Julian Gutierrez is a 17 year old teen who is currently the president of Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions (ASFAR), the oldest youth rights organization in the country, dedicated to promoting civil rights and liberties based on ability rather than age.
This article discusses a controversy that occurred after a student newspaper reported on sexual activity that occurs in school. The article provides an interesting insight on the separate attitudes of parents and students, in what appears to be somewhat of a generation gap.
What’s most striking is the far more reasonable responses of the students interviewed, as opposed to the almost shrill tone of the parent quoted in the article.
While one student says, “It's high school, you've got to learn sooner or later, I guess,” and others mention the importance of journalistic free expression, a critical element of student liberty, the mother of a freshman student that was interviewed remarks, “(It's) not quite a Playboy, but I think it's pretty up there," which just seems absurd.
But the most revealing comment made by the mother was, “We're trying to keep our kids from running into this and they're bringing it home from school?” This kind of comment should cause the reasonable person to ask whether deliberately withholding information from youth is really a particularly wise course of action to take.
Understanding people can sympathize with the reaction of parents who actually have an evolutionary impulse to protect the welfare of their offspring, and thus the strong emotional objections they would have to their kids being exposed to sexual topics, which are regarded as being “harmful to minors.”
But it’s irrational for that to extend to discrimination against reason, and the comments of the students contrasted to comments with the mother illustratively reveal the conflict between reason and emotion, and the lack of reason that often accompanies advocacy of withholding vital information about sexual topics from youth.