News

By Peter J. Smith

MEXICO CITY, August 22, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Mexico’s federal government is forcing the nation’s schools to adopt biology textbooks that includes pornographic sex-education, which has evoked outrage from Mexico’s Catholic Bishops and state governors, who have demanded the government remove the explicit material.

“We agree with the necessity of sex education, but pornographic information is something else,” Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez of Guadalajara told the Mexican newspaper Reforma. The cardinal excoriated the federal government for implementing the program, calling the decision “totalitarian” for neglecting to neither consult with the Church nor address the objections of parents who are the primary educators of their children.

The new sexual education course is directed at 7th graders and above, and is nothing less than a full fledged pornographic immersion course in sexual behaviors. The course (contained in chapter 4) tells students that homosexuality and masturbation are acceptable behaviors, includes pornographic pictures, and encourages students to find pornography off the internet.

The bald-faced perversion encouraged by the texts has infuriated Mexico’s Catholic Bishops, who steadfastly maintain that the new textbooks will give the youth an incomplete picture of human sexuality, and encourage them to experiment with promiscuous behavior or various sorts of sexual perversity.

The head of the Mexican bishops’ family affairs committee, Bishop Rodrigo Aguilar Martinez of Matehuala, said the Catholic Church “is not against sex education, but rather in favor of an education that is integral, age-appropriate and adequate for each individual person.”

Mexico’s Catholic Bishops have challenged the federal government to recall the texts, and are joined by a number of Mexico’s state governors.

“Certain matters should be handled carefully, particularly when dealing with 11- and 12-year-olds, for the love of God,” said Eduardo Bours, governor of the Sonora state, who has joined several other governors, who have decided to replace the textbooks with bowdlerized versions.

The sex education has been forcefully pushed by the health secretary of Julio Frenk, who has consistently thrown himself at odds with the Catholic Church’s pro-life pro-family position. Frenk was responsible for a plan to make “morning-after pill” free at government health clinics regardless of pro-life objections that the pill was abortifacient.

Frenk also launched a pilot anti-homophobia campaign in Mexico City, but withdrew it bowing to heavy pressure from the Church and pro-family advocates.

“We are always very respectful of the position of all groups in our society,” Frenk told Mexico’s La Jornada newspaper recently. “But at the end of the day, the government’s public policies should be based on scientific evidence.”
  The government expected to have distributed the 1.5 million books by August 21 to Mexico’s public schools for the upcoming school year.