Time for Doug Ford and Ontario to have ‘the talk’
I am getting the impression that Doug Ford, newly minted leader of the Ontario PC Party, really does not want to have the talk. You know, the talk about sex. When asked during a combative CBC radio interview this week to go into detail about his promise to “repeal” the Ontario sex-education curriculum, Ford sounded like my kids used to while growing up when I broached the tricky subject of sex with them: evasive and pretty keen to change the subject.
“I have an idea. Why don’t we talk about important things, about the economy?” he testily asked Ottawa Morning host Robyn Bresnahan.
She had just contradicted his false assertion that parents had not been consulted in the updating of the sexeducation curriculum, which has been in place, despite uproar in some communities, since 2015.
In fact, as Premier Kathleen Wynne reiterated this week, parents along with educators, medical professionals and even the police were widely consulted, especially on the pivotal point of age appropriateness.
When pressed, Ford could not cite any specific item from the curriculum egregious enough to justify him, a man who clearly respects taxpayer money, embarking if he wins on what could be a costly process of repeal, consult further and replace with a new curriculum.
But he did simplistically state “this issue is really about respecting parents,” adding “what happens to our own kids is our business, it’s not about the Liberal ideology that’s being breathed down our back.”
In other words, repealing the sexeducation curriculum is an ideological issue.
It’s how Ford got social conservatives on board to elect him party leader, especially the supporters of fellow leadership candidate Tanya Granic Allen, head of a parents’ group that fiercely opposed the curriculum.
It was Granic Allen, remember, who shot to spurious stardom during the first Conservative leadership debate when she said that math scores might be higher and students more focused “if they’re not talking about anal sex in the classroom.”
Her use of that specific sexual term caused another leadership hopeful, Caroline Mulroney, to later quip that her kids learned more about sex from watching that first debate than “in school.”
Mulroney was the only leadership candidate who said she would not reopen the sex-ed issue.
Sex and politicians. Not a good mix. Some turn out to be hypocrites, like former U.S. Republican congressman Tim Murphy, who was publicly anti-abortion but resigned after reports he privately urged that option on a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.
Some turn out to be panderers, like Doug Ford, dazzled when audiences cheer wildly at his promise to repeal sexeducation, but who appears to know nothing about the actual curriculum.
While not all parents who currently oppose sex-education are social conservatives, two of its most vocal opponents are Granic Allen and evangelist Charles McVety, both anti-abortion crusaders who have labelled this sexeducation curriculum “radical.”
They would much rather see an emphasis on “love and marriage” than, say, “gender expression.”
Even if you discount ideology, religious values or outright intolerance, this issue should not only be about “respecting the parents.”
It should be about respecting our children and their right to have up to the minute information — both scientific and social — that will help keep them safe in a complex world that can become sexually toxic for them before Mom and Dad even suspect they are ready for certain details. (“Not my little girl!”)
In fact, in the #MeToo era in which we have learned that even relatively empowered actresses felt pressured into sexual encounters with now disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, I can’t think of anything more important than giving our children specific knowledge — on consent and on sex in the digital era — that will empower them and keep them safe.
Parents are often the last to accurately gauge when their kids need sexual information.
A recent article in the New York Times titled “Teenagers Are Sexting — Now What?” quoted University of Calgary psychologist Sheri Madigan, who authored a large study on digital sexual activity, saying that because “the average age of first cellphone ownership is 10.3,” parents need to start talking to their kids at a much younger age than they might have assumed: “Let them know not to get into a car with a stranger, let them know that text messages and emails and online communications should never include anyone with no clothes,” Madigan said.
It’s terrifying to parents of any ideological stripe that young kids have to be armed with such information. But unless you keep them in a bubble, away from phones, screens and even other kids who might be well ahead of them, they simply need to know.
No sex-education program is perfect but it can still be a valuable two-way street. Kids can learn something in school and tell their parents about it, perhaps opening up a conversation they wouldn’t have otherwise.
Most parents are challenged daily by making a living, keeping their own relationships healthy, spending enough time with their children, motivating them in school and just getting by.
Many are grateful for the help that comprehensive sex-education gives them. There is less chance of missing something important that could affect your child.
Doug Ford would prefer to keep it vague. In an interview with the Star, he now says he is not looking at “a big massive change” in the sex-education curriculum.
That response won’t satisfy either social conservatives who want many changes more in line with their values, or progressives who want him to leave it alone. Or even anyone in between.
They need the kind of details Ford is so far unwilling to give.
Time for the talk, Doug.
Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson.