The Left, Bert and Ernie and Children's Innocence
By _Dennis Prager_
(http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/dennis_prager/) - July 2, 2013
If a Martian were to observe the human condition, he would have to conclude
that the left has an agenda to deprive children of their innocence.
The Martian would have no other explanation for the premature sexualizing
of children that the left has engaged in for decades, and which seems to
increases almost weekly.
The most recent example is the cover of the current issue of the New
Yorker, which depicts the Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie. They are
seated on a couch snuggling with Bert's head on Ernie's shoulder watching
television. The TV features a picture of the U.S. Supreme Court.
To their credit, the creators of Sesame Street and of Bert and Ernie have
stated that the two characters are not only never depicted as having
anything but Platonic interest in one another, they are also never depicted as
having any interest in females either. As indeed it should have been, they
were characters for children to enjoy.
But for the left, Bert and Ernie (and whatever else the left can get its
ideological hands on) are manipulated into vehicles for a left-wing cause.
And no cause animates the left these days more than the social advancement of
gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered.
One consequence has been the robbing of children's innocence by prematurely
sexualizing them. Rendering Bert and Ernie as gay is only the most recent
example.
Other examples abound.
Just one week earlier, the State of Colorado's Rights Division ruled that a
first-grade boy who identifies and dresses as a girl may use the girls'
restroom at school. The school had previously allowed the first-grader to use
a bathroom in either the teachers' lounge or in the nurse's office, but
not the girls' bathroom.
Now, first-grade girls must share their bathroom with a fellow first-grader
who has a penis. There is every reason to have pity on this child. But
that is not a valid reason to subject all the girls to issues such as gender
confusion at such a young age.
Another way in which the left has subjected young children to sexual issues
has been the widespread teaching about sexual harassment, also beginning
in first grade. In addition to having discussions that do not belong in a
first-, second-, third-, fourth-, or fifth- grade class, this hysterical
fixation on sexual harassment has labeled innocent child's play a form of
sexual deviancy.
A few years ago I asked my listeners to send in funds to pay for the legal
defense of two seventh grade boys arrested -- yes, arrested by police --
for participating in "slap butt day."
As reported by The Oregonian:
"Two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting
the bottoms of girls as they ran -- what some kids later said was a common
form of greeting. But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville
Public Schools. So a teacher's aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the
office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school
soon interrogated them. ... The officer read the boys their Miranda rights
and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next
five days."
Two seventh graders in jail for five days for butt slapping on slap-butt
day.
And it gets worse.
The seventh-graders were not permitted contact with their parents for 24
hours, they were brought into court in shackles and jail garb, and they were
strip-searched four times. And the Yamhill County District Attorney,
Bradley Berry, brought felony sex charges against the two boys.
According to a 2008 ABC News story, "In schools across the country, kids as
young as 3 and four 4 now facing charges of sexual harassment that will
stay with them permanently on their school records."
ABC gave the example of 7-year-old Randy Castro of Potomac View Elementary
School in Maryland. He, too, slapped a girl's butt and the school called in
the police and wrote him up as sexual harasser.
In 2007, in liberal Maryland alone, 166 elementary students were suspended
for sexual harassment, including three preschoolers, 16 kindergartners and
22 first-graders.
In California where the left can pass any law it wants, the state passed a
law last year that all textbooks in California -- from first grade on --
describe the contributions of gays, bisexuals and transgendered individuals
to America and to California.
How exactly does one explain bisexuality to 6-year-olds? For the left this
is not an issue.
At the Democratic National Convention in 2000, the Democratic Party
featured five young people, about 5 to 10 years old, and had them recite
lyrics
describing how frightening their futures are likely to be. This alone was
innocence killing. But of course one of the fears had to be sex-related: "When
I grow up will kids still be wrongfully touched?"
And of course, the left has insisted on sex education from the earliest
grades. In New York City, seventh graders are taught how to use condoms.
All these policies have been enacted in the name of tolerance, protecting
girls and health. But the left always has a noble reason for its damaging
policies -- even when they involve something that when taken away can never
be returned: children's sexual innocence.
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