(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Planned Parenthood [PP] Center for Sex Education executive director was criticized after saying that babies are inherently sexual and advocating for the introduction of pornography to minors, according to the Post Millennial.
The director at PP’s sex education branch in New Jersey, Bill Taverner, said in 2015 that “we are all sexual beings from birth to death.”
PP’s “Fundamentals of Teaching Sexuality” reflect Taverner’s views by claiming that “sexuality is a part of life through all the ages and stages. Babies, elders and everyone in between can experience sexuality.”
Even before that, in a 2012 interview, Taverner said that children should be taught pornography — a position that he has maintained up until at least Feb. 2021.
He said that pornography can be useful because it is widely accessible.
“There’s access to erotica, pornography, that was very different for young people 30 years ago,” Taverner said. “It [was] certainly not as accessible, certainly not as instantaneous, so there’s a lot of information that is useful.”
When the interviewer interrupted him by saying that “some of it is wrong,” Taverner said that “some of it is wrong, a lot of it is wrong,” but added, “there is good stuff out there as well.”
In 2021, the sex-ed activist said that while educators “never wanted pornography to be the primary source of sex education,” he thinks “instruction needs to adapt to modern times.”
“If we talk about porn, [some think] is it going to make people want to watch it? Which is the same faulty kind of premise as if we teach about condoms,” he said.
“It’s going to make people want to have sex with condoms, maybe that’s not a bad thing.”
“If this is what they’re doing with their cell phones and tablets and their laptops, then we need to shift our education and stop doing the banana on a condom and think that, you know, we’ve done our thing,’ he added.
According to him, comprehensive sex education should start in kindergarten.
“Sexuality education is not isolated to a particular point in a person’s life, it’s a continuous process,” Taverner said.
He then said that 5 and 6-year-old children should be taught about STD prevention and how babies are conceived.
“Young children are learning about sexuality from the attitudes their parents display [and] when we think of K-12 education we may be talking about what makes a family, we may be talking about disease prevention…” Taverner said.
“Age-appropriate sex education is so important. And we have to let our experts guide us.”
