The Christian Appeal (February 2001)
Issue Theme: Issues of Life

"Save Driving"
by Gene Shelburne

 

"Anthony Ducklow listened as his neighbors kicked around the pros and cons for sex education in Maplewood, Minnesota’s schools.

 What would happen, Mr. Ducklow wondered, if we taught driver’s education like we teach sex education? He thinks it would go something like this:

 “Welcome to Driver’s Education 101! I would like to go over some ways for ‘safe driving.’ While a majority of drivers prefer driving on the right side of the road, some of you may choose to drive on the left side. This is a moral choice, and only you can decide what is right—not your parents or your friends. If you do decide to drive on the left side, use protection. Drive only in automobiles that contain airbags. Airbags save lives!

 “The same goes for red lights and stop signs. Some will tell you that you should terminate your acceleration at these designated areas. This is another moral choice. I cannot tell you what is right or wrong. You will have to decide whether this particular life choice is for you. But remember, education is the key to safe driving!”

 Mr. Ducklow’s point is well made. None of us would want to travel on streets used by practitioners of “safe driving,” would we? Yet in cities all across America parents send their kids to schools where students are taught that right and wrong don’t matter as long as they adhere to the practices of “safe sex.”

Right and wrong do matter. They matter to all of us, whether we’re Baptists or Catholics or Hindus or Christodelphians. Not one of us would trust his money to a banker who allowed his employees to redefine right and wrong to suit the mood of the moment, would we?

Even the pagans among us who profess no religious beliefs at all insist on rigid standards of right and wrong to govern the professional behavior of their doctors and their CPA’s and their butchers and their electricians.

Only in the realm of sex—where our wrong choices have so many life-long and utterly devastating consequences—only in this crucial arena does anybody dare to suggest with a straight face that responsible human beings should ignore the mandates of right and wrong.

Some people will find fault with Mr. Ducklow’s satire, I suspect, because it so deftly unmasks the nonsense of their value-neutral approach to sex education. And we never like it when somebody exposes our follies.