MOORPARK : District Urged to Teach Moral Values

Parents, concerned that teachers might try to push safe sex in their sex-education classes, asked the Moorpark school board Tuesday to endorse the teaching of moral values instead.

“Kids need to be taught how to maintain an abstinent lifestyle,” said Bob Caddel of San Bernardino. Caddel, a friend of Joel McDowell, the author of “The Myths of Sex Education,” was asked by about 25 Moorpark parents to represent them at the meeting.

“We need to work together to do something about the future,” Caddel said, citing statistics from the National Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta that said 35,616 Americans acquire a sexually transmitted disease every day.

“The future is dim or quite dark. We need a kind of policy to deal with this,” he said.

Caddel said the sex education policies of the district need to include information about what kind of movies not to attend, how to handle certain dating situations and how to remain abstinent until marriage.

Board member Pam Castro thanked Caddel for his presentation. “I was holding my breath, hoping you were not going to ask us to pass out condoms,” Castro said. “It’s a breath of fresh air.”

The board members accepted copies of McDowell’s book, but took no immediate action on the presentation.