Still banging on about Brook

I continue to ponder the iniquitous Brook, about the evils of which (or should it be of whom?) I have recently blogged here and here.

In their statement in defence of their perverse Traffic Lights Tool, they say both that: 'Most young people under the age of 16 do not have sex' and also that 'The tool includes sexual activity as ... a green activity in the 13-17 age category, ... because there is a spectrum of normal behaviour.'

Maybe I am over-literal, but if most young people are not having sex, in what sense is it a normal behaviour? It can only mean, it seems to me, that Brook regard it as normal, in the face of the statistical evidence to the contrary. And by normal, they mean acceptable, and probably desirable (see their wwwsite for details of their Sex+Positive Campaign).

And whilst Simon Blake, the Chief Executive, seems at the Select Committee to suggest that Brook in no way encourages under-age sex, that claim also rings false. 'Most young people under the age of 16 do not have sex. Those that do need appropriate help, advice and support from well trained professionals.' But it is quite clear that such 'appropriate help, advice and support' is in fact the provision of condoms, the reassurance that their behaviour is normal, and the facilitation of abortions when the contraception fails - from which Brook, of course, makes substantial profits. And consider this, from their advice pages on their website: 'If you are under 16 and you are having sex, it is less likely that you will get into trouble if there is not a large age difference between you and your partner, you both consent (i.e are happy to have sex) and there’s no evidence of any exploitation.'

Likewise, Joe Hayman, chief executive of the PSHE Association, said: 'What I was saying was that it's really, really important that a dictatorial-from-the-front lesson on what one should and shouldn't do is less likely to have an impact and I think we've got to start from where children are, their reality.'

That is almost the battle-cry of those who are trying to sexualise our children. It has a surface plausibility - until you consider whether they would apply it to behaviour of which they really disapprove. I would wager my mortgage that neither Hayman nor Blake would say of, say racism, or homophobic bullying: Those that do need appropriate help, advice and support from well trained professionals, or still less: it's really, really important that a dictatorial-from-the-front lesson on what one should and shouldn't do is less likely to have an impact and I think we've got to start from where children are, their reality.

We are only non-judgemental (in that sense) when we think no judgement is necessary.

Frankly, these people are unknowingly the stooges of the Evil One: they need our prayers, our pity, and our strongest possible opposition.

Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix.
Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus nostris,
sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper,
Virgo gloriosa et benedicta.