Sometimes I wonder why I read both to read TownHall.com. All it does is anger up the blood.

Case in point: an editorial from Robert E. Rector at the Heritage Foundation concerning sex education. Rector has much to complain about: most sex ed programs these days don't preach abstinence as the only option, he says. The implication, of course, is that the school should teach that the only method of contraception is to say "no" to sex.

And what about the rest of us that live in the real world? He addresses this issue: "Far worse, though, is what abstinence-plus programs do contain: explicit demonstrations of contraceptive use -- especially condoms -- and direct encouragement to experiment sexually." I'd be hard-pressed to find a program that actually encourages sexual activity. At the same time, though, an abstinence-only program ignores the fact that kids are having sex. As we've found out many times before, ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away or change it for the better. Preventing kids from discovering other methods of contraception doesn't encourage sexual behavior; it acknowledges that it is not the school's job to tell kids whether or not sex is moral. In the same way that a library which shelves Mein Kampf doesn't necessarily support those ideas, so too does a school which markets "abstinence-plus" programs not necessarily endorse sex for children. Like the library, it merely provides information so that those kids who do decide to have sex know what their options are, instead of being shut out and labeled as evil by some institution which only recognizes abstinence as a method of contraception.

Rector's column is the rhetorical equivalent of closing one's eyes when a car is coming, as though pretending it's not there will change it. Or, we can be realistic and acknowledge the fact that sex among kids does exist. And rather than shunning those that do and giving them a stern lecture about how it is evil and that, if they want to have contraception, they cannot have any, since abstinence is the only "correct" method of contraception, we should tell them what they want to know.

This, of course, only goes for schools. It is the parents that set morals, and as always, it is not the school's job to teach morality, despite certain folks who feel that a particular morality -- their morality -- should be taught to all children. These same people proceed to balk when the school takes an amoral stance or begins teaching a morality contrary to theirs. It's a great day when hypocrisy walks into a room disguised as virtue and then becomes unmasked, revealing its true, decrepit face.