The executive director for Planned Parenthood’s Center for Sex Education located in New Jersey reportedly said that babies are born “sexual” and that comprehensive sexual education should begin in kindergarten and include lessons in “porn literacy” for older students.
Bill Taverner, the director of the Center, said in 2015 that "[we have] in our society, an assumption of asexuality of people with intellectual disabilities. It's a myth that's perpetuated, and really we are all sexual beings from birth until death,” according to Fox News Digital.
His views align with Planned Parenthood’s, which reportedly claimed in a “Fundamentals of Teaching Sexuality” guide that “babies, elders, and everyone in between can experience sexuality.”
Three years earlier, Taverner reportedly said in an interview that some aspects of “erotica” can be “useful.”
“I think that there’s this yearning for information that young people have that… hasn’t changed. [The] delivery of how we get information is quite different. I think that the internet is a major influence on how people learn about sexuality. There’s access to erotica, pornography. That was very different for young people 30 years ago. It’s certainly not as accessible, certainly not as instantaneous. So there’s a lot of information that is useful,” he reportedly stated.
The interviewer interjected and told Tavener that “some of it is wrong.”
Taverner responded that “there is good stuff out there as well.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Taverner about his remarks. He did not clarify what he meant, but said in a 2021 interview that sex educators “never wanted pornography to be the primary source of sex education, and that instruction needs to adapt to modern times.” And, he argued that teaching about porn in classrooms is “similar to instructing children on how to use a condom,” the report stated.
“There’s a resistance to… if we talk about porn, [some think] is it going to make people want to watch it? Which is the same faulty kind of premise as if we teach about condoms, it’s going to make people want to have sex with condoms or maybe that’s not a bad thing,” Taverner said. He added that “porn literacy” would help students clarify their values on sex and will “meet people where they are.”
“Age-appropriate sex education is so important,” he continued. “And we have to let our experts guide us.” He reportedly said in the past that certain parts of sex ed should start in kindergarten.
“Sexuality education is not isolated to a particular point in a person’s life, it’s a continuous process. Young children are learning about sexuality from the attitudes their parents display… When we think of K-12 education… we may be talking about what makes a family, we may be talking about disease prevention… All of that sets the foundation for a basic understanding that is useful for further conversations when we’re talking about condoms… [and] pregnancy conversations,” he said.
Last month, a school board in Idaho voted to remove Planned Parenthood-endorsed sexual education from its schools. The move was instigated by parents who opposed the lessons, which children could be placed into without parental consent, according to the Idaho Freedom Foundation. The curriculum reportedly included instruction on gender identity, transgender ideology, abortion, sex toys, masturbation and “high-risk” sexual activities.