UNESCO Gets Off the Track Again

Why do we allow the United States to pay dues for membership in UNESCO? That stands for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. One of President Ronald Reagan's many excellent decisions was his 1984 termination of U.S. membership in this United Nations affiliate because it was corrupt, anti-Western, and a vehicle for far-left propaganda. Unfortunately, President George W. Bush put us back in UNESCO in 2003 as part of his devotion to an undefined new world order.

UNESCO has adopted the pretense that it is in charge of prescribing curriculum for schoolchildren all over the world. UNESCO's Director General boasted that one of the goals is to foster "worldwide curricula reflecting UNESCO values.” This fall, UNESCO has been busy writing guidelines for the teaching of sex education, supposedly in order to slow the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. In these guidelines, UNESCO tells teachers in all countries to teach children that abstinence until marriage is "only one of a range of choices available to young people."

The working draft of the guidelines calls for children aged five to eight to be taught in school about same-sex couples, tolerance of different sexual orientations, and specific sexual activity that I'd rather not talk about on radio. Schoolchildren aged nine to 15 are to be given even more detailed discussions. For students starting at age 12, UNESCO guidelines teach enthusiastic "advocacy" of abortion and so-called "emergency contraception."

Public reaction to the UNESCO sex-ed guidelines caused UNESCO to make a few changes before presenting them at the UNESCO meeting in September. However, there was no apology for the explicitness of the sex-ed curriculum; UNESCO asserted that its guidelines are "evidence-informed and rights-based." Time Magazine thought the sex-ed guidelines are just great and went on the attack against what it called "the knee-jerk outrage of conservative pundits."

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