Topic - Media Objectivity

Hi All,

This is was a posting from LIFE Correspondent John Lui "Get Your Values Out of my face". Although Lui's article was not printed on the paper, it was posted on the ST Online Blog under ST LIFE CORRESPONDENT.
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John Lui
Life! Correspondent
Get your values out of my face
May 08, 2009 Friday, 11:42 AM
John Lui shares his views on the Aware saga.
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"GET your values out of my elite uncaring face"

If there is one lesson that the Aware saga has proven yet again, it is that parents have an inflated sense of their own worth in society.

I am not married and do not have children and it has irritated me for a long time that mothers and fathers like to excuse their incredibly selfish behaviour by saying "it's for the sake of the kids".

The group of pro-values parents who object to a factual and comprehensive sex eduation programme should be reminded that their little darlings belong to the same society that I do.

If these little angels as a result of ignorant fornication foist little bundles of joy on society and its taxpayers, I for one will be more than a little displeased.

In my eyes, having teenagers with fully functioning reproductive organs and not being able to control them is similar to owning a pit bull with big teeth and not putting it on a leash. Both creatures are hazards to other people.

If you tell me that your pit bull's fondness for sinking his fangs into people is "a private matter between a dog and his owner", I would tell you to grow a brain, you selfish, ignorant fool.

And if you campaign to keep leashes off dangerous dogs, then you are more than a fool, you are a menace to society.

Your right to keep your pet unrestrained ends where the skin of my leg begins.

Your rights to keep your child ignorant about sex ends where my tax dollars start to fund public medical programmes for STDs, juvenile delinquency schemes and prisons for people screwed up by being born to poor teenage mothers.

In the pages of The Straits Times over the last four weeks, we have seen upper-middle class professionals, driven by private religious impulses, strive to change public education policy.

People from well-off, educated families are the ones who are statistically the least likely to suffer from the problems of teen pregnancy and STDs. Yet they feel driven to restrict sex education for the people who need it most: Teens from lower-income families.

But it makes sense. After all, the harm that these well-meaning people could cause will never affect them directly. They get to feel holy but will never experience the misery born of their actions.

Singapore was born of pragmatism. Legalised prostitution protects women in the sex trade from pimps. No-one likes prostitution but greater misery comes from driving it underground.

Teenage sexual behaviour is a public health issue, like swine flu or dengue fever.
The next time someone tells me that sex education is a private matter between a parent and his child, I will tell him that in return, I will make open containers filled with stagnant water a private matter between myself and the stuff I keep on my property.