WYNNEWOOD, Pennsylvania (LifeSiteNews) – An English teacher at a Pennsylvania private school is under fire for his use of a pornographic sex education curriculum that he hopes to have a “transformative” impact by “desensitizing children” to the sight of sex acts.
RedState reports that a video has surfaced in which Al Vernacchio of Friends’ Central School declares that, from ages three to 18, “every single one of those kids is a sexual being. They have been since birth, and at every age and stage, we can offer them age-appropriate, transformative sexuality education.”
Al Vernacchio is a sex educator for kids ages 3 to 18 at Friends’ Central School in PA.
“…everyone single one of these kids is a sexual being. They have been since birth and at every age and stage, we can offer them age appropriate transformative sex Ed.” pic.twitter.com/oldZFIu0jQ
— Megan Brock (@MegEBrock) February 10, 2023
He is speaking at a Sexual Freedom Summit hosted by the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, an activist group dedicated to “sexual freedom as the fundamental human right of all individuals to develop and express their unique sexuality; to be personally autonomous with regard to bodily integrity and expression; and to enjoy sexual dignity, privacy, and consensual sexual expression without societal or governmental interference, coercion or stigmatization.” The year of the event is unclear.
A 2018 profile in Philadelphia Magazine approvingly details Vernacchio’s “revolutionary approach to sex education,” especially “porn literacy,” which “is exactly what it sounds like: It’s grounded in the understanding that kids (whether we like it or not) are watching porn, and that we need to provide them with the critical thinking necessary to understand its messages.”
“Is porn harming our culture? Yeah, I think it is,” Vernacchio said at the time. “And we do have to find ways to stop that harm.” However, he argued that the harm was not inherent to the viewing of sex, but in the “messages” conveyed by the most common varieties of porn.
“They learn that men are supposed to be sexually aggressive,” he said. “They learn that women are objects. They learn that in the absence of consent, you don’t need a clear ‘yes.’ They learn that sex doesn’t require communication. They learn that you’re supposed to know what to do — like this knowledge gets preloaded into you, and if you don’t know, there’s something wrong with you.”
Vernacchio’s theory of sex education takes the form of a classroom decorated with “pillows shaped like testicles and uteruses” and buttons bearing “mottos like ‘Use condom sense!,’ ‘Frisky can be risky,’ and ‘SEX — Talk with your kids about it’”; and class discussion of specific sex acts (including how “problematic” it is to define it as narrowly as contact with opposite-sex genitalia).
“Vernacchio teaches comprehensive sex ed, meaning he discusses the full scope of issues surrounding sex: STDs and pregnancy, of course, but also porn literacy, consent, pleasure, LGBTQ and gender issues, sexting, and other information that tends to slip through the cracks in most classrooms,” the article says. “For such a wide-ranging curriculum to work, Vernacchio says, it must start young: A successful, holistic sex education reaches from elementary school to graduation. He talks to fourth-graders about puberty, to fifth-graders about romantic crushes, and with preschoolers about issues like fairness and gender. He starts integrating porn literacy in ninth grade during talks about body image, gender roles and physiology.”
Vernacchio does not mince words about his ultimate agenda being not just to help children navigate an eventual part of their own lives, but to impart his ideology on the next generation.
“Part of my message today is that we all, no matter what else we do in life, need to find a way to be sexuality educators for the kids in our lives. If we don’t step up, others will. And many of those others don’t see wholeness and freedom the way we do,” he says. “One of the things we can celebrate today is how young people have so many more options to consider and simply whether they feel like a boy or a girl, or whether they identify as gay, straight, or bisexual. Our understandings of both gender and orientation have greatly expanded in our culture, and there’s an ever-increasing list of labels one can use to describe oneself.”
When asked for comment by Fox News, Friends’ Central reaffirmed its support for Vernacchio as a “nationally renowned and highly respected educator,” and claimed it was “disappointing that his work and our School are being miscast so thoroughly.”
Amid ongoing controversies about the content of taxpayer-subsidized classrooms across the country, Vernacchio’s case reminds Americans seeking alternatives that private schooling is far from a guarantee of a more conventional education.
Last year, Breitbart obtained an “extensive trove” of documents and video from the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), the national accreditation association for American private schools and a registered 501(c)(3), shedding light on the organization’s training materials for “LGBTQ+ inclusive” curricula, including exposing sexually-explicit content to children as young as four without their parents’ knowledge or consent.