McCain Campaign Ad Bashes Barack Obama on OKing Sex Ed for Kids
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 10, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The campaign of John McCain has released a new television ad that bashes pro-abortion candidate Barack Obama. The ad highlights Obama’s voting to teach "comprehensive sex education" to kindergartners and says he is wrong to push sexual teaching on children.
The ad says Obama has a poor record on education issues and that his "one accomplishment" is "legislation to teach ‘comprehensive sex education’" to kindergartners.
"Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family," the spot concludes.
The campaign cites a July 2007 article showing that, before his election to the U.S. Senate and when he was a member of the Illinois legislature, Obama served as the chairman of a committee that approved a bill to change the sexual education curriculum from grades 6-12 to start at kindergarten instead.
As the head of the Senate Health And Human Services Committee, Obama voted for S.B. 99 on March 6, 2003. The measure passed through the committee on a 7-4 vote.
"Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV," the bill read.
Obama defended the sex-ed for five and six year olds in comments to Planned Parenthood during a July 2007 speech.
"But it’s the right thing to do to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in schools," he said.
When Obama’s campaign was asked by ABC News to explain what kind of sex education Obama considers "age appropriate" for kindergartners, he appeared to backtrack.
The Obama campaign pointed to an October 2004 story in which he "moved to clarify" that he "does not support teaching explicit sex education to children in kindergarten."
"The legislation in question was a state Senate measure last year that aimed to update Illinois’ sex education standards with ‘medically accurate’ information," he told the Daily Herald newspaper in that story.
"Nobody’s suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it," Obama said. "If they ask a teacher ‘where do babies come from,’ that providing information that the fact is that it’s not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that’s going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards."
The Obama camp also told CBN News’ David Brody that Obama only supported the legislation because it would teach children about inappropriate sexual contact.
Despite Obama’s support, the Illinois legislation was not enacted.
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