Poll of the Day > happy pride month everyone

(+) Yeah! (+)

Ozmose posted...

I don't really get how people lost sight of the fact that when it comes to sex, kids will usually figure it out just fine on their own.

About the same way they lost sight of the fact that babies are delivered by storks: It's pretty easy to lose sight of facts that are objectively false. Comprehensive sex ed has been exhaustively demonstrated to yield significantly better results than providing no sex ed at all (which, in turn, is better than abstinence-only sex ed), in terms of reducing teen/unwanted pregnancy rates, reducing STI rates, increasing the age of first intercourse, increasing the rate at which child molesters are caught, reducing mental health issues for queer people, reducing sexual assault rates... Pretty much every metric of sexual population health gets better with comprehensive sex ed. The only reason anyone objects to it is that they cling to the idea that sex is bad (which is subjective and usually solely a matter of pushing their own religious agenda over what anyone else thinks) and that the best way to prevent their kids from having sex is to tell them as little as possible about it (which is demonstrably wrong).

Schools are meant to teach basic skills,

Significantly more people have sex over the course of their lives than will ever need to worry about anything from English class beyond basic literacy, anything from math class beyond a basic understanding of what numbers and their interactions represent, anything from science class at all... If the only consistent outcome of schooling were that every kid graduated high school knowing how to read, how to cook, and how to respect sexual consent, that would be a substantial improvement over the current state of affairs. Those are "basic skills." Everything else is just gravy.

not what to believe or not believe.

"Gay people exist" is no more of a belief than "2+2=4." Nor is "trying to deny the legitimacy of queer people causes significant harm," or "gender identity extends beyond simple genitalia." All of these things are observable facts about the world around us. Note that when people try to suggest eliminating all mention of LGBTQ people from classrooms, those objecting to it bring up evidence, and studies, and factual harms associated with those policies, while those supporting that erasure fall back on "it's just my belief and you should respect that!" the instant they're challenged on it.

The "agenda" here is "I'd rather see fewer kids kill themselves." That's it. If that's an agenda you have a problem with, then frankly, you and everyone else that agrees with you can go fuck yourself, because that's not a belief that has any place in a functional society. Get better, or get out.

my headcanon is that osmose is erik p, and he fell to the darkside after his mental breakdown when trump became president

ConfusedTorchic posted...

my headcanon is that osmose is erik p, and he fell to the darkside after his mental breakdown when trump became president

If Erik P came back we would immediately be able to tell because he was just pissy on another level I've never seen.

Even the biggest cranks manage to have one friendly conversation, but not him.