We’re going to talk about sex. Yippee!

My e-mail inbox has seen some discussion on the Wisconsin legislation plowing through on sex ed. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel blog School Zone says:

The state Senate is expected to vote today on new legislation that would require school districts that elect to teach human growth and development – better known as sex education – to teach a comprehensive curriculum that includes information about contraception.

One of my e-mails says – well, it doesn’t say much except the legislation was written by Planned Parenthood and it’s “offensive.”

Now I piped up when Elmbrook School District was proposing to teach oral sex in grades lower than high school. Besides hoping to give the little critters a couple of years without such knowledge, my main argument was, that for all the talk of process at that school board, the process for deciding the sex ed curriculum, as mandated by state law, was not being followed. If they are going to make the rule, you have to live by that rule. Even if you are Elmbrook.

It worked. A call to arms rang out and parents demanded to be made part of the process. Elmbrook acquiesced. Balance was restored.

But all along, remember, you can still opt your child out of any of this curriculum. You, as a parent, can create the balance in your household.

I, for one, hope that balance includes the knowledge of contraception. PEOPLE HAVE SEX. Is that so hard to believe? Kids even have sex out of wedlock. Gasp! The real tragedy is when either 1) a culture exists to reward out of wedlock childbearing, or 2) kids don’t have enough information to keep a pregnancy from happening.

Abstinence is good. I’ve taught all three of mine that sex complicates things. Choosing to make a relationship sexual means there are big messes in the end. It’s simply not recommended.

That doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

How crappy are you going to feel if your child becomes pregnant or fathers a child because they oopsed and no one bothered to tell them the details?

Abortion is bad. That’s really nothing to argue about. No one I’ve ever known has intentionally gone out to get pregnant so they could experience an abortion. But when you don’t admit to the fact that PEOPLE HAVE SEX and fail to mention there’s a way to prevent pregnancy when people have sex, you’re setting a whole population up for the potential need for abortion.

Isn’t it much better to prevent a pregnancy than end one?

So here’s the bottom line. Protect your own children. Teach them abstinence. It really is the only way to ensure one doesn’t become pregnant. But at the same time, get a grip that the other kids might be screwing around, and for goodness sakes, help them instead of judging them.

My bottom line for my children was confirmed recently in a line from The Blind Side:

Leigh Anne Touhy: Michael, I want you to have a good time but if you get a girl pregnant out of wedlock, I will crawl into the car, drive up to Oxford and cut off your penis.

So far it’s worked around here.