Over a thousand outraged parents who have children enrolled in taxpayer-funded public schools in Fremont, Calif. have signed petitions threatening legal action over a ninth-grade health textbook featuring oral sex, vibrators and, of course, bondage.
The 392-page textbook, which will be in use in the Bay Area school district, is called “Your Health Today.” It is rarely assigned to ninth graders, and it is not used in any other California school districts. Instead, it is most frequently used by professors in college-level health classes, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The semester-long course in which the textbook will be used is a required course for graduation.
In addition to the bondage information, Fremont high school freshmen get to see detailed illustrations of female and male sexual organs in different phases of arousal. Those phases are “excitement,” “plateau,” “orgasm” and “resolution.”
The book also contains guidelines for using Internet dating sites, information concerning masturbation and explanations of the major sexual positions. Other sections are devoted to gay marriage and e-cigarettes. Lady Gaga, actors from the “Harry Potter” movies and rapper Rick Ross also make cameos in the academic tome.
School officials have defended their decision to utilize the textbook by saying that 14-year-old kids need to know about sex, bondage and orgasms well before they reach college.
“We really want them to have a safe place to get facts about their bodies and how to handle things and how they need to be mature to deal with these things,” Fremont Unified School District board president Lara Calvert-York told the Chronicle.
Impressed school district health teachers unanimously chose the textbook for their 2,400 ninth-grade charges. The school board narrowly voted 3-2 to adopt it.
Michele Hartmangruber, who works at a Fremont high school, heartily endorsed the book’s raunchy contents.
“I want to let everyone know, if you think sex isn’t happening with your freshmen, you need to take your blinders off,” she said at a June school board meeting. “It’s happening, and it’s happening in the corners, in the bathrooms, in the cars, in the parks and even on the 50-yard line in front of everyone.”
Thus, Hartmangruber concluded, “You have to educate at the ninth-grade level.”
The parents who have signed the petition disagree.
“I feel that it’s not age appropriate for these kids,” mad mother Asfia Ahmed, who has a son entering ninth grade, told the Chronicle.
In a letter to the school board, Ahmed described the textbook as offensive and essentially pornographic at certain points.
“I was shocked when I looked at the book the first time,” she wrote, according to the Chronicle. “I am willing to pursue legal action, and I have other parents willing to support me on this.”
Ahmed is now working with attorneys from the Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative legal defense organization, to force the school board to stop using the textbook. There’s a formal appeal process. If that fails, a lawsuit is possible.
“We are standing with the parents of Fremont because this textbook is clearly inconsistent with California law,” said Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, in a press release obtained by The Daily Caller. “No school board, regardless of their ideology, is above the law. We are hopeful that the overwhelming opposition by parents from across the political spectrum will cause the board to reverse its ill-conceived position.”
California state education standards direct that children across the state must begin learning about the birds and the bees in fifth grade. Mandated subject matter includes the changes that occur during puberty and the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases.
The state standards do not cover bondage and much of the other content of Fremont’s controversial textbook.
Parents have the option of taking their children out of class for at least some sex education content in the required class.
The Pacific Justice Institute also noted that the Chronicle understated the number of parents who have thus far signed petitions seeking to get rid of the textbook by at least 400.
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