June-July 2019
This summary presentation, by a noted English defender and teacher of the truth about human sexuality and fertility, was made in September 1997 at the annual Courage to Take a Moral Stance conference, held in Feldkirch, Austria. First printed in our special February 1999 edition on the sex-ed sell out by the Irish and British episcopates, it stands as a concise and powerful rebuke of the Western hierarchy these past 20 years.
The Value of Innocence
We live in the remains of the first civilisation to regard the innocence of young children as something of no intrinsic value, something that can be disposed of without harmful effects. We have forgotten that innocence is a part of childhood, in fact, an essential part of childhood. It is designed to protect the developing mind from information it does not yet have the capacity to cope with.
Who has not seen the young 'unknowing child' protected from sexual innuendoes in adult conversations or entertainment simply because it does not understand the meaning of what the adults are saying; it quite simply 'passes over their heads'. To make the child 'knowing' with regard to sexual matters is to commit an act of stealth — to steal something which should not be stolen and once stolen cannot be replaced. This is the great tragedy — you cannot replace innocence, you can only try and remedy any damage the loss of this protective mechanism can cause.
In fact to deprive a child of innocence could be called a form of child harassment or abuse.(1) A paediatrician stated recently that there is now a new perversion — watching pornographic videos with young children to see what effect they will have on them. This, perhaps, is an extreme example, but it shows how the voyeurism of our society and a totally distorted view of sexuality can combine to produce such an evil.
Those who promote programmes of sexual education to children who are in 'the years of innocence', the time when they have not reached puberty and are not naturally interested in adult sexual behaviour, are the first to deny the existence and value of childhood innocence. They have many arguments to say why children can no longer keep their innocence in to-day's world.
They wish to replace it with information. Beware! Protect your children from the sex ideologists. Parents must turn their eyes and their hearts to their children. They must learn what childhood means and what is necessary to pass through childhood without being damaged spiritually or psychologically. They must learn again the value of childhood innocence as a prerequisite to developing full human dignity.
We would like to bring to your attention a tactic used in school sex education programmes to diffuse levels of parental anxiety. This is the strategy of linking sex education, and by this we mean explicit details of human nudity and genital activity in the open and public setting of a school classroom, to the theme of Christian love. If you like, the explicit information (often to children as young as 6, 7 and 8 years) is baptised with religious words or interwoven with spiritual themes.
This happens in Catholic schools and makes it very difficult for parents to raise objections. Even if they do they are not listened to. But these parents are right. They know that these sexual details should not be talked about in public — they are private and intimate. Indeed to talk about them in public is liable to lead to sexual excitement and curiosity. That is why such instruction should only be given gradually and on an individual basis by parents to their children, when the children need it and are able to comprehend it.
And parents must learn to control the electronic media in their home. The healthy family can control television.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) Renowned social commentator Roger Scruton has stated that "sex education, so conceived, is really vicarious paedophilia. The adult 'advisor', explaining the use of the condom to a class of 14-year-olds with slides and pictures, is in the position for which every paedophile craves — freely arousing the sexual curiosity of the immature, with himself as the centre of attention." - Ed.