One executive with Planned Parenthood had become the target of extreme criticism for stating that kids are “sexual” from birth and sounding the call for porn literacy lessons for older kids.
As the executive director of the New Jersey-based Center for Sex Education, which holds the title of Planned Parenthood’s sex education arm, Bill Taverner issued the recently discovered statements from an interview back in 2015, explained a report from Fox news.
“I think that we unfortunately have in our society, an assumption of asexuality of people with intellectual disabilities,” explained Taverner to the interviewer, sexuality consultant Leslie Walker-Hirsch.
“It’s a myth that’s perpetuated, and really we are all sexual beings from birth until death,” stated Taverner.
Planned Parenthood itself chimed in to agree with this mindset in a release labeled the “Fundamentals of Teaching Sexuality,” claiming that, “sexuality is a part of life through all the ages and stages. Babies, elders, and everyone in between can experience sexuality.”
As part of an interview from 2012, Taverner seemingly implied that some exposure to pornographic content could be “useful” for slightly older kids.
“I think that there’s this yearning for information that young people have that … hasn’t changed,” stated Taverner via the interview, which was originally put on by a local New Jersey chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW).
“I think that the internet is a major influence on how people learn about sexuality,” explained Taverner. “There’s access to erotica, pornography. That was very different for young people 30 years ago, certainly not as accessible, certainly not as instantaneous. So there’s a lot of information that is useful, there’s websites that are —”
“Some of it is wrong,” cut in NOW’s Rebecca Lubetkin, the person carrying out the interview.
“Some of it is wrong, a lot of it is wrong, but there’s good stuff out there as well,” answered Taverner.
Taverner claimed that “sexting” is just another issue schools need to deal with in regard to their students and general sex education.
The executive for Planned Parenthood made comments in a similar fashion this past year, claiming that while those in public health and sexology never sought to make porn the “de facto educator,” we need to “shift our education.”
During an interview from 2021, Taverner stated that there is currently a “resistance” to talking about pornography with students because some people think it will only encourage them to look into it, which Taverner labeled “the same faulty kind of premise as if we teach about condoms is it going to make people want to have sex with condoms. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.”
“Getting back to meeting people where they are, if this is what they’re doing with their cell phones and their tablets and their laptops, then we need to shift our education and stop doing the banana on a condom and think that, you know, we’ve done our thing,” he stated.
Taverner stated that sex educators need to sherpa young people concerning the ethics of pornography.
“That’s not to say that there’s a right answer,” he stated. “We need to have conversations about what’s missing in porn that may be different in a real relationship, and that’s not to castigate porn.”
Taverner explained that Sex education should start as early for kids as kindergarten. During this time sex education could be just talking about “what makes a family” or “the basics of germs.”
“All of that sets the foundation for a basic understanding that is useful for further conversations when we’re talking about condoms or when we’re talking about pregnancy prevention,” he stated.
“Age-appropriate sex education is so important,” exclaimed Taverner. “We need to let our experts guide us.”
As a former sex educator for Planned Parenthood, Monica Cline claimed that the group has a very “distorted view of sexuality and children.”
“The pornification of our children by Planned Parenthood pays homage to the ‘Father’ of sex education, Alfred Kinsey, who claimed children are sexual from birth after sexually abusing infants and children for his research,” concluded Cline in a release. “The sex-ed industry, funded in large part by our government, has adopted this depraved belief, pushing this twisted thinking onto vulnerable populations since the 1970s.”
