Michael Coren Calls Out Anti-SexEd Protestors

In recent years I've watched journalist and author Michael Coren truly evolve before my eyes. A devout Catholic and social conservative, he has, in the last months, recanted his beliefs on same sex relationships and the LGBTQ communities. More recently, he's called for cessation of hostilities over the 2010 Ontario Health and Physical Education curriculum, which sat on a shelf for five years, and was recently... finally... released. 

I've blogged a little about Mr Coren's broadcasts on the former Sun News Network. From early discussions with Dr Teresa Pierre of Parents as First Educators in 2010; to the genesis of the Ben Levin grooming document conspiracy, which surfaced on the network in 2013; and into speculation about the most recent iteration of the document -- it seemed to me that Mr Coren himself had become impatient, and perhaps a tad embarrassed, about the intellectual descent of the conversation.

Today he broke ranks with fellow Sun News alums Brian Lilley and Ezra Levant, who continue to spin the conspiracies and lament the death of parental rights. His column in the National Post newspaper -- Why critics of Ontario’s new sex ed curriculum are wrong -- is a full-frontal assault on the slender-reed arguments generated by the anti-SexEd crowd. He writes:

It’s almost 250 pages long and you have to read through forests of advice about not smoking, not doing drugs, eating vegetables and keeping fit before getting to the good bits. What is does do, however, is acknowledge that some children feel as if their physical bodies do not represent their psychological and sexual feelings and acknowledges that, whether parents approve or not, anal and oral sex take place. It’s more discussion and explanation than recommendation and indoctrination. In fact most of the curriculum is more banality than Bolshevism and while some of it is surprising to adult eyes, it’s not especially radical or misplaced.
Unlike Mr Coren (you'll need to read his introduction to the piece), I had fairly thorough conversations about sex with my parents when I was in junior grades -- I'm fifty-four -- so I was actually ahead of the curve when the school got around to giving the lesson about where babies come from. By middle school, having transferred from a public board to an all-boys Catholic academy, I knew of the existence of oral and anal sex but little more. And if I understand Michael's thesis correctly, we as parents have to let go of the notion that our children live in some little bubble. It is highly unlikely my now-grown son knew much less than I did about sex coming up through school. What more contemporary sex-ed has provided is an opportunity for children to question and discuss safely in a controlled environment.

 The article can be viewed here. 

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