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Alan Keyes is Making Sense
Alan KeyesMay 29, 2002
ALAN KEYES, HOST: Welcome to MAKING SENSE. I am Alan Keyes.
Now, of course, we are all of us aware of the terrible scandal that has hit the Catholic church. We're also aware that in a lot of the instances of the sexual misbehavior of priests, it has involved abuses of children and molestation or accusations of molestation against kids.
This was greeted, quite naturally, with shock and outrage by pretty much every decent person in America. And it has obviously been an important part of the adverse effect that it has had upon perceptions of the church that it has involved this issue of sexual relations with children.
We know of the advocacy by Father Shanley of relationships between men and boys and the scandal that was caused by the fact that this was somehow tolerated by the church. Well, without understanding, it's pretty clear, isn't it, that this society is against the idea of sexual relations between adults and children? And indeed, I think most of us stand aghast at the idea that we would be encouraging sexual activity among our kids. Teenage pregnancies being one of the major problems that we confront in this country among other things. And with the knowledge that we have, all of us especially who are parents that these are things that very often, especially young kids, are quite incapable of understanding or handling, we kind of take it for granted that we want to protect the innocence of our children and try to make sure that such knowledge, as they are obtained, is obtained in a way that is suited to their maturity and development and the larger moral context in which these issues ought to be handled. We make that assumption, don't we?
Well, I'm not quite sure why we do. Right now, for instance, Nickelodeon, the cable TV network for children, is considering the airing of a program that will be aimed at discussing the subject of homosexuality and putting that subject before kids seven and eight years old and things like that who characterize for their audience.
You have teachers in California who are coming out to their students to talk about their homosexuality and promote “tolerance” for homosexual behavior. These sorts of things, of course, are presented as something aimed at promoting an end to bigotry and intolerance. But at the same time, it is required when you deal with a subject like this that you are putting pretty explicit sexual issues before the very young.
That in and of itself would raise a concern, but it comes about in a context now in which some folks are coming forward explicitly to advocate the view that this sort of sexual activity among young people is a good thing and that sexual relations between adults and children aren't necessarily bad, as Father Shanley, the notorious child molester, up in Massachusetts advocated apparently at one point.
Well, now, he's not alone. In a book published by, I think, the University of Minnesota, Judith Levine, an author, has written a book called “Harmful To Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex.” Yes, you heard that right. Not the perils of sexual activity for children, but the perils of protecting children from sex. The institution of childhood, in essence, precisely what she questions.
In her book, she pretty much is explicit about what she considers to be the wrong attitudes that have characterized approaches, traditional approaches, to sexuality for kids. She writes, for example, quote: “Sex is not harmful to children. It is a vehicle to self-knowledge, love, healing, creativity, adventure, and intense feelings of aliveness. There are many ways even the smallest children can partake of it.”
Smallest children meaning, as she shows from some of the quotes and research she deals with, the infants, people like this. She goes on to say, quote: “Sexual contact with a child does not a pedophile make.”
Now, that may come as a surprise to some of you since obviously a lot of furor is being made right now about people who are looking for — adult people looking for sexual contact with children. But in case you thought that might be a problem or might indicate that there was something wrong, you would have to think again, according to this author.
In an interview, she is also quoted as saying that, “Children for their part, to train to look for sexual malevolence in every adult touch. Programs such as the popular good touch, bad touch curricula have been shown to have no positive effects on children.” That's what she claims, at any rate.
And she also says that they have negative ones. Quote: “They reinforce children's prejudices against bad people,” i.e., people of different races or those who wear ragged clothing and raise general levels of anxiety, particularly in young children.
Now, you will note in that kind of a remark that a book like this, she's not necessarily required apparently, as people are generally are on this program, to make any sense. Why the notion that you're going to teach your child to be wary of adults who are trying to exploit them for sexual purposes? Why that idea should somehow be equated with teaching them to dislike poor people or black people, I don't know, since the whole point of the thing is to try to put your children in a situation where they will not be exploited by adults.
But that unwillingness to see the positive agenda that is actually involved in the institution of innocence for our children, that characterizes the mentality, the approach, the whole argument that is, in fact, made in this book. It's as if the whole history of human societies and civilizations in which there is clearly written the connection between subjection and slavery and the psychological destruction of human autonomy and the exploitation of children, it's as if none of that record exists for this lady.
She does, of course, in the usual feminist way, comment on the institution of marriage and the inequality and so forth that characterize it. But it's as if she forgets that one of the key elements in maintaining that inequality was the fact that in a lot of the ancient societies and medieval societies and other pre-modern societies, it was — nothing was thought of a marriage between a 60-year-old man and a 13-year-old, 14-year-old girl. If that advanced the interests of family, if that was something dictated by the exigencies of social requirement or ambition, it just went ahead without any regard whatsoever for the situation in which you were placing the young woman.
That ability to combine a situation of material dependency with an age difference that could then exploit the use and abuse of the sexual connection, the sexual exploitation of women, it certainly was one of the things that helped to sustain the abusive institutionalization of inequality in marriage through many centuries of human civilization. All of these ideas totally put aside in this book, including the possibility that there is any connection between human sexuality and family, and any requirement that one would want to school the heart, mind, and conscience of children to look at their sexual being in a way that doesn't just involve self-gratification and pleasure and things of this kind, but that also involves relationship and the connection with those responsibilities and obligations which we owe to one another and to future generations.
The whole moral context, in fact, in which human sexual conduct needs to be considered entirely put aside in this book, as if it does not exist. And yet there are those who try to argue that, no, this isn't going to promote pedophilia, it's not going to promote sexual exploitation of children, it's not going to promote adults abusing children. No, it's just going to mean healthy, enthusiastic sexuality for our young people. Well, not likely, given what, in fact, it opens the door to once again, which is that sexual exploitation which makes of marriage, for instance, a situation of dependency and which makes of every sexual relationship a situation of subjection, where an immature individual is being seduced and exploited for the gratification of an older one. That door is opened wide by this book. Now, obviously, not everybody is going to agree with me on that.
So next, in the heart of the matter, we're going to be discussing whether innocence is passe when it comes to children and sex. We're going to be talking about what the con consequences are likely to be if this is in fact the case. I know that for some of you, this is going to be a shocking and outrageous subject. I do want to forewarn some of my audience out there, because I know there are some of you who have home-schoolers and other young people who are watching this show. I would want you to exercise your judgment, given the topic that we're talking to, and the fact that, for instance, we're going to be talking to former surgeon general Dr. Joycelyn Elders, a lady who has never been reticent in her explicit discussions of human sexuality; Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt; and Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women of America.
Well, getting back then in our next segment to a topic that you would have thought we'd never talk about, but is sex good for very young children? You're watching America's news channel, MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: Coming up in our next half-hour, is cross-burning free speech or hateful action? The Supreme Court has decided it will hear the case. Later on, we'll hear arguments from both sides.
A reminder that the chatroom is busy tonight. You can join in right now at CHAT.MSNBC.COM.
But let us get back right now to our discussion about the emergence of an argument that, far from needing protection from sexual activity and sexual exploitation, these things are positive goods for children, if handled in the right way.
Joining us to get to the heart of the matter, former U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Joycelyn Elders. Also with us, Gloria Feldt, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America; and Sandy Rios, the president of Concerned Women for America. Ladies, welcome to MAKING SENSE and thank you for joining me.
Now, Joycelyn, I'd like to start with you, if you don't mind, because you wrote the preface to this book or the introduction to it. And I've got to tell you, I find it, as a parent who has raised children, still has a young child of 13 years old, I find some of the things in this book to be both shocking, offensive and potentially extremely harmful to our young people in that they seem to provide a grounds for justifying those who are seeking out young people, seeking to have sexual relations with them and to abuse them. As we have seen, this is not unheard of even in the precincts of the church.
These kinds of activities have shocked and dismayed people around the country. How could you write a preface for a book that seems to contribute to this sort of phenomenon?
DR. JOYCELYN ELDERS, FORMER U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: You know, Dr. Keyes, I'm very pleased that you're talking about this subject tonight because when we know that 16 percent of our young men have been sexually abused before the age of 20, 26 percent of our young women have been sexually abused, and we've kept it in the closet, we've not talked about it, and I felt that this book helped to deal with some of the myths that are out there.
You know, everybody is saying it's promoting pedophilia, but no place in this book do I find that they are promoting pedophilia. We all think that sex between adults and children are wrong.
KEYES: Can I interrupt you one second? Because that's simply not what this author thinks. And I — I'm — she may have given you this impression. I think in the book itself, she gives other impressions. In an interview last month, for instance, she said, quote, “I don't say, I don't say that sex between kids and adults or teens and adults is a good thing or a bad thing. What we know from the research is that about 10 percent of teenagers will have sex with adults who are five or more years older than them and those experiences are sometimes terrible and abusive, and sometimes they're medium, and sometimes the kids, the teenagers, feel that they're OK, that they're even positive.” So, that's what I'm saying.
Now, it seems to me, Dr. Elders, that she is saying that, well, it's a good thing sometimes, far from what you just said. We all think it's wrong. She doesn't think it's wrong. She thinks there are circumstances when it's OK.
ELDERS: Well, I don't think that that's saying she thinks it's wrong. She is saying the research shows that for some teenagers, they did not consider it a bad experience. But, you know, I feel that sex between adults and children are wrong. And I think that our country feels that. But, you know, we've not talked about it. We've not done anything about it.
KEYES: Why did you write an introduction to a book...
ELDERS: Because I felt very strong...
KEYES: ... written from a perspective that in fact does not share that viewpoint and that does not support that statement you just made?
ELDERS: As far as I was concerned, I felt that this book, if it makes us talk about it, if it makes you bring it on your program and we talk about it, well, then, to me, that's doing something good for our country, because we've been silent when it came to our children for so long. We've sold them and allowed them to be used and abused. That's why we have the teenage pregnancy, the sexually transmitted diseases, the HIV, is because we have not educated them. Yet, you know if you ask if they know about sex...
KEYES: Dr. Elders...
ELDERS: Yes.
KEYES: The thing I find kind of ironic about what you're saying is that here is a book that actually as you read through it will give comfort to people, like Father Shanley, for instance, who believes that it's OK to have sex with young kids. And she cites study and makes other arguments that are essentially are aimed at morally neutralizing this question and focusing on whether or not the young person involved consents or doesn't consent. She even cites the Dutch Law in which all the way down to the age of 12, they are willing to accept the idea, well, if the young person consents, that will be OK. And that it would seem to me would give aid and comfort to people who think that it's OK to engage in this kind of activity and to seek out partners in that age group.
Sandy Rios, can you make sense of this for me, because it seems to me that Dr. Elders is saying one thing, and yet this book and this author do not condemn sexuality or sex between children and adults, quite the contrary?
SANDY RIOS, CONCERNED WOMEN FOR AMERICA: I would like to think that Dr. Elders means exactly what she just said, which means that she should renounce this book. She obviously did not read it. In fact, I'd like to ask her publicly whether she did.
ELDERS: I want you to know I did read it twice.
RIOS: How then can you say that she was not advocating sex...
ELDERS: And I believe...
(CROSSTALK)
KEYES: Dr. Elders, let Sandy talk. Let Sandy talk for a minute now.
RIOS: She says that sex between adults and 12-year-olds is just hunky-dory. It's the great model out of the Netherlands.
ELDERS: That is a lie.
RIOS: She uses that — it is not. It's found on page 89, Dr. Elders. Let me also tell you that her resources that she cites, she talks about using psychologists, Edward Brogersma (ph), who she quotes, was arrested and convicted of having sex with a child. He wrote “Loving Boys.” That's one of her resources. Also, Theo Sanford (ph), who is on the board of PIDECA (ph), which is the journal of pedophilia. These are her experts, Dr. Elders. How can you write a forward for a book like that?
KEYES: Well, let me go for a minute — let me go for a minute to Gloria Feldt. You've been listening to this discussion...
GLORIA FELDT, PRESIDENT, PLANNED PARENTHOOD: Thank you.
KEYES: ... and to my own sense of this, Gloria, do you agree with Dr. Elders that everybody in this society thinks sex between children and adults is wrong? And if so, what do you think of a book that really at the very least, one has to say, aims to put this whole concept in a morally neutral position?
FELDT: Well, I certainly agree with Dr. Elders that it's important to talk about these issues. And I do appreciate the fact that we are doing that right now.
I have to tell you I haven't read this book, so I really can't comment on it. But what I can say is that you raise the issue of the current sex scandal that's going on, and I think if anything should tell us why our young people need to have good, solid information so that they can protect themselves from the vulnerabilities they have when they don't have that information, when they don't have age-appropriate, honest, straightforward sex education, how can anyone protect themselves from inappropriate sexual advances if they don't have that information? And that's what I think is important for us to talk about.
KEYES: Well, see, I find it interesting, then, Gloria, because I think if you sat down and read this book, she makes — Judith Levine actually makes a critique of so-called age-appropriate education and sexual matters. She thinks that the whole concept of age-appropriate is wrong, apparently, and should be thrown out the window and is a bad thing and so forth and so on because it involves a lot of the usual prejudices about children and sexuality.
I mean, so in a sense, the very statement that you made there, is one that she would actually criticize as reflecting this archaic view that somehow children should be protected when it comes to sex.
FELDT: Well, I would be happy to discuss it with her at some point. But, again, since I haven't read the book, I am going to address the issues specifically and head on. And that is that children are — we are all sexual human beings. Sex is a part of our humanity, our very humanity. And what we need to learn is how to deal with it responsibly.
And when you live in a society in which three-fourths of the primetime network television shows have sexual content, and yet only a tenth of them have anything about sexual responsibility, and they won't take condom ads, we have a problem that we need to overcome by making sure that young people have honest and responsible and medically accurate and age-appropriate sex education that's right for them...
KEYES: I got to tell you...
FELDT: ... because — if I just can finish this one sentence.
KEYES: Yes.
FELDT: You can make children ignorant. You can make children ignorant and vulnerable, but you really can't make them totally innocent in any society.
KEYES: I'm not sure because one of the things that I find most disturbing about this book, and, Dr. Elders, I would have to say I guess I find it disturbing about the approach that has been so fastily taken by people toward sexuality in general, is that when this woman talks about family, she does it usually in a derogatory way. She even laments the fact that sexuality education has retreated from the implicit critique of family that was involved in it and she says that this retreat from critiquing the archaic institution of the family is a mistake.
And yet, if I may say, I think the way in which you approach these matters is precisely in the context of our children and family responsibility. Levine laments, quote, “a retreat from the critique of family implicit in school-based sexuality education which endorses the autonomy of children and suggests that family with its hierarchical structure, its neuroses, ignorance and taboos, is not the best sex educator after all.”
I mean, this is obviously somebody who hates the family life, the idea of a mother and father raising children, doing their best to be responsible. Isn't that idea of a commitment to family, of a responsible willingness to put your children above yourself and commit yourself to the shaping of new generations, isn't that the proper context to help our children think about sexual matters? This woman rejects it completely.
ELDERS: Dr. Keyes, you know, we can agree to disagree.
First of all, I think that most families that you're talking about feel as you are talking. But we know that there are many children who do not have the kind of family that you're talking about. Many of our children know about sex. You know, if you ask them, sure, they know about it. But we refuse — where we're having trouble — do you agree with me that why is it so difficult that they can't learn about it? We can't teach them. We can't empower them with the knowledge that...
(CROSSTALK)
RIOS: Alan, could I speak here?
KEYES: Yes, go ahead, Sandy.
ELDERS: ... to empower them with the knowledge to make decisions...
RIOS: Dr. Elders and Gloria, I would like to say that this is the argument I get from many people who feel the way that you do. It's always educate, tell them more, tell them more. The onus falls at the feet of the children. If they only knew all of that they need to know about homosexuality, about putting condoms on penises, if they knew all of these details, they would be safe from all of this onslaught.
That is a lie. And I don't know about you, I'm 52 years old, but when I was a kid, we did not know all of this, and I can count on one hand, less than one hand, the number of girls I knew that even got pregnant. Now we know so much and we have so many people that are pregnant.
We have...
FELDT: Sandy, you...
RIOS: ... STDs that are rampant. And you're telling me that it's because...
FELDT: ... apparently just didn't know what was going on, because in 1967...
RIOS: Oh, Gloria, I knew exactly what was going on.
FELDT: In 1957, when we were young, this country actually experienced its highest teen pregnancy rate ever in its history.
ELDERS: Absolutely.
RIOS: I'm sorry, Gloria. Where I was living, that is not the case.
KEYES: It's astronomically lower than it is today.
RIOS: Yes, I don't believe that. I'm sorry. You have to show me that statistic.
(CROSSTALK)
Gloria, let me ask you, how many girls in your class that got pregnant?
FELDT: Quite a few.
RIOS: Quite a few would be how many?
FELDT: Quite a few. And, you know, the thing is that in the 1950's, in the 1950's, what would often happen is that girls would get pregnant and one of two things would happen. They would either get married and you'd never know...
RIOS: Oh, that's terrible, isn't it? Terrible. Terrible.
FELDT: No, no, no. Let me...
RIOS: How could they get married? Better to have an abortion.
FELDT: ... or they would be sent off to Aunt Mary for a year, and they would never speak of the pregnancy again. But the pain and the shame of it would last them forever.
RIOS: Yes, because there was a certain thing as chastity and honor. There were rights and wrongs, Gloria. We had some moral order in those days. Now we have moral chaos.
KEYES: Sandy, there was also, if I may interject here, there was an assumption too that the proper context in which to deal with these matters was precisely the context of marriage and family and responsibility for children, that the act itself was considered not autonomously in terms of erotic gratification and so forth, but in terms also of the responsibility we all have for the community, the species, and therefore, for the procreation of the human race. This has been total divorce.
FELDT: There is a kernel of agreement here, if I may say this. There's a kernel of agreement here in the sense that I agree with you. I believe that we are the grown-ups, and that we have that responsibility and that it is very important for families to communicate and organizations like Planned Parenthood do everything we can do to help families communicate.
But Dr. Elders is right. Every family is not perfect. And so we also need the other institutions of society to provide the kind of context, and that includes more responsible messages in the media. It includes responsible and appropriate and medically accurate sex education in our schools and other places.
KEYES: Gloria, if I may interrupt, all of that sounds very good. But the problem I have is that, for instance, Dr. Elders, who is nodding and saying that she agrees, has written a forward to this book in which, on page 89, we are told a good model of reasonable legislation is Holland's. The Dutch parliament in 1990 made sexual intercourse for people between 12 and 16, with adults, legal, but then let them employ a statutory consent age of 60 (ph) if they, the children, felt they were being coerced or exploited.
It seems to me that somebody who is coming forward to suggest that instead of looking upon our children as I think realistically they are, you know, human beings who need help and guidance to develop the kind of maturity that will allow them in a full-fledged and responsible way to deal with these issues, she wants them to be the ones who decide. And if some adult has succeeded in seducing them and they think it's OK, we won't call that exploitation. Don't we have to reject that kind of transparent effort to re-introduce our children to exploitation?
ELDERS: We have not empowered our children with the knowledge to make that decision. And it's because...
KEYES: Excuse me, it is not just a question. See, this is the lie, if I may say so. You act as if it's just a question of knowledge you can get somewhere. That's not true. Maturity comes in part from experience, because there's something to it that goes beyond knowledge. It's more than information.
ELDERS: That's right. They have to get wisdom.
KEYES: It involves the — let me finish.
ELDERS: That's right. It involves all of it.
KEYES: It involves the formation of character. It involves the formation of the ability to forego, for instance, present gratification for future goods, to appreciate the importance of things that may seem abstract in the short term, but that, in fact, turn out to be all important like honor and decency and obligation to family. These are things that kids, in the midst of their broiling passions, as they are first introduced in adolescence to the reality of those passions, we know good and well that, by and large, they can't handle them the same way they will.
(CROSSTALK)
Let me finish one sentence. This book wants us to put the onus of consent on those kids at that time. This is irresponsible.
ELDERS: That's not true.
(CROSSTALK)
RIOS: I would like to say, Dr. Elders, you're talking about educating but you're talking about educating children that sex with adults is OK. So if you let this book be the source of education, which is the one you did the forward on, it tells children that they should be quiet and have sex with adults because it's not so bad.
ELDERS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we have not done better with our children and have a comprehensive health education in our schools because...
RIOS: That's not what this is about, Dr. Elders. You wrote the forward on a book that's promoting pedophilia.
ELDERS: You are — that is not what this book is about. That's not what I'm about.
RIOS: You have not read the book, have you?
ELDERS: I have the read the book twice.
FELDT: If I can interject here, I don't believe that the Dutch law that is cited is cited precisely accurately. But notwithstanding that...
RIOS: Well, why would you say that, Gloria? I have the quote right in front of me. I have the quote. Do you want to hear it?
FELDT: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) what I want to just say is that — wait. If what we want to have is a lower rate of unintended pregnancy, a lower rate of teen pregnancy, a lower rate of sexually-transmitted infections, then we would do well to look at how the Dutch do handle these things, how this is handled in the Netherlands because they have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy, abortion, sexually-transmitted infections and we should learn from that.
KEYES: One second. We're coming to the close of this segment. We have decided in light of the interesting discussion that we are having on this very important topic, we're going to hold you all over, if you don't mind staying, for one more segment. And we'll be coming back.
Ponder this though, Gloria, in terms of what you just said, the quote we gave was from this book. If it's inaccurate, it's because the lady writing the book is perhaps not all together accurate. I don't know. But it seems to me this is the way she thinks it ought to be, accurate or not.
We will be back with more from our guests. And later, a Web site that shows the faces of women entering abortion clinics. Does this invite violence against women seeking abortions. We'll talk to the man behind the site on America's news channel, MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: Welcome back to MAKING SENSE.
We are continuing our discussion about the question of whether or not one can accept this idea that we should be promoting sexuality among children and between children and adults. Still with us, former U.S. surgeon general Dr. Joycelyn Elders. Also with us, Gloria Feldt, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America; and Sandy Rios, the president of Concerned Women for America.
Now, you all, I would like you to listen to one more quote from Judith Levine's book. She says, quote: “A fair number of the youngsters either regularly or occasionally turn to prostitution to get by.” She's talking about kids on the street. “In the risk-benefit calculus of life on the street, sex is both a plus and a minus. Survival sex, sex in trade for a bed, a shower or a pair of shoes, may also offer some personal rewards, such as adult companionship and affirmation. And like other adult-minor sex, it is not always an interaction of utter abjection on the young person's side.”
Now, I have to tell you, Dr. Elders, Gloria, Sandy, I read that and you may say, oh, she's just describing — no. She is giving aid and comfort to people who want to sit there and say my inclination to go after these young kids ain't so bad after all. If I can just talk them into it, that will make it OK. I think that that is a dangerous way to approach these issues. And, Dr. Elders, I say again why would one want to promote this dangerous approach?
ELDERS: Dr. Keyes, why are these children on the street? Why do they have to leave home to live on the street and resort to prostitution? You know, I think that we have just not done a good job in our country of taking good care of children. And I'm concerned about that. I'm pleased that these things are coming up, and I think she's saying what the children are telling her. But, you know, I think that we need to know about it, know all sides, and we need to discuss that. And if nothing else, this book should make us do a better job in taking care of our children.
KEYES: Can I make a minute to answer your question though? Because I think one of the reasons that there are children in these terrible situations and why we have seen a precipitous breakdown of family life since the 1960's when a lot of these progressive, liberal, leftist, radical ideas started to destroy our family, is that we got away from the understanding of human sexual activity in the context of procreation as aimed at marriage and aimed at fathering and mothering in a responsible fashion.
We got away from an understanding which sees these things not as a way to get hedonistic pleasure and erotic gratification, which is what Judith Levine talks about, but as a way to fulfill our responsibilities as human beings to experience the joys that go beyond mere physical pleasure that are involved in the love that we feel for our children and that they share with us.
I think that's why we have these children on the street, because we have destroyed and corrupted and traduced the understanding of human procreation in such a way as to divorce human sexuality from the real understanding of family life that ought to be the first thing we're trying to introduce to our children. So to answer your question, I think it's precisely the attitudes promoted in this book that have helped to destroy that structure which would keep these children off the street.
Sandy Rios, what do you think?
RIOS: Alan, you know, when I hear these things, I don't know whether to weep or to get angry, because our children are being systemically robbed of their innocence. Now, Gloria calls it ignorance. I call it innocence.
There is nothing more beautiful than the innocence of a child. And every day, we hear of more things happening to our kids. I heard yesterday about a Web site, now several Web sites that have started on the Web, parents positioning and posing their children in underwear or bathing suits and having interactive conversations with adult men who want to see Susie (ph) in this and in this pose and have her do this. And they say that they're doing it to raise money for their child's college education, and you see Abercrombie & Fitch promoting thong underwear with the word “eye candy” on it for 10-year-old girls. And you hear the stories. We have to do something.
Now their solution, Joycelyn's solution and Gloria's is educate. I say eradicate, eradicate these forces of evil that are preying on our children and stop writing forwards for books like Dr. Elders had the nerve to embrace. I don't understand that. I could go on and on. Gloria, in your case, I don't understand Planned Parenthood and this whole notion that condoms and education is going to somehow save the world. How about the innocence of childhood? Isn't there any way and isn't there anything in your mother's heart that would want to preserve that for your children?
FELDT: Alan, I want to say that I — you know, the prostitution is not called the oldest profession for no reason. And you may decry some things that exist in today's society, but I think you are wrong to think that they are new. These are issues that human beings have been dealing with since the beginning of time.
RIOS: So is human sacrifice, Gloria. Do you want to go back to that?
FELDT: No, no. What I want to say is that I think that we as adults have a responsibility to make sure that our young people have honest, equal, and by equal, I mean education and information that is on a basis of equality, of respect for human beings, respect for one another, respect for their own bodies, responsibility. No.
You're absolutely right, Sandy. Education alone cannot solve all the problems in the world. But you know what? Without it — without it, we're sunk. We want young people — we want to teach our young people information about every other aspect of life. Why wouldn't we want them to know about sex?
KEYES: You are not talking about education. All that you have just described leaves out the most important elements that I believe would be absolutely fundamental, to...
FELDT: Value?
KEYES: Let me finish. Educating children with respect to what we are referring to here as human sexuality. The first and foremost thing is family itself. The first thing that kids can learn and they ought to learn is not about their genitalia and all this stuff. It's about what it means to be a mother and what it means to be a father and what in fact is the kind of love and feeling and tenderness that is shared within a family circle between them that has a lot of elements of warmth and...
ELDERS: Alan, have you ever been to (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
KEYES: Let me finish. Let me finish.
It has a lot of elements of warmth and physicality but it is not involved with sexuality. And if you introduce them to that understanding of true family life, and then as it is appropriate, as their attention starts to focus as it properly should on their assumption of that role, then introduce them to the other, if I may call them that, mysteries of the married state.
That's the proper way to do it. This notion that you inform them of stuff you have no desire that they should use is insane and irresponsible. And it's leading to the kind of things that Joycelyn has given her imprimatur to, a book that, in fact, promotes child sex and sex with children which we claim and she even admits we stand against. Joycelyn, your response?
ELDERS: My response to that is I feel you've just given me a long sermon about — I want to — we need to empower our children with knowledge to make good decisions, and I think that the fact that this is a book that was written for — to help teachers, to help ministers, to help — it was not written for mothers for their children. And if you read — and if you read the book, you would know that.
KEYES: Gloria, the only ministers it is going to help and the only church people it will help are the kind of church people I hope they're going to be throwing out of the Catholic church soon. Very quickly, Gloria...
(CROSSTALK)
We have only a few seconds left. Gloria, last words?
FELDT: I can't believe I'm agreeing with some of what you're saying, but the very topics that you were discussing that young children should learn first are absolutely what every good, responsible, comprehensive and age-appropriate sex education program teaches. So I think that's a good note to end on.
KEYES: Not this book. Gloria, Gloria, not this book. Sandy, I'm sorry. We had a lot of talk, but we have to go. We're up against a hard break. But not this book, Gloria. Take a look at it. I think you'll find that Dr. Elders either through, I don't know, ignorance or inadvertence has put her impromatu on a book that promotes just the opposite of what you have been advocating tonight. Thanks.
Next, does a pro-life Web site that posts the faces of people entering abortion clinics incite violence. We'll talk to the creator of such a Web site.
And later, my “Outrage of the Day.” An 11-year-old arrested at a protest on the Golden Gate Bridge.
But first, does this makes sense? President Bush met with the pope recently and apparently expressed his concerns over the crisis in the Catholic church. We saw in the wake of revelations about his own sexual possible attractions in the past, one of the cardinals, the archbishop, Archbishop Weakland resigning.
We have also seen up in Boston now where a fellow who was apparently guilty of all kinds of child molestation was then moved around and tolerated by Cardinal Law, well, we've heard all this about him. Weakland is gone after a revelation of one sexual incident. Cardinal Law tolerated a whole train of serial abuses. Weakland resigns, Cardinal Law is still there. Does this make sense?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: There's an anti-abortion Web site that posts photos of mothers coming and going from abortion clinics. The operator of the site says he hopes to shame mothers into not having abortions. Critics say this tactic violates the mother's privacy and subjects her to humiliation and possibly to harm. Neal Horsely is the man behind this Web site and another that lists the names and addresses of abortion providers. Neal, welcome to MAKING SENSE.
NEAL HORSELY, ABORTIONCAMS.COM: Good to be here, Alan.
KEYES: Well, now, you probably know, Neal, I don't think that there's a stronger advocate of the pro-life position in America today than I try to be in everything that I do and say. It's why I wear my feet every night on this program. You will see them right here on my collar because I believe this is something that is on my mind, in my heart all the time.
But I want to tell you quite bluntly that I think that what you are doing is wrong, that it's harmful to the pro-life movement, that it represents the kind of tactic that will disgrace and discredit what we are trying to do, and that it involves a tactic that because it disregards what ought to be our own principle of care and concern for life is actually contrary to the truths we're supposed to stand for. And I want to say quite bluntly on behalf of the pro-life movement itself, I wish you'd stop it.
HORSELY: Well, I — I hear what you're saying, and I received that message from you with — with all the impact that the message deserves, because you're right, Alan. You represent to me a man who's blessed my soul and who's stood in a place that's made me proud to know that there is a man of God that's willing to stand up.
But I think you're wrong right now, because I think you're — you're ignoring the fact that these people are going to kill God's children. And what I'm trying to do is to point out that fact. And you can say that it's wrong to point it out, but a woman who goes and kills her baby is involved in some degree of homicide and she's going to be punished. And we can pretend she's a victim, but the reality is she knows what she's doing. And God knows she knows what she's doing. And we've got to start acting like that's the truth or else we confuse people.
KEYES: Well, see, one of the problems that I have, though, Neal, is I believe that God wants her to love that child, and he wants us to love her. He wants us to understand that the action we take — I believe deeply in the injunction speak the truth with love. And love means that you don't endanger somebody, that you don't approach them in a way that will actually possibly bring harm and grief upon them because, in your self-righteousness, you think you're the instrument of God's punishment. I want to be the instrument of God's truth. I think the question of conscience and punishment ought to be left in his hands, and that what we ought to be trying to do...
HORSELY: Why don't you say that the to the policeman...
KEYES: Let me finish. We ought to be representing the truth that converts the heart. And I've got to tell you, it seems to me that standing there, especially if you're adopting a tactic that might convey to this woman, you don't care about me, you don't care if somebody comes and hurts me, that's not going to open her heart to the truth. That's not going to open her heart so that she'll listen to the plea that God puts in our mouths on behalf of her child. We want her to hear us, not shut her heart against us.
HORSELY: Why don't you say that to the policemen who we hire to go out and interrupt people who are about to commit homicide. The fact is you're treating these people like they're not fixing to kill their babies. No wonder they're confused. No wonder they don't understand that what they're doing is a heinous sin.
KEYES: Quite the contrary. Neal, what I am doing is I am treating this situation as what it is, a situation in which we must not unleash greater evils in what we do to stop the evil we're looking at. And if we go forward in a way that suggests we're declaring some kind of physical war on people, then the end result will be a worse situation, and we'll be to blame for it. I plead with you again...
HORSELY: You're extrapolating...
KEYES: We've come to the end of our time.
HORSELY: I'm not doing what you say, Alan.
KEYES: Again, please, take it to heart. This is going to hurt.
HORSELY: You're not talking about what I'm doing.
KEYES: This is going to hurt. It's not going to help, and it seems to me that we are under an obligation to do our best to achieve a positive result.
HORSELY: Hey, when are you going to let me talk?
KEYES: I did let you talk. We've run out of time, actually. So both of us are going to have to stop talking.
HORSELY: See, that's it. You came here and ambushed me.
KEYES: Neal, thank you.
HORSELY: That was a lousy thing to do.
KEYES: Thank you, Neal. Just take it to heart, because I'll tell you, I'll speak my mind to whoever. I just spoke it to you, and I hope you'll pray over it.
Next, my “Outrage of the Day.” We'll be back right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: I think that was my “Outrage for the Day.” As we look at ground zero in New York City, a reminder, tomorrow on America's news channel, MSNBC, coverage of the World Trade ceremonies, marking the end of the recovery efforts there. See you tomorrow.
Now, of course, we are all of us aware of the terrible scandal that has hit the Catholic church. We're also aware that in a lot of the instances of the sexual misbehavior of priests, it has involved abuses of children and molestation or accusations of molestation against kids.
This was greeted, quite naturally, with shock and outrage by pretty much every decent person in America. And it has obviously been an important part of the adverse effect that it has had upon perceptions of the church that it has involved this issue of sexual relations with children.
We know of the advocacy by Father Shanley of relationships between men and boys and the scandal that was caused by the fact that this was somehow tolerated by the church. Well, without understanding, it's pretty clear, isn't it, that this society is against the idea of sexual relations between adults and children? And indeed, I think most of us stand aghast at the idea that we would be encouraging sexual activity among our kids. Teenage pregnancies being one of the major problems that we confront in this country among other things. And with the knowledge that we have, all of us especially who are parents that these are things that very often, especially young kids, are quite incapable of understanding or handling, we kind of take it for granted that we want to protect the innocence of our children and try to make sure that such knowledge, as they are obtained, is obtained in a way that is suited to their maturity and development and the larger moral context in which these issues ought to be handled. We make that assumption, don't we?
Well, I'm not quite sure why we do. Right now, for instance, Nickelodeon, the cable TV network for children, is considering the airing of a program that will be aimed at discussing the subject of homosexuality and putting that subject before kids seven and eight years old and things like that who characterize for their audience.
You have teachers in California who are coming out to their students to talk about their homosexuality and promote “tolerance” for homosexual behavior. These sorts of things, of course, are presented as something aimed at promoting an end to bigotry and intolerance. But at the same time, it is required when you deal with a subject like this that you are putting pretty explicit sexual issues before the very young.
That in and of itself would raise a concern, but it comes about in a context now in which some folks are coming forward explicitly to advocate the view that this sort of sexual activity among young people is a good thing and that sexual relations between adults and children aren't necessarily bad, as Father Shanley, the notorious child molester, up in Massachusetts advocated apparently at one point.
Well, now, he's not alone. In a book published by, I think, the University of Minnesota, Judith Levine, an author, has written a book called “Harmful To Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex.” Yes, you heard that right. Not the perils of sexual activity for children, but the perils of protecting children from sex. The institution of childhood, in essence, precisely what she questions.
In her book, she pretty much is explicit about what she considers to be the wrong attitudes that have characterized approaches, traditional approaches, to sexuality for kids. She writes, for example, quote: “Sex is not harmful to children. It is a vehicle to self-knowledge, love, healing, creativity, adventure, and intense feelings of aliveness. There are many ways even the smallest children can partake of it.”
Smallest children meaning, as she shows from some of the quotes and research she deals with, the infants, people like this. She goes on to say, quote: “Sexual contact with a child does not a pedophile make.”
Now, that may come as a surprise to some of you since obviously a lot of furor is being made right now about people who are looking for — adult people looking for sexual contact with children. But in case you thought that might be a problem or might indicate that there was something wrong, you would have to think again, according to this author.
In an interview, she is also quoted as saying that, “Children for their part, to train to look for sexual malevolence in every adult touch. Programs such as the popular good touch, bad touch curricula have been shown to have no positive effects on children.” That's what she claims, at any rate.
And she also says that they have negative ones. Quote: “They reinforce children's prejudices against bad people,” i.e., people of different races or those who wear ragged clothing and raise general levels of anxiety, particularly in young children.
Now, you will note in that kind of a remark that a book like this, she's not necessarily required apparently, as people are generally are on this program, to make any sense. Why the notion that you're going to teach your child to be wary of adults who are trying to exploit them for sexual purposes? Why that idea should somehow be equated with teaching them to dislike poor people or black people, I don't know, since the whole point of the thing is to try to put your children in a situation where they will not be exploited by adults.
But that unwillingness to see the positive agenda that is actually involved in the institution of innocence for our children, that characterizes the mentality, the approach, the whole argument that is, in fact, made in this book. It's as if the whole history of human societies and civilizations in which there is clearly written the connection between subjection and slavery and the psychological destruction of human autonomy and the exploitation of children, it's as if none of that record exists for this lady.
She does, of course, in the usual feminist way, comment on the institution of marriage and the inequality and so forth that characterize it. But it's as if she forgets that one of the key elements in maintaining that inequality was the fact that in a lot of the ancient societies and medieval societies and other pre-modern societies, it was — nothing was thought of a marriage between a 60-year-old man and a 13-year-old, 14-year-old girl. If that advanced the interests of family, if that was something dictated by the exigencies of social requirement or ambition, it just went ahead without any regard whatsoever for the situation in which you were placing the young woman.
That ability to combine a situation of material dependency with an age difference that could then exploit the use and abuse of the sexual connection, the sexual exploitation of women, it certainly was one of the things that helped to sustain the abusive institutionalization of inequality in marriage through many centuries of human civilization. All of these ideas totally put aside in this book, including the possibility that there is any connection between human sexuality and family, and any requirement that one would want to school the heart, mind, and conscience of children to look at their sexual being in a way that doesn't just involve self-gratification and pleasure and things of this kind, but that also involves relationship and the connection with those responsibilities and obligations which we owe to one another and to future generations.
The whole moral context, in fact, in which human sexual conduct needs to be considered entirely put aside in this book, as if it does not exist. And yet there are those who try to argue that, no, this isn't going to promote pedophilia, it's not going to promote sexual exploitation of children, it's not going to promote adults abusing children. No, it's just going to mean healthy, enthusiastic sexuality for our young people. Well, not likely, given what, in fact, it opens the door to once again, which is that sexual exploitation which makes of marriage, for instance, a situation of dependency and which makes of every sexual relationship a situation of subjection, where an immature individual is being seduced and exploited for the gratification of an older one. That door is opened wide by this book. Now, obviously, not everybody is going to agree with me on that.
So next, in the heart of the matter, we're going to be discussing whether innocence is passe when it comes to children and sex. We're going to be talking about what the con consequences are likely to be if this is in fact the case. I know that for some of you, this is going to be a shocking and outrageous subject. I do want to forewarn some of my audience out there, because I know there are some of you who have home-schoolers and other young people who are watching this show. I would want you to exercise your judgment, given the topic that we're talking to, and the fact that, for instance, we're going to be talking to former surgeon general Dr. Joycelyn Elders, a lady who has never been reticent in her explicit discussions of human sexuality; Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt; and Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women of America.
Well, getting back then in our next segment to a topic that you would have thought we'd never talk about, but is sex good for very young children? You're watching America's news channel, MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: Coming up in our next half-hour, is cross-burning free speech or hateful action? The Supreme Court has decided it will hear the case. Later on, we'll hear arguments from both sides.
A reminder that the chatroom is busy tonight. You can join in right now at CHAT.MSNBC.COM.
But let us get back right now to our discussion about the emergence of an argument that, far from needing protection from sexual activity and sexual exploitation, these things are positive goods for children, if handled in the right way.
Joining us to get to the heart of the matter, former U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Joycelyn Elders. Also with us, Gloria Feldt, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America; and Sandy Rios, the president of Concerned Women for America. Ladies, welcome to MAKING SENSE and thank you for joining me.
Now, Joycelyn, I'd like to start with you, if you don't mind, because you wrote the preface to this book or the introduction to it. And I've got to tell you, I find it, as a parent who has raised children, still has a young child of 13 years old, I find some of the things in this book to be both shocking, offensive and potentially extremely harmful to our young people in that they seem to provide a grounds for justifying those who are seeking out young people, seeking to have sexual relations with them and to abuse them. As we have seen, this is not unheard of even in the precincts of the church.
These kinds of activities have shocked and dismayed people around the country. How could you write a preface for a book that seems to contribute to this sort of phenomenon?
DR. JOYCELYN ELDERS, FORMER U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: You know, Dr. Keyes, I'm very pleased that you're talking about this subject tonight because when we know that 16 percent of our young men have been sexually abused before the age of 20, 26 percent of our young women have been sexually abused, and we've kept it in the closet, we've not talked about it, and I felt that this book helped to deal with some of the myths that are out there.
You know, everybody is saying it's promoting pedophilia, but no place in this book do I find that they are promoting pedophilia. We all think that sex between adults and children are wrong.
KEYES: Can I interrupt you one second? Because that's simply not what this author thinks. And I — I'm — she may have given you this impression. I think in the book itself, she gives other impressions. In an interview last month, for instance, she said, quote, “I don't say, I don't say that sex between kids and adults or teens and adults is a good thing or a bad thing. What we know from the research is that about 10 percent of teenagers will have sex with adults who are five or more years older than them and those experiences are sometimes terrible and abusive, and sometimes they're medium, and sometimes the kids, the teenagers, feel that they're OK, that they're even positive.” So, that's what I'm saying.
Now, it seems to me, Dr. Elders, that she is saying that, well, it's a good thing sometimes, far from what you just said. We all think it's wrong. She doesn't think it's wrong. She thinks there are circumstances when it's OK.
ELDERS: Well, I don't think that that's saying she thinks it's wrong. She is saying the research shows that for some teenagers, they did not consider it a bad experience. But, you know, I feel that sex between adults and children are wrong. And I think that our country feels that. But, you know, we've not talked about it. We've not done anything about it.
KEYES: Why did you write an introduction to a book...
ELDERS: Because I felt very strong...
KEYES: ... written from a perspective that in fact does not share that viewpoint and that does not support that statement you just made?
ELDERS: As far as I was concerned, I felt that this book, if it makes us talk about it, if it makes you bring it on your program and we talk about it, well, then, to me, that's doing something good for our country, because we've been silent when it came to our children for so long. We've sold them and allowed them to be used and abused. That's why we have the teenage pregnancy, the sexually transmitted diseases, the HIV, is because we have not educated them. Yet, you know if you ask if they know about sex...
KEYES: Dr. Elders...
ELDERS: Yes.
KEYES: The thing I find kind of ironic about what you're saying is that here is a book that actually as you read through it will give comfort to people, like Father Shanley, for instance, who believes that it's OK to have sex with young kids. And she cites study and makes other arguments that are essentially are aimed at morally neutralizing this question and focusing on whether or not the young person involved consents or doesn't consent. She even cites the Dutch Law in which all the way down to the age of 12, they are willing to accept the idea, well, if the young person consents, that will be OK. And that it would seem to me would give aid and comfort to people who think that it's OK to engage in this kind of activity and to seek out partners in that age group.
Sandy Rios, can you make sense of this for me, because it seems to me that Dr. Elders is saying one thing, and yet this book and this author do not condemn sexuality or sex between children and adults, quite the contrary?
SANDY RIOS, CONCERNED WOMEN FOR AMERICA: I would like to think that Dr. Elders means exactly what she just said, which means that she should renounce this book. She obviously did not read it. In fact, I'd like to ask her publicly whether she did.
ELDERS: I want you to know I did read it twice.
RIOS: How then can you say that she was not advocating sex...
ELDERS: And I believe...
(CROSSTALK)
KEYES: Dr. Elders, let Sandy talk. Let Sandy talk for a minute now.
RIOS: She says that sex between adults and 12-year-olds is just hunky-dory. It's the great model out of the Netherlands.
ELDERS: That is a lie.
RIOS: She uses that — it is not. It's found on page 89, Dr. Elders. Let me also tell you that her resources that she cites, she talks about using psychologists, Edward Brogersma (ph), who she quotes, was arrested and convicted of having sex with a child. He wrote “Loving Boys.” That's one of her resources. Also, Theo Sanford (ph), who is on the board of PIDECA (ph), which is the journal of pedophilia. These are her experts, Dr. Elders. How can you write a forward for a book like that?
KEYES: Well, let me go for a minute — let me go for a minute to Gloria Feldt. You've been listening to this discussion...
GLORIA FELDT, PRESIDENT, PLANNED PARENTHOOD: Thank you.
KEYES: ... and to my own sense of this, Gloria, do you agree with Dr. Elders that everybody in this society thinks sex between children and adults is wrong? And if so, what do you think of a book that really at the very least, one has to say, aims to put this whole concept in a morally neutral position?
FELDT: Well, I certainly agree with Dr. Elders that it's important to talk about these issues. And I do appreciate the fact that we are doing that right now.
I have to tell you I haven't read this book, so I really can't comment on it. But what I can say is that you raise the issue of the current sex scandal that's going on, and I think if anything should tell us why our young people need to have good, solid information so that they can protect themselves from the vulnerabilities they have when they don't have that information, when they don't have age-appropriate, honest, straightforward sex education, how can anyone protect themselves from inappropriate sexual advances if they don't have that information? And that's what I think is important for us to talk about.
KEYES: Well, see, I find it interesting, then, Gloria, because I think if you sat down and read this book, she makes — Judith Levine actually makes a critique of so-called age-appropriate education and sexual matters. She thinks that the whole concept of age-appropriate is wrong, apparently, and should be thrown out the window and is a bad thing and so forth and so on because it involves a lot of the usual prejudices about children and sexuality.
I mean, so in a sense, the very statement that you made there, is one that she would actually criticize as reflecting this archaic view that somehow children should be protected when it comes to sex.
FELDT: Well, I would be happy to discuss it with her at some point. But, again, since I haven't read the book, I am going to address the issues specifically and head on. And that is that children are — we are all sexual human beings. Sex is a part of our humanity, our very humanity. And what we need to learn is how to deal with it responsibly.
And when you live in a society in which three-fourths of the primetime network television shows have sexual content, and yet only a tenth of them have anything about sexual responsibility, and they won't take condom ads, we have a problem that we need to overcome by making sure that young people have honest and responsible and medically accurate and age-appropriate sex education that's right for them...
KEYES: I got to tell you...
FELDT: ... because — if I just can finish this one sentence.
KEYES: Yes.
FELDT: You can make children ignorant. You can make children ignorant and vulnerable, but you really can't make them totally innocent in any society.
KEYES: I'm not sure because one of the things that I find most disturbing about this book, and, Dr. Elders, I would have to say I guess I find it disturbing about the approach that has been so fastily taken by people toward sexuality in general, is that when this woman talks about family, she does it usually in a derogatory way. She even laments the fact that sexuality education has retreated from the implicit critique of family that was involved in it and she says that this retreat from critiquing the archaic institution of the family is a mistake.
And yet, if I may say, I think the way in which you approach these matters is precisely in the context of our children and family responsibility. Levine laments, quote, “a retreat from the critique of family implicit in school-based sexuality education which endorses the autonomy of children and suggests that family with its hierarchical structure, its neuroses, ignorance and taboos, is not the best sex educator after all.”
I mean, this is obviously somebody who hates the family life, the idea of a mother and father raising children, doing their best to be responsible. Isn't that idea of a commitment to family, of a responsible willingness to put your children above yourself and commit yourself to the shaping of new generations, isn't that the proper context to help our children think about sexual matters? This woman rejects it completely.
ELDERS: Dr. Keyes, you know, we can agree to disagree.
First of all, I think that most families that you're talking about feel as you are talking. But we know that there are many children who do not have the kind of family that you're talking about. Many of our children know about sex. You know, if you ask them, sure, they know about it. But we refuse — where we're having trouble — do you agree with me that why is it so difficult that they can't learn about it? We can't teach them. We can't empower them with the knowledge that...
(CROSSTALK)
RIOS: Alan, could I speak here?
KEYES: Yes, go ahead, Sandy.
ELDERS: ... to empower them with the knowledge to make decisions...
RIOS: Dr. Elders and Gloria, I would like to say that this is the argument I get from many people who feel the way that you do. It's always educate, tell them more, tell them more. The onus falls at the feet of the children. If they only knew all of that they need to know about homosexuality, about putting condoms on penises, if they knew all of these details, they would be safe from all of this onslaught.
That is a lie. And I don't know about you, I'm 52 years old, but when I was a kid, we did not know all of this, and I can count on one hand, less than one hand, the number of girls I knew that even got pregnant. Now we know so much and we have so many people that are pregnant.
We have...
FELDT: Sandy, you...
RIOS: ... STDs that are rampant. And you're telling me that it's because...
FELDT: ... apparently just didn't know what was going on, because in 1967...
RIOS: Oh, Gloria, I knew exactly what was going on.
FELDT: In 1957, when we were young, this country actually experienced its highest teen pregnancy rate ever in its history.
ELDERS: Absolutely.
RIOS: I'm sorry, Gloria. Where I was living, that is not the case.
KEYES: It's astronomically lower than it is today.
RIOS: Yes, I don't believe that. I'm sorry. You have to show me that statistic.
(CROSSTALK)
Gloria, let me ask you, how many girls in your class that got pregnant?
FELDT: Quite a few.
RIOS: Quite a few would be how many?
FELDT: Quite a few. And, you know, the thing is that in the 1950's, in the 1950's, what would often happen is that girls would get pregnant and one of two things would happen. They would either get married and you'd never know...
RIOS: Oh, that's terrible, isn't it? Terrible. Terrible.
FELDT: No, no, no. Let me...
RIOS: How could they get married? Better to have an abortion.
FELDT: ... or they would be sent off to Aunt Mary for a year, and they would never speak of the pregnancy again. But the pain and the shame of it would last them forever.
RIOS: Yes, because there was a certain thing as chastity and honor. There were rights and wrongs, Gloria. We had some moral order in those days. Now we have moral chaos.
KEYES: Sandy, there was also, if I may interject here, there was an assumption too that the proper context in which to deal with these matters was precisely the context of marriage and family and responsibility for children, that the act itself was considered not autonomously in terms of erotic gratification and so forth, but in terms also of the responsibility we all have for the community, the species, and therefore, for the procreation of the human race. This has been total divorce.
FELDT: There is a kernel of agreement here, if I may say this. There's a kernel of agreement here in the sense that I agree with you. I believe that we are the grown-ups, and that we have that responsibility and that it is very important for families to communicate and organizations like Planned Parenthood do everything we can do to help families communicate.
But Dr. Elders is right. Every family is not perfect. And so we also need the other institutions of society to provide the kind of context, and that includes more responsible messages in the media. It includes responsible and appropriate and medically accurate sex education in our schools and other places.
KEYES: Gloria, if I may interrupt, all of that sounds very good. But the problem I have is that, for instance, Dr. Elders, who is nodding and saying that she agrees, has written a forward to this book in which, on page 89, we are told a good model of reasonable legislation is Holland's. The Dutch parliament in 1990 made sexual intercourse for people between 12 and 16, with adults, legal, but then let them employ a statutory consent age of 60 (ph) if they, the children, felt they were being coerced or exploited.
It seems to me that somebody who is coming forward to suggest that instead of looking upon our children as I think realistically they are, you know, human beings who need help and guidance to develop the kind of maturity that will allow them in a full-fledged and responsible way to deal with these issues, she wants them to be the ones who decide. And if some adult has succeeded in seducing them and they think it's OK, we won't call that exploitation. Don't we have to reject that kind of transparent effort to re-introduce our children to exploitation?
ELDERS: We have not empowered our children with the knowledge to make that decision. And it's because...
KEYES: Excuse me, it is not just a question. See, this is the lie, if I may say so. You act as if it's just a question of knowledge you can get somewhere. That's not true. Maturity comes in part from experience, because there's something to it that goes beyond knowledge. It's more than information.
ELDERS: That's right. They have to get wisdom.
KEYES: It involves the — let me finish.
ELDERS: That's right. It involves all of it.
KEYES: It involves the formation of character. It involves the formation of the ability to forego, for instance, present gratification for future goods, to appreciate the importance of things that may seem abstract in the short term, but that, in fact, turn out to be all important like honor and decency and obligation to family. These are things that kids, in the midst of their broiling passions, as they are first introduced in adolescence to the reality of those passions, we know good and well that, by and large, they can't handle them the same way they will.
(CROSSTALK)
Let me finish one sentence. This book wants us to put the onus of consent on those kids at that time. This is irresponsible.
ELDERS: That's not true.
(CROSSTALK)
RIOS: I would like to say, Dr. Elders, you're talking about educating but you're talking about educating children that sex with adults is OK. So if you let this book be the source of education, which is the one you did the forward on, it tells children that they should be quiet and have sex with adults because it's not so bad.
ELDERS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we have not done better with our children and have a comprehensive health education in our schools because...
RIOS: That's not what this is about, Dr. Elders. You wrote the forward on a book that's promoting pedophilia.
ELDERS: You are — that is not what this book is about. That's not what I'm about.
RIOS: You have not read the book, have you?
ELDERS: I have the read the book twice.
FELDT: If I can interject here, I don't believe that the Dutch law that is cited is cited precisely accurately. But notwithstanding that...
RIOS: Well, why would you say that, Gloria? I have the quote right in front of me. I have the quote. Do you want to hear it?
FELDT: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) what I want to just say is that — wait. If what we want to have is a lower rate of unintended pregnancy, a lower rate of teen pregnancy, a lower rate of sexually-transmitted infections, then we would do well to look at how the Dutch do handle these things, how this is handled in the Netherlands because they have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy, abortion, sexually-transmitted infections and we should learn from that.
KEYES: One second. We're coming to the close of this segment. We have decided in light of the interesting discussion that we are having on this very important topic, we're going to hold you all over, if you don't mind staying, for one more segment. And we'll be coming back.
Ponder this though, Gloria, in terms of what you just said, the quote we gave was from this book. If it's inaccurate, it's because the lady writing the book is perhaps not all together accurate. I don't know. But it seems to me this is the way she thinks it ought to be, accurate or not.
We will be back with more from our guests. And later, a Web site that shows the faces of women entering abortion clinics. Does this invite violence against women seeking abortions. We'll talk to the man behind the site on America's news channel, MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: Welcome back to MAKING SENSE.
We are continuing our discussion about the question of whether or not one can accept this idea that we should be promoting sexuality among children and between children and adults. Still with us, former U.S. surgeon general Dr. Joycelyn Elders. Also with us, Gloria Feldt, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America; and Sandy Rios, the president of Concerned Women for America.
Now, you all, I would like you to listen to one more quote from Judith Levine's book. She says, quote: “A fair number of the youngsters either regularly or occasionally turn to prostitution to get by.” She's talking about kids on the street. “In the risk-benefit calculus of life on the street, sex is both a plus and a minus. Survival sex, sex in trade for a bed, a shower or a pair of shoes, may also offer some personal rewards, such as adult companionship and affirmation. And like other adult-minor sex, it is not always an interaction of utter abjection on the young person's side.”
Now, I have to tell you, Dr. Elders, Gloria, Sandy, I read that and you may say, oh, she's just describing — no. She is giving aid and comfort to people who want to sit there and say my inclination to go after these young kids ain't so bad after all. If I can just talk them into it, that will make it OK. I think that that is a dangerous way to approach these issues. And, Dr. Elders, I say again why would one want to promote this dangerous approach?
ELDERS: Dr. Keyes, why are these children on the street? Why do they have to leave home to live on the street and resort to prostitution? You know, I think that we have just not done a good job in our country of taking good care of children. And I'm concerned about that. I'm pleased that these things are coming up, and I think she's saying what the children are telling her. But, you know, I think that we need to know about it, know all sides, and we need to discuss that. And if nothing else, this book should make us do a better job in taking care of our children.
KEYES: Can I make a minute to answer your question though? Because I think one of the reasons that there are children in these terrible situations and why we have seen a precipitous breakdown of family life since the 1960's when a lot of these progressive, liberal, leftist, radical ideas started to destroy our family, is that we got away from the understanding of human sexual activity in the context of procreation as aimed at marriage and aimed at fathering and mothering in a responsible fashion.
We got away from an understanding which sees these things not as a way to get hedonistic pleasure and erotic gratification, which is what Judith Levine talks about, but as a way to fulfill our responsibilities as human beings to experience the joys that go beyond mere physical pleasure that are involved in the love that we feel for our children and that they share with us.
I think that's why we have these children on the street, because we have destroyed and corrupted and traduced the understanding of human procreation in such a way as to divorce human sexuality from the real understanding of family life that ought to be the first thing we're trying to introduce to our children. So to answer your question, I think it's precisely the attitudes promoted in this book that have helped to destroy that structure which would keep these children off the street.
Sandy Rios, what do you think?
RIOS: Alan, you know, when I hear these things, I don't know whether to weep or to get angry, because our children are being systemically robbed of their innocence. Now, Gloria calls it ignorance. I call it innocence.
There is nothing more beautiful than the innocence of a child. And every day, we hear of more things happening to our kids. I heard yesterday about a Web site, now several Web sites that have started on the Web, parents positioning and posing their children in underwear or bathing suits and having interactive conversations with adult men who want to see Susie (ph) in this and in this pose and have her do this. And they say that they're doing it to raise money for their child's college education, and you see Abercrombie & Fitch promoting thong underwear with the word “eye candy” on it for 10-year-old girls. And you hear the stories. We have to do something.
Now their solution, Joycelyn's solution and Gloria's is educate. I say eradicate, eradicate these forces of evil that are preying on our children and stop writing forwards for books like Dr. Elders had the nerve to embrace. I don't understand that. I could go on and on. Gloria, in your case, I don't understand Planned Parenthood and this whole notion that condoms and education is going to somehow save the world. How about the innocence of childhood? Isn't there any way and isn't there anything in your mother's heart that would want to preserve that for your children?
FELDT: Alan, I want to say that I — you know, the prostitution is not called the oldest profession for no reason. And you may decry some things that exist in today's society, but I think you are wrong to think that they are new. These are issues that human beings have been dealing with since the beginning of time.
RIOS: So is human sacrifice, Gloria. Do you want to go back to that?
FELDT: No, no. What I want to say is that I think that we as adults have a responsibility to make sure that our young people have honest, equal, and by equal, I mean education and information that is on a basis of equality, of respect for human beings, respect for one another, respect for their own bodies, responsibility. No.
You're absolutely right, Sandy. Education alone cannot solve all the problems in the world. But you know what? Without it — without it, we're sunk. We want young people — we want to teach our young people information about every other aspect of life. Why wouldn't we want them to know about sex?
KEYES: You are not talking about education. All that you have just described leaves out the most important elements that I believe would be absolutely fundamental, to...
FELDT: Value?
KEYES: Let me finish. Educating children with respect to what we are referring to here as human sexuality. The first and foremost thing is family itself. The first thing that kids can learn and they ought to learn is not about their genitalia and all this stuff. It's about what it means to be a mother and what it means to be a father and what in fact is the kind of love and feeling and tenderness that is shared within a family circle between them that has a lot of elements of warmth and...
ELDERS: Alan, have you ever been to (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
KEYES: Let me finish. Let me finish.
It has a lot of elements of warmth and physicality but it is not involved with sexuality. And if you introduce them to that understanding of true family life, and then as it is appropriate, as their attention starts to focus as it properly should on their assumption of that role, then introduce them to the other, if I may call them that, mysteries of the married state.
That's the proper way to do it. This notion that you inform them of stuff you have no desire that they should use is insane and irresponsible. And it's leading to the kind of things that Joycelyn has given her imprimatur to, a book that, in fact, promotes child sex and sex with children which we claim and she even admits we stand against. Joycelyn, your response?
ELDERS: My response to that is I feel you've just given me a long sermon about — I want to — we need to empower our children with knowledge to make good decisions, and I think that the fact that this is a book that was written for — to help teachers, to help ministers, to help — it was not written for mothers for their children. And if you read — and if you read the book, you would know that.
KEYES: Gloria, the only ministers it is going to help and the only church people it will help are the kind of church people I hope they're going to be throwing out of the Catholic church soon. Very quickly, Gloria...
(CROSSTALK)
We have only a few seconds left. Gloria, last words?
FELDT: I can't believe I'm agreeing with some of what you're saying, but the very topics that you were discussing that young children should learn first are absolutely what every good, responsible, comprehensive and age-appropriate sex education program teaches. So I think that's a good note to end on.
KEYES: Not this book. Gloria, Gloria, not this book. Sandy, I'm sorry. We had a lot of talk, but we have to go. We're up against a hard break. But not this book, Gloria. Take a look at it. I think you'll find that Dr. Elders either through, I don't know, ignorance or inadvertence has put her impromatu on a book that promotes just the opposite of what you have been advocating tonight. Thanks.
Next, does a pro-life Web site that posts the faces of people entering abortion clinics incite violence. We'll talk to the creator of such a Web site.
And later, my “Outrage of the Day.” An 11-year-old arrested at a protest on the Golden Gate Bridge.
But first, does this makes sense? President Bush met with the pope recently and apparently expressed his concerns over the crisis in the Catholic church. We saw in the wake of revelations about his own sexual possible attractions in the past, one of the cardinals, the archbishop, Archbishop Weakland resigning.
We have also seen up in Boston now where a fellow who was apparently guilty of all kinds of child molestation was then moved around and tolerated by Cardinal Law, well, we've heard all this about him. Weakland is gone after a revelation of one sexual incident. Cardinal Law tolerated a whole train of serial abuses. Weakland resigns, Cardinal Law is still there. Does this make sense?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: There's an anti-abortion Web site that posts photos of mothers coming and going from abortion clinics. The operator of the site says he hopes to shame mothers into not having abortions. Critics say this tactic violates the mother's privacy and subjects her to humiliation and possibly to harm. Neal Horsely is the man behind this Web site and another that lists the names and addresses of abortion providers. Neal, welcome to MAKING SENSE.
NEAL HORSELY, ABORTIONCAMS.COM: Good to be here, Alan.
KEYES: Well, now, you probably know, Neal, I don't think that there's a stronger advocate of the pro-life position in America today than I try to be in everything that I do and say. It's why I wear my feet every night on this program. You will see them right here on my collar because I believe this is something that is on my mind, in my heart all the time.
But I want to tell you quite bluntly that I think that what you are doing is wrong, that it's harmful to the pro-life movement, that it represents the kind of tactic that will disgrace and discredit what we are trying to do, and that it involves a tactic that because it disregards what ought to be our own principle of care and concern for life is actually contrary to the truths we're supposed to stand for. And I want to say quite bluntly on behalf of the pro-life movement itself, I wish you'd stop it.
HORSELY: Well, I — I hear what you're saying, and I received that message from you with — with all the impact that the message deserves, because you're right, Alan. You represent to me a man who's blessed my soul and who's stood in a place that's made me proud to know that there is a man of God that's willing to stand up.
But I think you're wrong right now, because I think you're — you're ignoring the fact that these people are going to kill God's children. And what I'm trying to do is to point out that fact. And you can say that it's wrong to point it out, but a woman who goes and kills her baby is involved in some degree of homicide and she's going to be punished. And we can pretend she's a victim, but the reality is she knows what she's doing. And God knows she knows what she's doing. And we've got to start acting like that's the truth or else we confuse people.
KEYES: Well, see, one of the problems that I have, though, Neal, is I believe that God wants her to love that child, and he wants us to love her. He wants us to understand that the action we take — I believe deeply in the injunction speak the truth with love. And love means that you don't endanger somebody, that you don't approach them in a way that will actually possibly bring harm and grief upon them because, in your self-righteousness, you think you're the instrument of God's punishment. I want to be the instrument of God's truth. I think the question of conscience and punishment ought to be left in his hands, and that what we ought to be trying to do...
HORSELY: Why don't you say that the to the policeman...
KEYES: Let me finish. We ought to be representing the truth that converts the heart. And I've got to tell you, it seems to me that standing there, especially if you're adopting a tactic that might convey to this woman, you don't care about me, you don't care if somebody comes and hurts me, that's not going to open her heart to the truth. That's not going to open her heart so that she'll listen to the plea that God puts in our mouths on behalf of her child. We want her to hear us, not shut her heart against us.
HORSELY: Why don't you say that to the policemen who we hire to go out and interrupt people who are about to commit homicide. The fact is you're treating these people like they're not fixing to kill their babies. No wonder they're confused. No wonder they don't understand that what they're doing is a heinous sin.
KEYES: Quite the contrary. Neal, what I am doing is I am treating this situation as what it is, a situation in which we must not unleash greater evils in what we do to stop the evil we're looking at. And if we go forward in a way that suggests we're declaring some kind of physical war on people, then the end result will be a worse situation, and we'll be to blame for it. I plead with you again...
HORSELY: You're extrapolating...
KEYES: We've come to the end of our time.
HORSELY: I'm not doing what you say, Alan.
KEYES: Again, please, take it to heart. This is going to hurt.
HORSELY: You're not talking about what I'm doing.
KEYES: This is going to hurt. It's not going to help, and it seems to me that we are under an obligation to do our best to achieve a positive result.
HORSELY: Hey, when are you going to let me talk?
KEYES: I did let you talk. We've run out of time, actually. So both of us are going to have to stop talking.
HORSELY: See, that's it. You came here and ambushed me.
KEYES: Neal, thank you.
HORSELY: That was a lousy thing to do.
KEYES: Thank you, Neal. Just take it to heart, because I'll tell you, I'll speak my mind to whoever. I just spoke it to you, and I hope you'll pray over it.
Next, my “Outrage of the Day.” We'll be back right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: I think that was my “Outrage for the Day.” As we look at ground zero in New York City, a reminder, tomorrow on America's news channel, MSNBC, coverage of the World Trade ceremonies, marking the end of the recovery efforts there. See you tomorrow.