Shoot the birds, smash the bees!

Yesterday the Argentine Senate passed a law that dictates compulsory sex education to be taught in all schools, public and private, from the initial level (5-year-olds and up). It seems ridiculous that this was not implemented yet and that it had to be debated at all, and it is ridiculous, if you forget the constant meddling of the Catholic Church in public affairs in Argentina.

The main point of contention was, always, that the parents should have a say in what their children are taught, lest the state imposes some sort of twisted sex ideology (like, I don't know, "sex is bad if not for reproduction") on those poor, highly malleable minds. The real function of this criticism is that, once you get the parents some room to get to decide on contents, those parents (who aren't teachers or experts in sex education, and who have been fed Catholic misinformation and prejudice about sex since birth) will conduct the lobbying themselves, while the hierarchs of the Church look at the battle from above without exposing themselves as the bunch of narrow-minded sex-obsessed anti-erotic bigots they are.

It must be noted, of course, that the Church did not support the parents back when Catholic doctrine was taught in public schools regardless of the parents' religious persuassion, and children of Jews and other religious minorities were (at most) given the option to leave during religion class. The Church also resented the lawmakers (most of whom were incidentally Catholic and/or parents) who took away from it the privilege of indoctrinating children, when Law 1420 of General Common Education was passed in 1884, and didn't mind the right of parents to decide on the education of their children when religious education was allowed back into the classroom on several occasions (e.g. during the last dictatorship).

Sex education laws have been passed already in provincial jurisdictions. In Santa Fe there's been one since the first administration of Governor Inarticulate Mummy 14 years ago, but as many other things in this province, it basically lies there without being applied because public officials are busy inventing longer, more appropriately bureaucratic names for their offices.

The current national law is both broad and shallow in scope. It says that the national government has to provide basic content, but the implementation will be gradual and subject to the communities' "socio-cultural reality" and "respecting the convictions of their members". That bit half-guts it from the beginning..., but let's hope.