The Dirty Papist

 From Reddit:

"My son knows what gay is since 3 yrs old and nothing is wrong with him. I rather explain it to him than have a conservative pastor show him with 2 fingers inserted into his bum. Smh"

Just conservative pastors, huh? Is that how you determine if they're conservative? Because maybe we're having the wrong conversations.

"And that is the exact reason they want to stop sex ed for 5 year olds. Because they don't want 5 year olds to learn that they shouldn't be touched in private places. Because that is what sex ed is at that age."

No. No, it's not. You can explain consent and boundaries--and at that age, there pretty much should be no consent questions outside of basic hygenic and medical needs--without talking about "gay" and suggesting to kids that since they haven't formed strong opinions about sex yet that they're already open to experimentation with things that have strong positive correlation to life-shortening pathologies.

"My daughter's catholic school had lessons for 5 year olds to know that abuse is wrong and how to report. They called it a 'circle of grace' and that no one should violate it. There are ways to teach sex ed that are religiously conservative. These laws want to keep kids ignorant to make them easier to abuse."

That first part is nice, but the second part is false. These laws want to keep kids from being open to adults or even other children who are inclined to suggest that exploring the next step beyond the tame stuff they've discussed--it'll be couched in terms like "self-exploration" or "experimentation" or "learning about yourself" or "subverting conservative mores" (this last one being especially pernicious, not because it's a thumb in the eyes of the GOP and Old Fashioned Jesus, but because it's encouraging children to destroy themselves piecemeal in symbolic protest against a phantom bugbear). That's why there are concerns about grooming.

These people obviously think, due to the lop-sidedness of their news intake, or just want to believe/want you to believe, that "don't say gay" is really the point of legislation that literally calls for age-appropriate education. So I wonder, further, if these people even believe grooming is a real thing.

Because in my mind, there's not much moral difference between a "conservative" pastor who likes to diddle children and a "progressive" one who likes to tell children that it's okay to diddle themselves or each other or him or get diddled by him.

If the kids these groomers were feigning to protect were sixteen instead of six, if these kids were their own children being predated by the proverbial frat boys and star quarterbacks at college who came home to check out the "fresh meat," they'd be on the front lines--and rightly so--reminding everybody that date rape is still rape.

Because that's essentially what it is.