Secular morality

Tonight, SAA Church:
1) Mass, 6:30 p.m.
2) Confessions, 7-8:30 p.m.
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Below are excerpts from an article in today’s Washington Post about a pilot program in sex education that began yesterday in a Montgomery County public school. Three things come to mind:

1) “official lesson plan” – this is the part that might be new. As we learned from recent comments made our site, some Mont. teachers have promoted homosexuality in school clubs and groups.

2) “Things that cause sin will inevitably occur, but woe to the person through whom they occur. It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin” (Lk 17:1-2).

3) Christian sexual morality focuses on “chastity”; secular sexual morality focuses on “tolerance”.


“A health teacher at Argyle Middle School in Silver Spring spoke to eighth-graders yesterday about sexual orientation. And so began a pilot program in Montgomery County schools that delves deeper into issues of sexual and gender identity than most other school systems in the Washington region, if not the nation.

The field test, which will start in five other schools by the end of the month and -- barring legal intervention -- the rest of the county in fall, marks the first time Montgomery teachers have broached homosexuality as a part of the official lesson plan in eighth- and 10th-grade health classes…

More than 60 Argyle students will receive the new sex-education lessons this week, said Carol Boyd, president of the school's PTSA. The lessons, which require parental permission for students to take, are taught to two classes on alternating days and raise the topic of sexual orientation at grade 8 in a discussion that centers on tolerance, stereotyping and harassment.

Grade 10 lessons define the terms in greater depth as part of a frank discussion about the search for sexual identity. These are the lessons that have stirred most of the rancor…

Three CRC leaders with protest signs stood outside Argyle Middle at dismissal yesterday. One sign read, "Health before politics."

Opposition centers on passages, mostly from the more candid high-school curriculum, that describe gay, lesbian and transgender people "celebrat[ing] their self-discovery" and transsexuals choosing sexual reassignment surgery to "match how they feel."

Others in the relatively liberal Montgomery community thought the curriculum did not go far enough in reaching out to students who might be struggling with their sexual identity.

Almost forgotten is the infamous "cucumber video," in which a youthful health educator unrolls a condom onto a cucumber. It has been replaced by a clinical video that has raised comparatively little ire…

Judy Stocky, mother of Luke (14), said she lost no sleep over the decision to send him to health class. ‘I think the class is good,’ she said. ‘Maybe it's going to teach these children how to exist together.’”