This week's column on entertainment and culture issues from Brent Bozell focused on how King Middle School in Portland has agreed to allow its health center to offer contraceptives -- even pills and the patch -- to middle-schoolers without parental knowledge or consent. Brent borrowed from the Good Morning America debate segment Scott Whitlock blogged where the anything-goes blond hottie favoring sex among children (Logan Levkoff) said she would draw no limits at grade-school contraceptive distribution. She said you had to buy "protection" for the kids when they're bombarded with sexual messages. (Like "Desperate Housewives"? Or even the Geico Caveman comedy?)
Glenn Beck was great in mocking the Permissives in that debate: "The library is outdated, why don't we have a copulation room for the kids?"
Brent noted that recent entertainment shows on ABC and CBS have viciously attacked advocates of abstinence-only sex education in schools, who are so "not as cool" as the blond hottie walking down the hall with the condom bowl:
The lesson from the anything-goes crowd is so illogical it borders on the obscene. In order to "protect the youth" from unsavory sexual messages, we should provide them will all the technology so they can have "safe sex" – even at age 11. But who is responsible for this bombardment of sexual messaging in our culture that’s fueling this fire? ABC and all the other networks, along with many of their advertisers, need look no further than the mirror. More than any other element in our society, it is they who are responsible for the deluge, primarily – though not exclusively – through their entertainment products.
It’s bad enough that they refuse to take any responsibility for their own sleazy product. But what’s unconscionable is that TV dramatists are now portraying those who want to keep children free and safe from premature sexual activity as mentally disturbed, even as a social menace.
The swaggering shysters of ABC’s "Boston Legal" went to court on October 9 on behalf of a high-school girl who contracted the HIV virus from "unprotected" sex with a boy. The girl in this script sued not the infecting boy, not the boy’s parents – but the high school which taught abstinence-only sex education.
The school’s crime was its failure to advance the righteousness of the Almighty Condom, which the “Boston Legal” lawyer ridiculously claimed was "arguably, the single most important invention of the past 2,000 years." Resistance to pop culture and peer pressure is futile, he argued. "They're simply going to do it! We all do it. Birds do it, bees do it, educated fleas do it. One time unprotected sex can kill you. A condom can save you." With a flourish, the lawyer concluded his sermon: "We should be in criminal court this very moment trying this obscenely duplicitous school for conspiracy to commit murder."
ABC only suggested murder as a rhetorical device. CBS took it to the next level. On its drama "Cold Case," abstinence advocates are presented as killers. In the September 30 episode, detectives were investigating a 1998 murder, only to discover the devoutly Christian teens in the "Hearts Wait" abstinence club turned out to be sexually active hypocrites who murdered one of their own members to keep their sins secret. When the victim tried to convince her club mates that their teenage lust was understandable, they responded by denouncing her as "dirty," a "whore," a "slut," and the B-word before stoning her to death, while citing the Old Testament. Their leader, a youth minister, had one student confess her teenage lust for him with her back turned, so he could pleasure himself as she spoke.
The idea that Christian teenagers stone people to death could only come from a fevered brain in Tinseltown. In terms of cultural politics, this is simply mudslinging – a vile smear that requires no troublesome facts as it points an accusatory finger.
The get-it-on gurus who push “protection” are really encouraging sex between children. Like Hollywood, “sexologists” like Levkoff see themselves waging war “on a culture that condemns all things sexual.” But they’re really waging a war on anyone who suggests a limitation, anyone who wants to draw a line. Anyone who wants a child to wait, to grow and mature before leaping into bed or a back seat, is evil, deeply sick, and even capable of murder.
I'm still amazed at the "Cold Case" plotline. Some dramas with shocking plot twists claim to be "ripped from the headlines" – but you can’t find Christian teenagers stoning people to death in the newspaper. Brent's right: that could only come from a brain that cannot contemplate a higher calling than the sexual urge. If you saw the plot summary "teenagers get stoned" in the TV Guide, you'd never think they meant the ancient variety.
