By Larry Craig

The federal government wants to be involved in the sexual education of your child. It has written standards for this education, and my home state of Illinois was one of the first states to adopt them. If you live in other states, you might want to see where your state stands on this issue. The federal government didn’t write them for itself.

This doesn’t mean that every public school in Illinois will use them, but you should assume they do until proven otherwise.

You should know what they are, and if you know parents of children in public education — if you care about any of them — you might want to talk to them about this.

The new standards tell our kids that there is no such thing as normative sex. Vaginal, anal, and oral sex are all equal sexual relationships. So essentially kids have to try them all to see which they like best. I would expect that biology would at least suggest that sexual organs are reproductive organs, but in fact they are merely pleasure tools for instant gratification. If by chance a pregnancy occurs, no worry — we have an answer for that.

They are taught that sex was “assigned” at birth, and, really, they shouldn’t have done that. Only you know what gender or sex you are.

They are conflating gender with sex. Maybe not all at once, but that’s the goal. Boys can have vaginas, and girls can have penises.

By the end of second grade, they want to diminish the value of the nuclear family by equating it with every variation and combination of adults. Essentially, the idea is to affirm that a nuclear family is not necessarily something they should strive for or even want to have. It is not better than other forms of family. There are other options just as good. So begin thinking about them.

They will also know the meaning of gender and gender identity, but it’s not your parents’ idea of gender. Gender and biology are distinct from each other.

By fifth grade, they will learn to “distinguish between sex assigned at birth and gender identity” and “how they may or may not differ.”

They will “define sexual orientation” and “differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity.” And they will also learn “the range of ways pregnancy can occur.” No need to limit your thinking to the traditional way.

The entire idea of male and female is outdated. The concept of marriage between a man and a woman is just stereotypical and harmful to portray that as the ideal.

But, actually, the worst part of all this is that children are essentially being asked to choose a gender identity and sexual orientation long before they have ever even given any thought to whether they want children of their own, and before they even reach puberty and they see how they respond to the opposite sex.

I consider that criminal child abuse.

Oh, school districts can opt out of the program. I have learned from a former health teacher in middle school in Illinois that the administration hid much of this information from the parents, so they did not know what they were getting when they opted in for the program. You might want to check on that too.