In response to your article of Wednesday, April 28, telling us that just not talking about it (sex of course) is OK, I would like to ask if you would please publish the quote where Premier Dalton McGuinty ‘promised never again to propose something slightly controversial —–‘.

Now, may I ask what gives you the right to tell the parents of Ontario that our ‘kids’ need more sex education from the government? Please tell me, if you are married and if so how many children and grandchildren do you have?

Mr. Mercer, I have a few other questions for you. How much more are we teaching today than we taught 50 years ago, about sex that is? During the same 50 years has divorce gone up or down? Sexual assaults, gone up or down? Child molestation, up or down? How many sex offenders have been rehabilitated, by the government, never to offend again? How do you think what we have been doing for the past 50 years has been working?

Now I would like to take exception to some of your assumptions. ‘Everyone knows our bodies are shameful and weird, and we ought to not talk about them without using funny nicknames.’ Really? Well not ‘everyone’ because I have 3 children, 8 grandchildren and 1 great-grandson and not one of them has ever been taught a funny nickname for a body part. By my math that makes 13 of us who aren’t included in your ‘everyone’.

‘So they wailed. And they screamed. And they got their way.’ Could I explain to you how our government works. We vote, we pay and every once in awhile we speak. This would be one of those times. It is called a democracy. ‘He flip-flopped.’ I don’t think so. The way I understand it we call this democracy. ‘What this taught McGuinty is that parents want to be in control when it comes to talking about that, you know, all that gross stuff.’ Yes sir, parents obviously do want to be in control and yes you go ahead and call it ‘all that gross stuff’ if you want to, but please do not do it in a way that infers that would be the way these parents would refer to sex.

Sincerely,

Marian Garner