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Planned Parenthood director: children are 'sexual beings' from birth

Bill Taverner advocates that students do "porn ethics" and calls for comprehensive sex education to be taught starting in kindergarten.

Bill Taverner / Wikimedia.

Bill Taverner / Wikimedia.

Published by
Verónica Silveri Pazos

Planned Parenthood CEO Bill Taverner who consistently advocates for teaching pornography in sex education, stated in an interview that "we are all sexual beings from birth to death," Fox News revealed.

Taverner directs Planned Parenthood's New Jersey-based Center for Sex Education, which provides training materials nationwide and hosts the largest conference for sex educators in the country. The director defends sex education constantly in congressional briefings. In 2015 he said:

We have in our society, an assumption of asexuality of people with intellectual disabilities. It is a myth that is perpetuated, and really we are all sexual beings from birth to death.

"There is access to erotica, to pornography”

In 2012, Taverner said that children of a certain age should be taught about pornography in sex education and pointed out that the Internet is very functional for this, since "there is access to erotica, pornography (...) and there is a lot of information that is useful":

I think there is this yearning for information that young people have, which... has not changed. The way to obtain information is very different. I think the Internet has a big influence on how people learn about sexuality. There is access to erotica, to pornography. That was very different for young people 30 years ago. It certainly wasn't as accessible, it certainly wasn't as instantaneous. So there is a lot of information that is useful.

The interviewer interrupted the director and said, "Something about that is wrong." Taverner responded by reaffirming his position: "Some things are wrong, many things are wrong. But there are also good things.

He has maintained his stance on the issue. In a 2021 interview, he said that sex education instruction must adapt to modern times, claiming that pornography should be the main source of teaching, something that educators "resist." He further argued that teaching about pornography in the classroom is similar to instructing children on how to use a condom:

There is a resistance to... if we talk about porn, some people think, is it going to make kids want to watch it? It's the same kind of faulty premise that if we teach about condoms, it's going to make people want to have sex with condoms.

"Let's do porn ethics”

The director also called for making "the ethics of porn" and stated that "opinion" activities concerning this topic will help students clarify their values:

Getting back to meeting people where they are, if this is what they are doing with their cell phones and tablets and their laptops, then we have to change our education. We have to present opportunities for young people to think about..., for example, their values. You know, let's do an opinion activity. Let's do porn ethics.

Taverner stressed the importance of teaching sex education at an "appropriate age" and noted that some parts of comprehensive sex education should begin in kindergarten:

Sex education is not isolated to a particular moment in a person's life, it is a continuous process. Young children are learning about sexuality from the attitudes that their parents display.... When we think about K-12 education...we may be talking about what a family does, or disease prevention.... All of that lays the groundwork for a basic understanding that is useful for later conversations when we're talking about condoms and conversations about pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood Guidelines

The CEO clearly follows the company’s guidelines. Planned Parenthood stated in a guide entitled Foundations of Teaching Sexuality that "sexuality is a part of life at all ages and stages. Babies, the elderly, and everyone else can experience sexuality."

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