Where today’s sex ed came from… and why it matters

Many parents believe sex education is simply part of a standard education, but a closer look at its origins paints a disturbing picture of its true nature. Few are aware that some of the power players in sex education today have an extensive history with the porn industry, direct ties to a researcher who recruited pedophiles for his ‘research,’ and ties to a man who wanted to destigmatize bestiality. 

Many of the founders and originating leaders of SIECUS (originally known as the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States) — a member of the Future of Sex Education (FoSE) coalition of sex-miseducators —may be surprising. As previously reported by Live Action News, SIECUS was founded by the former medical director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Mary Steichen Calderone. Helping her to fund the creation of the group (today known as SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change) was Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, whose Foundation also funded Planned Parenthood — and also funded a group known as the Kinsey Institute, named after Alfred Kinsey, a man dubbed the “Father of the Sexual Revolution.” 

Warped methodology, warped ideas

Alfred Kinsey believed that children were sexual beings from birth — but he wasn’t the first to make this claim.

This idea was promoted in the highly scrutinized and controversial psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. Freud’s fellow psychoanalyst, Carl G. Jung, accused him of “projecting an observation from adult life onto the child’s mind,” and ultimately rejected “Freud’s notion of the polymorphic perverse sexuality of children.” 

Freud’s psychosexual theory is often criticized as being “hard to test scientifically, leaving questions about its validity,” and suffering from a lack of data — since his theories were based on one victim of incestuous sexual abuse. Despite this, early SIECUS Report contributors called Freud a “giant seminal” figure while alluding to the idea that Freud’s psychosexual theory did not go far enough in justifying the assumption that children are inherently sexual from birth. “Freud’s theory of a latency period, which alleges a diminution of interest in sexual matters from infancy to late childhood, created an acceptance of a wish fulfillment which saw children as innocent sexual beings (emphasis added),” they wrote. 

In other words, as warped and unscientific as Freud’s theories were, the SIECUS authors took issue with Freud’s presupposition that children were innocent and somewhat disinterested in what he described as inherent sexual desires. Were the SIECUS authors desiring a scientific justification to support their unsettling claims that children’s sexual desires are inherently similar or equal to those of adults? It is this type of perverted ideology often illustrated in the depraved justification of pedophiles and sexual abusers.

When Kinsey came on the scene, he attempted to provide a more scientific approach to sexology by gathering data. However, as Live Action News author Bettina diFiore reported in the “Built on Sand” series, Kinsey used disturbing and unscientific methods to obtain this data — which included coaching pedophiles to use a stopwatch to record their violent sexual abuse of infants and children and to document their graphic observations.  

Founded on Darwinistic evolutionary ideology, Kinsey’s and Freud’s theories fell flat in proving anything remotely scientific. Research Associate Jeffrey Escoffier with the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research noted, “The Kinsey approach not only failed to replace Freudian theory with any sophisticated theory of its own, but it also failed to establish a viable research tradition or a more robust empirical account of the individual’s sexual behavior.” 

Yet, SIECUS has historically based its sex-ed program upon Kinsey’s flawed claims and theories. 

After Kinsey’s warped ‘methodology’ came to light, public outrage against Kinsey led SIECUS and its supporters to distance and excuse themselves from his sexually abusive tactics in the 1996 SIECUS Report. Yet later, the group attempted to minimize Kinsey’s active participation in hiding the severe sexual abuse of children by pedophiles, referring to Kinsey as “The most significant agent of change in American cultural life in the 20th century.” They labeled those opposed to Kinsey’s ‘research’ as “far-right.”

However, in addition to SIECUS and the Kinsey Research Center (originally the Institute for Sex Research) sharing the same early donor — Hugh Hefner — the two organizations also shared originating trustees and board members. One of those individuals was Wardell Pomeroy. 

Promoting incest and bestiality

A founding board member of SIECUS, Wardell Pomeroy worked alongside Alfred Kinsey for two decades.

Pomeroy held disturbing beliefs regarding incest and the sexual abuse of children. He told Time in 1980, “It is time to admit that incest need not be a perversion or a symptom of mental illness…. Incest between… children and adults… can sometimes be beneficial.” 

In an article entitled “A New Look at Incest,” which was printed in pornographic publications, Pomeroy further justified his unsettling beliefs, stating: 

We find many beautiful and mutually satisfying [sexual] relationships between fathers and daughters. These may be transient or ongoing, but they have no harmful effects…. Incest between adults and younger children can also prove to be a satisfying and enriching experience…. Incest can be a satisfying, non-threatening, and even an enriching emotional experience, as I said earlier.

In the book, “Boys and Sex,“ Pomeroy targeted teenage boys, even discouraging the negative stigmatization of bestiality, presenting it as if the practice is something that merely “happens” to some people:

While most people think it’s at least immoral, and repulsive as well, it’s practiced around the world and has been known as far back as the ancient world. In our time, about 4 percent of city boys and 17 percent of farm boys, according to Kinsey’s figures, engaged in sexual behavior with animals, and 4 percent of both city and farm girls had done it. As to whether it’s immoral or not, that depends entirely on the point of view… 

This kind (bestiality) of sexual behavior may never happen to you, because the incidence is so low. If it does, you would be best advised to keep any knowledge of it to yourself so you can avoid either ridicule or punishment, or both. You can feel secure in your knowledge that you’re not a monster, no matter what society may think about it.

Given the close relationship between Pomeroy, SIECUS founder Mary Calderone, and the porn industry, SIECUS’ position referring to pornography as “art” and stating that pornography “can serve a variety of important needs in the lives of countless individuals” should come as no surprise.   

Four Big Lies About Sex

Anti-Religious Roots

Given the penchant toward promoting bestiality — fairly common in pagan worship in ancient times — it should also not be surprising that SIECUS founders and originating board members have a documented history of attacking religion — specifically, Judeo-Christianity. Their belief system was based in Humanist ideology.

In 1973, SIECUS co-founder Lester A. Kirkendall and Alan F. Guttmacher — a VP of the American Eugenics Society and the Planned Parenthood president responsible for introducing abortion to the organization — were co-signers of the Humanist Manifesto II, published in “The Humanist. The Manifesto,” which stated, “But we can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species. While there is much that we do not know, humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.”  

The Manifesto went on to say:

Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation or both illusory and harmful. They distract humans from present concerns, from self-actualization, and from rectifying social injustice… There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body. We continue to exist in our progeny and in the way that our lives have influenced others in our culture. 

In 1983, Kirkendall received the “Humanist Award of the Year” from the American Humanist Association, joining Mary Calderone (1974) and Margaret Sanger (1957) on the list of other awardees. Sanger, of course, was the founder of Planned Parenthood, which has become America’s abortion industry leader. 

Conclusion

The beliefs of SIECUS’ founding members still live on today through the group of sex miseducators under the FoSE coalition and its affiliates, who have infiltrated public schools and libraries. 

Anyone who speaks against the sexual perversion of SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, Advocates for Youth, and the FoSE coalition, is attacked and labeled by SIECUS as part of a religious ‘”regressive minority” which “… operates under an ideology of homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, patriarchal ideals, and white supremacy that has proliferated into broader attacks against public education.” 

Pomeroy once stated that he believed “…if Kinsey were alive today he would, quite incidentally, be pleased at the changes in openness and attitudes about sex….”

It is no surprise that the most vocal promulgators of the killing of preborn children via abortion historically and currently promote children’s access to pornography, masturbation, “gender-affirming care,” and sexually explicit books in effort to continue to fulfill the goals of Kinsey, Calderone, Kirkendall, Pomeroy, and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. 

We must ask ourselves: are these foundational principles and beliefs held by SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, and their affiliates truly deserving of easy access to the precious minds of vulnerable children with the use of tax dollars?