The Blog @ Spolitics

The Sex Education Bill Obama Supported – What It Actually Says

by Heywood U. Reedmore -- September 10, 2008 at 12:02 am | In 2008 Election | 1 Comment

The McCain camp released an ad attacking Obama for a bill he supported that would have taught comprehensive sex education in kindergarten. First, the ad:

The Obama campaign tried to spin it as a bill aimed to teach kids about “bad touching” and attacked McCain for the ad:

“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.

Burton noted that in a recent interview with Time magazine, McCain refused to define ‘honor.’ “Now we know why,” Burton said.

Take a look for yourself at what the bill actually says. (Note: underlined passages represent additions and strike-throughs are deletions from the previous law.) Here’s the graph garnering all the attention.

In three different sections, the bill calls for children in grades K through 12 to get instruction on how to prevent sexually transmitted infections. The question for Obama: how exactly does one “age-appropriately” teach a kindergarten student how to prevent contracting an STD without explaining in at least some detail what the “S” part entails?

It’s also worth noting what the bill tried to strike from the law:

And we’re supposed to believe the only aim of this bill was to protect children?