Irish School Students Targeted with Explicit Sex Manuals

DUBLIN, July 17, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A regional health board in Ireland planned to introduce an explicit British sex education booklet series to high school students. The booklets, entitled “4 Boys and 4 Girls” and promoted as “below the belt” and “below the bra” guides, were provided by the Irish Family Planning Association. They tell students that there is “no right age” for teens to engage in sexual activity, asserting, “your body is yours to share with whoever you choose.”  John Bruton, former Irish parliamentarian, got wind of the booklets and raised a public outcry. “I regret to say,” Bruton said, “that I have concluded that the IFPA are not the right people to be preparing tax-funded leaflets on sexual relations for distribution to 12- to 16-year-olds. They lack sufficient common sense, and sufficient social and moral judgement for such a sensitive and moral task.”  An Irish Examiner commentator called the books “the Baywatch view of human sexuality true in its assertion that sex is great, but utterly false in its claim that self-protection is the only thing that matters. Yet … they refuse to tell teenagers that sex and love should go together and that sex in certain circumstances is against the law. They fail to tell teenagers that condoms have a high failure rate. … They also omit to mention that early sexual activity leads to a huge amount of emotional heartbreak for teenagers…”  For local coverage:  https://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/opinion/Full_Story/did-sghSFJ1W-1rdAsglO-LCk0lQvU.asp