Hate, hypocrisy and hysteria

Spectator, The, Jan 21, 2006 by McKinstry, Leo

Much of this glorying in sex is aimed directly at young people. Pornography has been made acceptable, even fashionable. Last year one of the most popular brands of stationery for children sold by W.H. Smith was produced by Playboy, the giant American pornographic empire. Mizz magazine, aimed at pre-teen girls, even had a marketing promotion giving away Playboy souvenirs. Mizz explained that the Playboy brand 'is given added cool by its association with American hip-hop stars'. Little wonder, then, that a 2005 survey of 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19 found that 63 per cent of them aspired to be glamour models. Even teen literature is not safe. One of the most popular recent books for boys has been Doing It, by Melvyn Burgess. Featuring a condom on the cover, it gives explicit accounts of the sex lives of four teenagers, one of whom is given oral sex by his female teacher.

Sadly, some of our civic leaders who should be protecting the young are at the forefront of those corrupting them. The powerful sex education lobby, which despises any kind of morality and follows the twisted Freudian view that all children are sexualised from an early age, believes that teaching about sex should start in primary school.

The creed of so-called 'sexual rights' for youngsters now prevails. So a sex education booklet from the Family Planning Association, aimed at nine- to 11-year-olds, includes explicit drawings and advice about masturbation. Similarly, a leaflet from the state-funded Brook Advisory Service told schoolboys as young as 13 a series of 'juicy sex facts', such as the best types of condoms for oral and anal sex.

The spirit of our times is summed up by this statement from a Swindon girl, quoted in the Daily Telegraph: 'We are not like your generation. We get taught how to do it.

When I was 14 we were shown a video in school that told us all about sexual positions.

And it said that we should consider oral sex if we were a bit unsure about going all the way.' Nothing there about the illegality of underage sex.

But all this uninhibited sex education is not working. Britain has by far the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in Europe. An astonishing 5 per cent of all London girls aged between 15 and 17 have been pregnant. In this swamp of dissipation, it is inevitable that exploitation of sexually aware, knowing adolescents will occur.

The irony is that Ruth Kelly, devout Catholic and mother of four, is the antithesis of this approach. Indeed, she has ruled out serving in the Department for Health because of her religious opposition to abortion. Yet it is precisely because of her respect for motherhood and her religious beliefs that she is now in such trouble. Today's mood of misogyny, where women, even senior politicians, are judged on their looks and supposed sexual allure, means that Kelly is condemned because of her refusal to play the tabloid game, concentrating on her work or her domestic life rather than her wardrobe and make-up. Some of the worst offenders in this kind of brute sexism are women in her own party. 'How has she managed to get so far when she's had so much maternity leave?' a female backbencher was quoted as asking in the Times. 'What's she ever done for Labour, that cow?' Kelly's membership of the Catholic group Opus Dei only adds fuel to the secularist, amoral fire -- and I write that not as a Catholic myself but as a Belfast-born Ulster Protestant. She is seen as a crank, a fundamentalist. Without a shred of evidence, some have even hinted that her Catholicism has led her to be soft on child abuse, citing the Catholic Church's undistinguished recent record in tackling the problem. Others go even further. The taxpayer-funded black lobby group the 1990 Trust has even accused Kelly of a connection to Nazism through her membership of Opus Dei. 'Nazis active in Minister's Secret Society' proclaimed a recent headline on a 1990 newsletter, revealing not only that a member of the National Front is in Opus Dei but also that the organisation's founder, Monsignor Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, was an admirer of Franco's. The article went on, 'Parents will be concerned that Kelly is in charge of their children's education while supporting a secretive and elitist Catholic body with past links to fascism.' Guilt by association was the hallmark of Senator McCarthy's witch hunts in 1950s America. Now it has been revived in modern Britain against Ruth Kelly.