'Taste Test' in Sex Ed Class Stirs Controversy in Santa Fe
by Jim Brown
July 30, 2004
(AgapePress) - A pro-family leader is condemning the classroom behavior of a sex education teacher in New Mexico.
Instructor Tony Escudero is under fire for giving a presentation at Santa Fe High School in which he encouraged ninth-grade students to taste flavored condoms. According to a report in Family News In Focus, Escudero may have been trying to de-stigmatize the use of condoms when he told one 15-year-old girl, who objected to the suggestion, to "have a little fun." However, a report in the Santa Fe New Mexican says the state health department is defending the teacher, despite having received a complaint from the student's mother.
Bob Knight with the Culture and Family Institute (CFI) says the incident shows how political correctness to accommodate the homosexual lobby is putting children at risk. Knight believes people today have come to expect to find some teachers doing "outrageous things" with their students -- "but to see a school board and administration back this up is utterly absurd," he says.
"This shows the extent to which the homosexual agenda has shaped and is running sex education in schools," Knight says, "because the whole push for condoms among school kids is entirely from a homosexual point of view."
The CFI spokesman says even in this day and age, the matter should be eliciting more public outrage. "You've seen excesses like this, usually in places like San Francisco or New York, where homosexual activists have been able to put their agenda into place using sex education, and safe school programs, and AIDS education programs," he explains. "Santa Fe is a pretty liberal town; it shouldn't surprise us that much, but usually cooler heads prevail."
Knight wonders where the local parents are in the midst of this incident. "They ought to either be having some heads roll, or yanking their kids out of these schools," he says.
Knight, who is calling for Escudero's immediate removal, says there used to be a time in America when men who would seduce young teens into sexual activity would actually be arrested.
In the Family News In Focus report, two abstinence advocates had reactions similar to Knight's. Leslee Unruh of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse says there are "serious problems" when teachers feel a need to "desensitize" students toward risky behavior. And Linda Klepacki of Focus on the Family says when a teacher urges kids to taste condoms, that is a pretty clear endorsement of sexual activity -- and that in any other setting, this incident would be grounds for a sexual harassment suit.
