OK, I’ve read the ruling, and while I

defer to the lawyers here, the judges seem to have the rejection of the

plaintiffs’ due process claim nailed down tight. The important political

point here — and perhaps the point on which SCOTUS might overturn — has to

do with the right of privacy.

Here, according to the ruling, are the kinds of questions kids ages seven

through 10 were asked; specifically, they were told to rate the following

activities on a basis of how often they experienced the thought or emotion:

a. “Touching my private parts too much.”

b. “Thinking about having sex”

c. “Thinking about touching other people’s private parts.”

d. “Thinking about sex when I don’t want to.”

e. “Washing myself because I feel dirty on the inside.”

f. “Not trusting people because they might want sex.”

g. “Getting scared or upset when I think about sex.”

h. “Having sex feelings in my body.”

i. “Can’t stop thinking about sex.”

j. “Getting upset when people talk about sex.”

Now, the 9C judges establish pretty clearly that parents don’t have the

constitutional right to require schools to accomodate their own personal

beliefs. But on the matter of privacy, the 9C found that the information

presented to the children in the survey “simply did not interfere with the

right of the parents to make intimate decisions.”

Well. Many parents — including me — believe it is the right of parents to

decide when and how to introduce the subject of sex to children. It boggles

my mind to think that school administrators would arrogate to themselves the

right to raise such topics with my seven year old. As a political matter,

this is the white-hot center of the culture wars: sex. As Tom Edsall argued

in this fascinating 2003 piece from The Atlantic

Monthly[http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200301/edsall], you can predict with

a high degree of certainty which party an American is likely to vote for

based on how they answer particular questions related to sex and sexuality.

This ruling gets at the fears people have about losing control of their

children’s sexuality. It is within the privacy rights of a minor child to

have an abortion without informing or receiving the consent of her parents,

but it is not within the privacy rights of a parent to consent before their

minor children are probed by strangers about their thoughts concerning

touching the genitals of strangers. This ruling is incendiary because it has

everything to do with the proper place of sexuality in American public life.

It’s why we’re having a culture war. It’s why we get things like Prop 2, the

anti-gay marriage amendment Texans will be voting on next week. And it’s

why, Tom Frank, that Kansans keep electing Republicans.