I ask my mother, "What does adultery mean?" She answers, "When mommies and daddies do bad things." I am not enlightened. But I somehow know the word has to do with THE taboo subject.

2. I'm 13. I hear the word "queer" for the first time. In fact, I'm called that. I come home and ask my mother what it means. She replies, "When men do bad things." Ditto.

3. I'm 18, and one summer afternoon, my father calls my brothers and me into my parents' bedroom. My mother is standing there. He's sitting on the bed. The whole scene is uncomfortable. He asks, "Is there anything you boys need to know about the facts of life?" We all look at our shoes and mumble, "No." My father glares at my mother and says, "You see. I told you they would learn it on the streets."

Postscript: it wasn't until I took biology in college that I learned some of my "facts" from whispered conversations at school were wildly wrong. It seems rather sad to me that, in the 20th century in a supposedly enlightened country, someone could reach the age of 19-20 and not have the most fundamental information about human reproduction.

Small correction to previous text: what we actually said to my father was "No, sir." We'd have had our necks wrong if we ever said simply yes, no, or what to a statement by an elder. Sir and ma'am were always part of the formula.

Dyslexic errors in both previous messages: in the first posting, "take" should be "talk" in the opening sentence.

In the second posting, "wrong" should be "wrung."

I don't know what is worse.. A talibangelical politician that would never give a Joycelynn a moments notice or a DLC Democrat that will fire her the moment she speaks some truth..

Either way, Joycelynn is also a hero of mine... a rare occurance in these times.

M/Through--
Too many parents abdicate their responsibility and expect someone else to underwrite their obligation to their children, including teaching them about sex/sexuality. Parents should be the first teacher(s); the primary role models; the fountain of wisdom and knowledge for their children. As insensitive as it may appear, parenting is not for everyone. I could not be remiss in my job as a parent and neglect equipping my children with the tools needed to navigate this crazy world. And, this may be easy for me to postulate since I am not a parent.

>the vows of abstinence break far more easily than those latex condoms," Elders said.<

That should be on billboards across the South.
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Honestone, I don't disagree at all when you say that '"parents should be the first teacher(s); the primary role models; the fountain of wisdom and knowledge for their children."

I also certainly don't disagree, either, when you say that "parenting is not for everyone."

Like you, I'm not a parent, except vicariously -- of some rowdy and much-loved nieces and nephews. I've always considered my students as my children, in a way, too. I have a strong interest in what becomes of them, as I would if they were my children.

But here's the thing: there's a big reality gap between "should" and "actually do." I certainly agree that parents SHOULD be the primary role models and teachers of their children. The sad reality, I suspect, though, is that many parents DON'T teach their children about sex and can't do so, because they are themselves ill-informed about this subject.

When I say "ill-informed," I don't mean about the basic plumbing and the mechanics of it all. But there's a heck of a lot more information needed, and we live in a society that doesn't make that accessible to people in the non-judgmental, matter-of-fact way many other societies do, despite that we are a highly eroticized society where porn is available on the Internet to anyone.

I've always thought that having children is one of the things that, in my imaginary ideal society, would require some kind of certificate of preparation. But we don't live in that society. Just about anybody who knows how to ride a bike can have a child.

And without any qualifications, preparation, know-how, commitment to raising good, educated children....When I walk through a grocery store and see what some parents throw into their shopping carts (and how they speak to their children -- or don't do so, when a good talking to is in order), I sometimes despair of our future.

I seriously doubt many of these same parents are having that talk about the birds and the bees with their children. I also seriously doubt some of them are equipped to do so.

Good sex educators in schools are so equipped. I'd like to assure that, for those children who don't get the information at home, someone is taking that responsibility -- for the good of the children themselves, and for all of us as a society.

Honestone, I usually find little with which to disagree with you. But I did get sex education at school, well at least on school grounds. I learned it from older boys, from "dirty jokes" at lunchtime, from all the myths adolescents share about sex. In retrospect it would have been very good to have learned it in a biology class but that came a few years later in high school, after the experimenting and myth-making had already occurred, after I had "felt-up" my first willing girl.

Yes, high schools in Ark used to teach sex in biology classes. No big ruckus was made of it. We learned the proper names for all our organs and how they functioned. Sure there was smirking and grins from the boys and red faces on a few girls.

Churches back then were about worship, not condemnation. Churches were about distributing food and clothing to the needy rather than beating up any politician who refused to tow their line. No churches thought that taking over the school board was their "calling."

One thing I've noticed about America. When the ignorant and unlearned get more income and leisure then watch out. There's a demi-god on every corner to control their minds and pocketbooks.

I'll repeat. No kid should be as dumb as I was when as a virgin I crawled into bed with my virgin first wife the first, second, and third night of our honeymoon. On the third day I called a preachers wife and asked "why won't it go in?" She told me a few things and bingo! No one should ever be that ignorant about sex again for the rest of time.

Lwood, you say, "Yes, high schools in Ark used to teach sex in biology classes. No big ruckus was made of it. We learned the proper names for all our organs and how they functioned."

Not in my Arkansas high school. At least, not when I attended it in the 1960s. We read (in addition to the English and American classics) Goethe and Aeschylus, Flaubert and Mann, Li Po and Tu Fu. We read -- in Latin -- Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Catullus....

But human reproduction we studied not. Our biology course told us how worms mate, but not how humans do so. The closest our school system ever came to a sex education course was an embarrassing week in P.E. class in 9th grade, when we were shown black and white scare films about v.d. The only sex ed fact I recall from the entire week was an elaborate discussion by the coach of how to zip up your pants without getting your equipment caught in the zipper.

Looking back, it's hard for me to believe that someone could graduate from a high school that prepared me superbly well for college, and be so abysmally ignorant of basic facts about human sexuality. What I learned on the playground, at summer camp, at bunking parties, and in whispered conversations in Sunday School classes turned out to be, shall we say, lacking in a few important facts, and completely wrong in many respects.

It took a college biology course -- at a Catholic university -- to dispel the misinformation and teach me the unvarnished facts, when I was nearing 20.