Sex!

Hello, hungry people

My, y'all are looking particularly frisky this morning Could it be that you dropped by Bob’s Diner thinking you might get lucky?

Sorry, that’s not on the menu. Indeed, that headline and the provocative image are false advertising. Please don’t sue me. But I didn’t think I could lure in any customers if I hung up a sign promoting the real topic of today’s post: Sex Education!

(Let’s pause a moment so all the horny, disappointed folks can leave.)

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Actually the full title of today’s topic should be Sex Education and How Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature Are Once Again Proving Themselves to Be Enlightened, Forward-Thinking Geniuses.

Just kidding.

They are Batshit-Crazy Cockwaddles.¹

In support of that argument, allow me to introduce another image:

It’s what’s known in the education world as a “Dual-Sex Human Torso Anatomy Model.” It’s used in lots of classrooms that aren’t in the State of Florida.

I think you’ll agree with me that the model possesses all the relevant parts for explaining to adolescents what’s involved with the flow of blood, breathing air, eating food, digesting food and, yes. . . sex!

It also possesses all the relevant parts for producing snickers from a classroom of seventh-grade boys, not unlike myself back in 1963, when all the girls in our science class at Leesburg High School were marched off to meet separately with the Home Economics teacher while Mr. Boyle, our science teacher, showed us a model much like the one above and attempted to explain the biological mechanics of making babies.

I felt sorry for Mr. Boyle that day. He must have seriously questioned why he decided to become a teacher. There he was, hemming and hawing and earnestly pointing out all the anatomical parts necessary for doing the deed and there we were whispering and laughing and making dick jokes.

Because we already knew all that stuff, having learned it in time-honored tradition — by hanging out with cool older guys who claimed to have done all sorts of things with girls that we could only imagine. They also loaned us their Playboy magazines so we could imagine in great detail.

I can only guess that girls learned about sex in much the same way. Although I suspect that, being females and far superior to males, they talked about it in a more mature manner. And their dick jokes were probably much better than ours.

But at least our schools had good intentions back then. They gave it their best shot. Sex education had a dedicated slot in the curriculum and teachers like poor Mr. Boyle were allowed to use whatever props they could get their hands on that might make us pay attention.

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Not so in Florida these days. The state government hasn’t gone so far as to ban the teaching of sex education but so many barriers have been erected — OK, poor choice of words there, feel free to snicker — that many school districts have said to heck with it rather than face going head-to-head with our governor and his goons.

For instance: Florida forbids teachers from discussing contraception or topics like consent, abuse, and domestic violence or using words like “bodily fluids.”

And: Teachers can no longer use anatomy models like the one above or pictures of any kind that depict the human body when trying to educate young people about the natural order of things.

Which is a whole lot like trying to teach geography without using maps.

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Caution dainty readers: Here’s a lewd and ironic detail that I couldn’t resist sharing with you.

The 2023 legislation that sets forth all the restrictions on sex education in Florida is contained in a document called House Bill 1069.

Yes, again, feel free to snicker. And don’t you think someone in Tallahassee could have suggested: “Um, maybe we should ask for a different number for the sex ed bill?”

The word we’re looking for here: Oblivious.

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But back to the classroom. Here’s the kind of educational picture the State of Florida now endorses.

This ridiculous drawing is taken from a state-approved textbook used in some charter schools. It has nothing to do with sex. At least I don’t think so. I don’t know exactly what those two guys might be up to in the bushes. And I can’t be sure the Brontosauraus is eyeing the Stegasaurus with pure intent. Read into it what you will.

Just know that Florida, through its school voucher program, now gives tax dollars to charter schools where students are taught that human beings — human beings who knew how to make pants and shoes and go to the barber shop — existed during the time of dinosaurs.

I have nothing more to say about this.

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But since you hung around this far, let’s do Today’s Poll:

1. I’m not exactly sure what a “cockwaddle” is, but it’s one of those delightful British slang words that seems to fit the bill.