It’s perfectly abnormal

It’s hardly a recent article (published last September), but I’ll quote a portion anyway:

A Lewiston woman wants to keep local children from seeing an acclaimed sex education book, “It’s Perfectly Normal.” So she checked out copies from the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries.

And she won’t give them back.

“Since I have been sufficiently horrified of the illustrations and the sexually graphic, amoral abnormal contents, I will not be returning the books,” JoAn Karkos wrote the local libraries last month.

In her second letter to Speer, Karkos cited a war on morality and called the volume “pornographic.”

“The truth is the contents of the book in question leads to a lot of misery, pain, lack of freedom, and often death,” Karkos wrote.

The highlights are my emphasis. Doesn’t life in general lead to a lot of misery, pain, lack of freedom and death? Life is also about love and passion and lust and sex.

I found a copy of the book at my library and checked it out so I could check it out for myself. This particular copy had 61 circulations as of March 2004 (says so on the card pocket inside).

Frankly, this puppy should be required reading. It’s very informative and I’m glad libraries refuse to cave on objections about it. This is an honest, candid book with cartoon illustrations depicting all the natural bits of the body and all the things a body naturally does.

I think I can get away with calling this woman a prude. I think she never got farther into the book than page 23, where a cartoony naked woman is bent over with a mirror so she can properly see herself. Maybe she skimmed the bits on homosexuality and masturbation, too, and wigged out. Or she was offended by the “all sorts of families taking care of babies” described on page 50. Who knows but her. By page 68 (it’s a short book) the author provides information about abstaining, birth control and pros and cons of abortion. The last few pages are all about staying healthy, why sexual abuse needs to be reported, how to avoid STDs and how to make responsible choices in all areas of one’s life.

There’s nothing but good in this book.

I don’t know why this woman thinks her personal (religious?) moral code trumps a rational approach to basic human biology. Why some parents want to shelter their kids to a point where menstruation comes as one hell of a surprise in the morning, or leave a boy believing that his wet dream means a demon had sex with him.

I don’t know why people want to make normal behaviour abnormal. Why twist facts to fit a faith? Why ignore facts all together? Why hide that kind of truth? How does that help anyone?

If a parent really wants a healthy, well-balanced kid, won’t a healthy attitude toward sex and sexuality go a long way to ensure that outcome? Not that I’d suggest 5 year olds should play live Lego with their interlocking parts, but curiosity is a natural thing. A round or two of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” is pretty much a given once they’re in school.

I think it does the next generation a great disservice to keep them in the dark about their sexuality. I’m not a parent but even I know that children need to learn how their bodies work, how becoming a teenager will change more than their taste in music and how the right to be sexually active is everyone’s right as responsible individuals.