Ford shows sex-ed politics about positioning
Doug Ford wants credit for feeling his way through a sex education compromise to find the sweet spot.
Our peripatetic premier’s perambulation over masturbation began when he mounted his provincial journey early last year. Now he boasts unabashedly about being even-handed on the matter at hand.
On the one hand, Ford heeded hysterical parental fears of errant teachers somehow transforming teens or preteens into homosexuals, hypersexuals or auto-sexuals (masturbation alert again).
On the other hand, the premier tuned out pedagogical fears from teachers about their ethical and professional obligations to educate children about biology, physiology, psychology, sexuality and, not least, consent.
For all his protestations of political responsibility, Ford abdicated his obligations by suspending the updated sex-ed curriculum for a year, and reverting to one first designed more than two decades ago. But time catches up to us all, and the premier has now rediscovered the virtues of modern sex-ed.
Politics, like sex, is about positioning. After whipping up people’s passions, Ford is now repositioning himself as the soul of sweet reason.
Despite the high hopes of socially conservative parents that Ford would ride to their rescue, he was always going to take them — and us — for a ride. The only question was how far Ford would bend himself out of shape to score political points along the way.
“I know there's extremes on both sides that wanted to go one way or wanted to go the other, but I also remember mentioning to the media that (it) is not going to be drastic changes,” Ford told reporters this month, suddenly stricken with political amnesia.
“It's not going to be drastic. There's a few things we have to tweak. I think we tweaked them and I think the minister (Stephen Lecce) landed it pretty well right in the middle.” Who knew Ford would summon his inner Buddha, charting the virtuous middle path to avoid intemperate extremes. But unlike the Buddha who never forgets his scriptures, Ford has forsaken his old political lines:
“We’re going to repeal the sex-ed curriculum,” he huffed during the 2018 election. “The days of Liberal ideology indoctrinating our kids, they're done.”
He did indeed repeal, only to repent. Never mind all that ideology and idolatry, on the question of human sexuality Ford is suddenly mindful of the second coming.
When he inserted himself into the PC leadership campaign, after the sudden withdrawal of Patrick Brown from provincial politics, Ford made common cause with anti-sexed zealots. He embraced rival leadership candidate Tanya Granic Allen — who couldn’t stop talking about anal sex during the debates — until he won the race and cancelled her candidacy over her homophobic online rants.
The Tories have been playing footsie with sex-ed ever since 2010, when the Liberal government of the day first tried to update the 1990s-era curriculum. Under Brown, the Tories had finally reconciled themselves to the updated curriculum when they formally recognized the homophobia behind so much of the opposition, but Ford dragged the party right back down.
Today, his government’s new PC sex-ed curriculum looks awfully like the old one put forward by Kathleen Wynne, his predecessor as premier who was vilified by her most zealous critics for allegedly allowing her sexual orientation to reorient sex education in Ontario. The gay-baiting never bothered Ford as it did Brown, but finally our God-fearing premier is manning up.
After all, some of his closest political allies are LGBTQ (not to mention +). And so Ford’s Tories have once again accommodated themselves to the curriculum with a few nips and tucks.
The so-called teacher “prompts” on masturbation have been tweaked (no, they don’t prompt masturbation, they are merely helpful scripts to help teachers answer any student questions without lapsing into awkward silences). Sexual orientation is still discussed, gender identity is delayed a bit, and consent is talked about more than ever.
Why then did the premier get so hot and bothered about sex-ed when he plunged into provincial politics? He saw an opening to be exploited, and electoral allies to be enlisted, only to be betrayed.
“I think we hit it bang on,” the premier said in the aftermath, clearly pleased with himself for having strung parents along while leaving students untutored on modern sexuality over the past year.
Yes, it is a relief that Ford has finally, publicly, seen the light. But it is hard to be generous about one so duplicitous.
The only question was how far Ford would bend himself out of shape to score political points along the way