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Bill: Sexual Education Act
Details
Submitted by[?]: Rutanian Heritage Party
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: December 2803
Description[?]:
| The RHP believes that it is the rightful responsibility of a child's parents to educate them in private and personal matters such as sexual intercourse, at a time when they feel it is appropriate and in a manner that is harmonious with their own values and beliefs. The RHP believes that Rutania's schools should focus on educating students in matters of maths, science, and so on, where life lessons and inherited wisdom should be the exclusive domain of the family. To oblige all schools to teach sexual education undermines parental responsibility and personal initiative - it presumes that parents are somehow incapable of teaching their own children important lessons, and turns what should be an intrinsically personal and private matter into an extremely public one. Furthermore, the RHP believes that, if children are educated in matters sexual intercourse prematurely, the results may be disasterous - under-age sex, teenage pregnancies and the transmission of STD's are only some of the possibilities. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change Sexual education in schools.
Old value:: Schools have an obligation to give sexual education at some point in puberty, but individual students have an opt-out option.
Current: Schools have an obligation to give sexual education at some point in puberty.
Proposed: Schools should not educate students in sexual matters.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 13:19:40, August 11, 2009 CET | From |  Revolutionary Workers Party | To | Debating the Sexual Education Act |
| Message | Absolutely not. Students have a fundamental right to a comprehensive education, and this includes sex education. This is nothing more than a reactionary measure and we will not support. |
| Date | 14:17:42, August 11, 2009 CET | From | Rutanian Elitist Party | To | Debating the Sexual Education Act |
| Message | We would prefer another option: each and every school has the possibility to choose whether to offer sexual education or not. But if the RHP really sticks to this option we may be able to support it. Mirabelle de Spaak, Minister of Education |
| Date | 14:49:34, August 11, 2009 CET | From | Rutanian Heritage Party | To | Debating the Sexual Education Act |
| Message | Can the RWP substantiate their argument? What they have given so far is merely a talking point about very illusive 'rights'. In response to the REP, we are willing to discuss and consider the option of allowing schools to determine whether or not to educate students in sexual matters individually - we can certainly see the merit in this alternative. However, for the time-being, the proposed policy is the one we prefer. |
| Date | 15:20:31, August 11, 2009 CET | From | Revolutionary Workers Party | To | Debating the Sexual Education Act |
| Message | We find the argument to be a lazy one, in all honesty. Indeed, the rate of STDs, teenage pregnancies and the like would more likely be REDUCED if the government subsidised and provided free contraceptives to all citizens through clinics and centres. This proposal seems to regard an important fact of life - sexuality and sex education - as in fact being secondary to conventional education such as maths, science and English. We do not subscribe to this view. We firmly believe that solely parental education towards sex is partisan, and leads to inconsistencies from household to household, city to city. All this does is ensure sex education for some, and yet more rises in STDs and unwanted pregnancies for other sections of society. This coupled with an inconsistent and regionalist policy towards abortion provides the stepping stones to what could regrettably be labelled as a white, Christian dominated theocracy. The RWP regards a comprehensive, questioning and non-partisan approach to sex education in schools as being of paramount importance and thus we are opposed. |
| Date | 02:32:24, August 12, 2009 CET | From | Rutanian Heritage Party | To | Debating the Sexual Education Act |
| Message | "This proposal seems to regard an important fact of life - sexuality and sex education - as in fact being secondary to conventional education such as maths, science and English." Quite the opposite - this proposal recognizes sexual education as an immensely important, but also highly personal and private, matter. Rather than viewing this issue as second to maths, science and English, this proposal recognizes that there is an appropriate time, place and method for which children can be taught different things - school should be the realm of academia, while life lessons and things as intimate as sexual education cannot possibly be taught to children by anyone other than their family at a time and in a manner that they feel is appropriate. The parents of Rutania do not want their children educated in such issues by unqualified public servants. |
| Date | 23:07:51, August 12, 2009 CET | From | Revolutionary Workers Party | To | Debating the Sexual Education Act |
| Message | If the RHP feels that teachers in this country are merely 'unqualified public servants', then shame on them. We have a COLLECTIVE responsibility to educate young people on sexual care, the education of which is not a private matter solely. It of course also speaks volumes that the RHP cannot seemingly critique the disasterous affects of STDs and the like if this measure goes through. Furthering this the party surely cannot believe there is an appropriate 'method' to sex education as there mention no methods whatsoever - only in which realm dubious and not-so-dubious advice can be given by parents. |
| Date | 05:43:39, August 15, 2009 CET | From | Rutanian Heritage Party | To | Debating the Sexual Education Act |
| Message | Would the RWP care to explain how it is that we have a 'collective' responsibility to educate young people in sexual care, when this is clearly far from a collective issue? It follows that a young person's parents would logically and righftully be the ones to educate them in this matter - a matter which is not public, nor collective, but individual and private. Furthermore, if the State makes even intensely private matters such as sexual intercourse federal government issues to be regulated and enforced, what is left that is beyond its reach? The place for young people to be educated in sexual care is not the classroom, and the right people to teach them are not low-paid public servants, to whom they have very little connection or relation. As for the RWP's comments on STD's, we are of course aware of this issue. However, we do not blame a lack of sexual knowledge for the spread of STD's, but the perversions of the mass media, including TV, movies, music and pornography, and a lack of parental responsibility to curtail these influences. What our society needs is not to bring sexual intercourse into the public sphere anymore than it already has been - what it needs is for sex to be moved to the private realm where it clearly belongs. |
| Date | 03:25:08, August 17, 2009 CET | From | Liberal Party of Rutania | To | Debating the Sexual Education Act |
| Message | In no way does sexual education in schools infer that parents are incapable, and if these parents do their duty to its necessary and fullest extent, any further education on the matter would only prove to be reiteration which does no harm. The sexual sphere of life is just part of ones personal health, locking up open and frank discussion of such health knowledge could only serve to worsen the long-term health of our citizens. It is noteworthy to see that teenage pregnancy in the Netherlands, which practices an extensive sexual education programme, is only 8.1 per 1000 young women aged 15 to 19 years, whereas the United States with several systems many of which proport abstinence or exclusively home education, has a rate of 93.0 per 1000 in the same year. Subsequently the Liberal Party respectfully declines its support for this bill. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | |||
| yes | Total Seats: 64 | |||
| no | Total Seats: 122 | |||
| abstain |
Total Seats: 119 |
| Random fact: Voters have an extra appreciation for bills that actually get passed, so if you want to maximally take profit from your votes, make sure you compromise with others. |
| Random quote: "It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them." - Bill Vaughan |