blatham wrote:jw said
Quote:No one has said that learning about alternative lifestyles is BAD.
Quote:Spellings explained in her letter, "many parents would not want their young children exposed to the life-styles portrayed in this episode."
A little honesty would be refreshing here, jw.
Spellings is offended by homosexuality. Spellings doesn't want more of it. Spellings doesn't want kids to think it 'normal', like the folks who called in the death threats don't want kids to think the Muslim faith is 'normal'.
The honesty is there in black and white.
No one says the learning of the alternate lifestyles is BAD--learning about is at age frigging 5 is ridiculous, too early and not the government's--or PBS' damn decision to make.
****.
PDiddie wrote:Diane wrote:As for maplesugaring, it could be turned into something a little obscene, but it would probably leave you with a nasty burn...
The syrup isn't an adequate lube?
Sexual amateurs!
It's for...eating.
I've used honey before...I may have an orgasm thinking about it...
Quote:The honesty is there in black and white.
No one says the learning of the alternate lifestyles is BAD--learning about is at age frigging 5 is ridiculous, too early and not the government's--or PBS' damn decision to make.
****.
At five, there is no connection made between parents and sexuality. Sexuality is not part of the mental life of kids at that age level, they don't conceptualize their own or anyone else's parents or anyone as sexual creatures. The same gender parents in the show aren't shown cavorting naked. Or even just in bed together - likely OK with Spellings if a mom and dad were reading, for example, as a five year old has no experiencial or conceptual framework which leads from an image of adults in bed to sex acts. So this isn't about sex.
And it isn't about confusion resulting from seeing alternate lifestyles. If so, depictions of the following would also be suspect...a hermit, a spinster, Israeli kibbutz co-operative parenting, orphanages, etc etc.
Sexuality and Your Child
Lynn Blinn Pike
Department of Human Development and Family Studies
By the age of three, your child will probably begin to ask you for information about sex. It will help if you take as much care in preparing yourself for your child's sexuality education as you do when preparing to teach him or her about health and physical safety.
Knowing what to expect at different ages can help you respond to typical questions young children ask. It also helps to know what behaviors you can expect.
Three to four years
Characteristics of sexual development
Three- and four-year-olds are curious about where babies come from.
They explore other children's and adults' bodies because of their curiosity. "Playing doctor" and pretending to be mommy or daddy become more common activities.
They have increased interest in the differences between adults' and children's bodies.
By age four, girls may become intensely attached to their fathers and boys to their mothers.
Children begin to have a sense of modesty and can begin to understand the difference between private and public behavior.
For many children, genital touching increases, especially when they are tired or upset.
Three- and four-year-olds still have a concern about elimination and frequently use words that refer to bowel movements and urination.
Five to seven years
Characteristics of sexual development
Children in this age group begin to have more contacts outside the family. Other children may bring up new ideas about sex.
They have increased need for privacy while bathing and dressing.
Five- to seven-year-olds often increase their use of sexual or "obscene" language (frequently to test parental reaction).
They are more interested in what it means to be male or female.
They give up wanting to "marry" mom or dad. Girls become closer to their mothers and boys to their fathers.
Children in this age group become more reticent about asking questions.
Masturbation continues to be common. Tell your child that this is not wrong, but it is something one does in private.
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blatham. You are incorrect.
No, Lash, I'm not wrong. But you have to think carefully about what I've said and what Pike is describing.
Children touch their genitals from very early and even masturbatory behaviors (rubbing on pillows, furniture, etc) can show up at 2 (as it did with my daughter). Curiosity regarding others' bodies is a natural extension of curiosity about their own, so they often look at and touch each other in the 2-5 range. Wondering where babies come from also reflects curiosity about the world around them.
We are, in that sense, sexual from the beginning.
But there is a great distance between that and what is conceptualized. And it is the conceptualization which is important here. A child at 24 months may be very interested in his/her own genitals (lots of nerve endings) but is many years away from understanding that mommies and daddies do anything in bed other than sleep and read, or understanding that intercourse is a fact of human life, or comprending that babies come about as a consequence of intercourse.
If a child in this age range sees two parents of the same gender, curiosity about that may arise (but it is equally possible it won't provoke much curiosity) but it is a curiosity about difference...precisely in the same manner as curiosity arising in seeing someone without an arm, or someone walking on stilts, or someone speaking a different language, or people of a different skin color, etc.
A child at this age range will not (cannot, without necessary earlier conceptions) perceive same gender parents as a 'sexual' issue at all. It is much older children, teens and adults that do.
PD Don't get maplesugaring confused with gingerbreading. (Ask your girlfriend.)
This whole thing is just more conservative blinders -don't look, you may see, don't seek, who knows what you will find. -- maybe if we pretend that something doesn't exist, homosexuality, it will just go away. Best of luck with that approach to life and homeschooling.
Be careful what your child is exposed to, but not so careful that he never learns more than you know.
Joe (Yesterday, I found out what risotto is made out of.) Nation
Given all the rumors before the election about government cut backs on funding for PBS and NPR, I can entertain the possibility that this is a finger in the wind test and the beginning of the conservative's move on public broadcasting.
The conservatives in power, or those demanding their political favors now that they've delivered at the polls haven't given up on the idea that they can "protect" their children from the changing world. They've tucked their children into Christian Schools, fundamentalist churches, regulated who their children can seek out as friends, removed their children from the schools entirely in home schooling programs, infiltrated school boards and now are reaching out to regulate university faculties. This is the new PC.
Too bad for them (and lucky for human progress) it won't work. I learned this when I wanted to encourage my young children to eat a healthy diet. They found sugar coated cereals on TV ads, bacon at their friend's breakfast tables, sausages at the 7-11, donuts at their aunt Katy's.
The only way I was going to keep them ignorant was to put them in a sanitized plastic bag or lock them in their rooms with nothing to watch on TV or to read but what I provided them. I tried it, I did........but those damn kids kept breaking out and escaping and I'd find them sneaking around eating candy and beef jerky. And then, heaven forbid, they grew up to be vegans. What's a mother to do?
As for their sex education, I never got the chance. A couple of very early questions came my way. But mostly, regardless of how I answered them, my children learned most of what they know or now believe from their peers. It's always seemed funny (sometimes hilarious) to me whenever I've encountered parents who think they need to teach their pre-teen or teen age children about sex. The children usually politely behave as if it's new information, but the truth is, the lessons they could teach, if they let on, would revolutionize their parent's world.
I agree that very young children should be protected from violence and the consumption of sugar. Parents do have a right to teach their children according to their own beliefs. Sex and religion should be a parent's perogative during the early years. But the idea that parents have the ability or right to protect their children completely from exposure to the outside world is dumb headed at least and unconscionable in it's extreme, even in the early years.
It should be noted, btw that this protection of young children is usually one sided. The same people insisting they have a right to teach their children as they see fit think nothing at all of talking to other people's children about religion. And the earlier the better (they consider themselves in this case to be missionaries.) So the whole fight is hypocritical in reality.
As far as the lesbian women and the maple syruping goes.......how subversive is it after all? Foxfire, for instance thinks it's ok to include, "under god" in the pledge (which is taught to children at a very early age.) What about a parent's right to teach their young children about the religion or non-religion of their choice? She's not at all worried about how a young child may feel ostrasized and set apart among their peers when, "under god" is repeated daily in the class room.
This thing with Spellings is not about a parent's rights. It's about the desire of a hard core religious group to not only indoctrinate their own children, but to indoctrinate the children of others. It's funny to me to see conservatives use the same arguments they try to dispell when the shoe is on the other foot.
It will all be in vain anyway. No one can stop progress. Human beings will continue to evolve as they have for eons. There's nothing these self appointed keepers of morality can do to stop it. There will always be cultural lags, and some of them will be destructive to many, but progress will march on. What a silly little grain of sand this is after all.
Even if PBS could be silenced or their programming controlled, or the universities could be forced to hire anti-science faculty, the ideas will pop up somewhere else. And our children will find them and do with them what they choose to do, regardless of our opinion. And their children will do the same.
Lash wrote:Sexuality and Your Child
By the age of three, your child will probably begin to ask you for information about sex. It will help if you take as much care in preparing yourself for your child's sexuality education as you do when preparing to teach him or her about health and physical safety.
Three to four years
Characteristics of sexual development
Three- and four-year-olds are curious about where babies come from.
They explore other children's and adults' bodies because of their curiosity. "Playing doctor" and pretending to be mommy or daddy become more common activities.
They have increased interest in the differences between adults' and children's bodies.
Five to seven years
Characteristics of sexual development
Children in this age group begin to have more contacts outside the family. Other children may bring up new ideas about sex. ~S-->It is a point of interest--but they're 3 to 5 years old. Parents trying to describe THE REGULAR stuff at that tender age--in an age appropriate way-- should be able to choose if they want to add in the gay talk.
They are more interested in what it means to be male or female.
They give up wanting to "marry" mom or dad. Girls become closer to their mothers and boys to their fathers.
-------------
blatham. You are incorrect.
I deleted the ones that may be confusing you. It is clear, documented and scientifically measured. They DO acclimate to certain norms--and do know differences in those norms. The introduction of abnorms that they notice DOES lead down a sex path-- because as the study proved, they are curious about bodies, differences in men and women, and are forming their identification with the parent of their sex.
Quote:I deleted the ones that may be confusing you. It is clear, documented and scientifically measured.
What is? They DO acclimate to certain norms What does that even mean? --and do know differences in those norms.
Excuse me...where is that written? What norms? Recognition of differences is somehow destructive? The introduction of abnorms that they notice DOES lead down a sex path--That's YOUR claim. It's not this author's claim. because as the study proved, they are curious about bodies, differences in men and women, and are forming their identification with the parent of their sex. This is completely incoherent.
I'm not sure what you are attempting to do here Lash. The above is unusually slipshod for you. Is it your belief, as a matter of faith or as a matter of personal preference and opinion, that homosexuality is perverse?
Lash,
I don't think you have to explain to Bernie about early childhood development and sex. He knows all this, I'm sure. You're answering him on the literal, concrete level. You're missing his point entirely.
Joe Nation wrote:PD Don't get maplesugaring confused with gingerbreading. (Ask your girlfriend.)
Joe, I don't have any girlfriends, and my wife of 18+ years has never heard of it either.
Help a brotha out, wouldja?
Joe Nation wrote:This whole thing is just more conservative blinders -don't look, you may see, don't seek, who knows what you will find. -- maybe if we pretend that something doesn't exist, homosexuality, it will just go away. Best of luck with that approach to life and homeschooling.
Al Pacino in "Devil's Advocate": Look...but don't touch. Touch....but don't taste. Taste....but don't swallow."
Hey Lola, you're worldy; have you heard of "maplesugaring"? Or "gingerbreading", for that matter?
is that anything like teabagging, or the Chicago Hot Plate?
blatham wrote:Quote:I deleted the ones that may be confusing you. It is clear, documented and scientifically measured.
What is?
The next sentence is.
They DO acclimate to certain norms What does that even mean?
I had imagined you had a volcabulary that surpassed mine. It means they adapt or become adapted to certain norms in their environment.--and do know differences in those norms.
Excuse me...where is that written?
Here-- "Playing doctor" and pretending to be mommy or daddy become more common activities.
Here-- They explore other children's and adults' bodies because of their curiosity
Here-- They are more interested in what it means to be male or female.
Hence, they are acclimating themselves to where they fit in the world sexually.
What norms? Recognition of differences is somehow destructive?
It is a complication you, PBS or no one has the right to force on me concerning my child's sexual education.
The introduction of abnorms that they notice DOES lead down a sex path--That's YOUR claim. It's not this author's claim.
Well, you did get that part right.
because as the study proved, they are curious about bodies, differences in men and women, and are forming their identification with the parent of their sex. This is completely incoherent.
Well, you're having severe cognitive disturbance this morning.
Let's recap that confounding sentence...
because as the study proved
they are curious about their bodies
they are curious about the differences in men and women
they are forming their identification with the parent of the same sex.
I'm not sure what you are attempting to do here Lash. The above is unusually slipshod for you. Is it your belief, as a matter of faith or as a matter of personal preference and opinion, that homosexuality is perverse?
I'll look up perverse. The word sounds much harsher than I think or feel about homosexuality.
perverse--Willfully deviating from acceptable or conventional behavior, opinion.
If this is true, I'm perverse, as well.
perversity in clinical terms refers to a pathological sexual practice. Until recently, homosexuality was considered to be a symptom of arrested or fixated psychosexual development and therefore perverse. But the concept of fixation and arrested development are no longer viable as adequate explanations for human behavior.
This is my best worldly-wise effort at the definition of gingerbreading:
According to the urban dictionary, the term is undefined. But since a ginger-snap, according to at least one person is defined as "the vagina of a (naturally) red-haired woman, or, by extension, the woman herself. Example: "Thats one nice ginger-snap, in my opinion."
http://www.urbandictionary.com/browse.php?word=gingerbreading
And since in builder's terms it means layering of gingerbread trims.......one might guess that gingerbreading would refer to a layering of something in relation to a ginger-snap.
My best guess:
An orgy involving relations with a red headed woman.
Any other ideas? Or, alternatively, maybe Joe Nation would be so kind as to inform us.
But ohhhhh, I've uncovered the following definition:
1. ginger beer
Cockney rhyming slang for a homosexual man.
Ginger Beer.... Queer!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ginger+beer
This would suggest that the introduction of this as yet undefined term could be related to the thread topic, but only thinly..........
However, it should be considered that the source of the above definition is "Thaarg The Almighty." He offered this definition as recently as September 30, 2004......we should keep an open mind. But it does sound like cockney rhyming to me. I'm sure it's not an item for PBS.
I now know what tea-bagging is, Bear. They might be related. he he
And euuuuuuuu! Chicago hot plate is nasty!
I have no idea why anyone would have a problem with kids learning about different lifestyles at any age.
They learn constantly about such things from nought up - from parents, parents' social networks, TV and other cutural outlets, school etc. Why would noticing that some kids live with two women, or men, or have access with such, be a problem? These things exist in reality - and, in my group, kids have contact with straight married forever folk and their kids, straight folk with blended families, single straight parents, single gay parents, single straight and gay with no kids, gay couples with no kids.
By the logic of kids not being exposed to alternate lifestyles too early, whatever that means, my gay friends with kids ought to shield them from heterosexual influences - which is "alternate" to them - or my single parent friends ought to not allow them to see families with two married parents living together. Huh?
Learning about sex and love occurs from day one - what on earth makes gradually learning that gay sex and love exists a drama?
Flooding kids with sexual info beyond what is appropriate for their age, whether it be straight, gay or brindle, is inappropriate. Allowing kids to proceed at their own pace with proper information when it is asked for is appropriate whatever a person's sexual orientation. The key is the pacing and the appropriate boundaries. Gay or straight.
I think only people who think gayness wrong would have any cavil with this - and even then, your kids are - unless you live in a very restricted community, or a very small and homogenous one - going to be learning about the realities of the human condition whether you like it or not.
Quote:I think only people who think gayness wrong would have any cavil with this
I think this is precisely the case.
Lash attempts to make it a 'sex ed' instance, but that argument is so strained and disconnected that it's not really coherent at all.
Others, like george elsewhere, suggest that the convention of marriage is already so stressed that we ought to play it safe and consider that gays ought to be allowed only 'union' status, and not marriage. But no empirical basis for that claim is forwarded, because none is available. Guesses and intuitions are given as adequate rationale for denying gays equality in this matter.
thomas has argued that there is reason enough, possibly, in making a default decision in the direction of tradition, to the end of greater social stability.
When folks push a preference such as this, with so little solidity in their reasoning, particularly where the matter concerns a fundamental element of constitutional principle like equality, it's pretty tempting to infer some degree of anti-gay sentiment or preference in the mix.
Dirty Sanchez was served his dinner, a steaming Chicago Hot Plate, with a glass of ginger beer.
He wondered if his waiter had teabagged it.
Oops, sorry...this post belongs in the "Pompous Asses" thread.
Mods, you may move...
Obviously, dlowan's and blatham's assertion is incorrect--because when my children were of the appropriate age, I shared the information I felt relevent--characterized it in positive terms--and have one very socially liberal child--and one, disgusted by gaydom. (But, not one who thinks he should impugn their rights or intrude on their privacy.)
You're just wrong. There are some people who think a three to six year old child need not have their first blush introduction to sex education complicated by an explanation of gayness.
Period.
I see nothing wrong with disagreeing with me--but feeling compelled to assign me untrue motives says more about you than me. I have stuck my neck WAY out, and stood alone for gay rights many times.
