Talking To Kids About AIDS

Yesterday the NY Times published a piece about a film called Please Talk To Kids About AIDS, which explores when to teach children about safe sex. From the story:

In it, two incredibly sweet and precocious sisters — Vineeta and Sevilla Hennessey, ages 6 and 4 — accompany their parents, the filmmakers, to the 2006 International AIDS Conference in Toronto. They interview top AIDS experts, gay activists, condom distributors, a sex toy saleswoman, a cross-dresser playing Queen Elizabeth II and an Indian transgender hijra in a sari.

The startling aspect is that, as one childish question leads to the next, they ask things like: “How does AIDS get into your body?” and “How come they want to have sex with each other?” For a reporter, it is a guilty pleasure to see some of the world’s leading scientists squirm — or not — when grilled by a child.

Aaaand here's the Catholic World News' reaction in a post titled The Facts Of Life And The Culture Of Death:

If the question was ever in doubt, it should be no longer: the great majority of sex-ed enthusiasts and AIDS educators are sexual misfits themselves, and their fervid interest in getting into the classroom with children -- other people's children -- stems not from a desire to protect those children from harm but from the need to vindicate their own sexual choices. Normal persons have an innate sense of the dignity of human sexuality that makes them reticent to broach the subject with children, and especially with the children of strangers. Normal persons believe human sexuality is governed by moral norms, even if they differ on where the lines are drawn.

But the folks coaching little Vineeta in the use of condoms are using her health as a pretext. They know perfectly well they're more likely give to her nightmares than to protect her from an unanticipated danger. They see her six-year-old's innocence, as they see all innocence, as a rebuke to their depravity. Hating that innocence, which must pain them whenever they encounter it, they want to extinguish it as soon and as thoroughly as possible. That's why they want into the first grade classroom.