- Executive director of Planned Parenthood's Center for Sex Education located in New Jersey, Bill Taverner, said 'we are all sexual beings from birth to death'
- Taverner has also been advocating for porn literacy for certain age groups as well as comprehensive sex education for kindergarten to 12th grade students
- While Taverner agrees that 'a lot of [porn] is wrong' but added that there is 'good stuff out there' as well
- The sexuality education advocate said he 'never wanted pornography to be the primary source of sex education' but 'instruction needs to adapt'
- The comments have been slammed on social media some describing the beliefs as 'incredibly vile' and 'pedophile thinking'
Bill Taverner, who has advocated for sexuality education at US congressional briefings, said in 2015 that 'we are all sexual beings from birth to death.'
He said: '[We have] in our society, an assumption of asexuality of people with intellectual disabilities.
'It's a myth that's perpetuated, and really we are all sexual beings from birth until death,' the executive director of Planned Parenthood, located in New Jersey, said.
The sentiment was echoed by Planned Parenthood, that said in a guide entitled the 'Fundamentals of Teaching Sexuality' that 'sexuality is a part of life through all the ages and stages.
'Babies, elders, and everyone in between can experience sexuality.'
But many have slammed Taverner's unearthed comments - saying that the ideas he peddled in fact 'promote pedophilia.'
Just three years earlier, Taverner said children of a certain age should be taught about pornography in sex education, a position he has maintained up until at least February last year, Fox News reported.
In a 2012 interview, Taverner said that young people have a yearning for information adding that the internet is a 'major influence on how people learn about sexuality.'
'There's access to erotica, pornography, that was very different for young people 30 years ago,' he said.
'It [was] certainly not as accessible, certainly not as instantaneous, so there's a lot of information that is useful.'
The interviewer interrupted Taverner and said, 'some of it is wrong' to which he Taverner agreed stating 'some of it is wrong, a lot of it is wrong' but added 'there is good stuff out there as well.'
Speaking to Fox News Taverner did not clarify what he meant when he said that but in a 2021 interview said that sex educators 'never wanted pornography to be the primary source of sex education' but 'instruction needs to adapt to modern times.'
'If we talk about porn, [some think] is it going to make people want to watch it? Which is the same faulty kind of premise as if we teach about condoms,' he said.
'It's going to make people want to have sex with condoms, maybe that's not a bad thing.'
He added that porn literacy would help students clarify their values on the topic and will meet 'people where they are.'
'If this is what they're doing with their cell phones and tablets and their laptops, then we need to shift our education and stop doing the banana on a condom and think that, you know, we've done our thing,' he said.
'We need to present opportunities for young people to think about, for example, their values.
'You know, let's do an opinion activity. Let's do the ethics of porn. And that's not to say that there's a right answer.'
Planned Parenthood's sex education arm hopes to provide training materials about the subject nationally and hosts the largest conference for sex educators in the U.S.
Taverner has said in the past that some parts of comprehensive sexuality education should begin in kindergarten.
'Sexuality education is not isolated to a particular point in a person's life, it's a continuous process,' he said.
'Young children are learning about sexuality from the attitudes their parents display [and] when we think of K-12 education we may be talking about what makes a family, we may be talking about disease prevention.
'All of that sets the foundation for a basic understanding that is useful for further conversations when we're talking about condoms [and] pregnancy conversations.
'Age-appropriate sex education is so important. And we have to let our experts guide us.'
Not everyone, however, agrees with Taverner, who has been shunned by some people who have described this perspective as the 'sexploitation of children.'
'What an incredibly vile thing to think and say publicly and what a vile organization. Daily amazed at the debauchery of the Marxist LEFT in US,' one twitter user wrote.
Another said: 'From the people who make money Killing Kids. What kind of monsters are we letting roam this earth?'
Meanwhile, others described Taverner's beliefs as damaging to young children: 'This is how you identify pedophile thinking. When some claims a child is a sexual being, they promote pedophilia.'
Another said: 'No respect for children inside or outside the womb?!?!?!'
Another said: 'Human reproduction taught in school at a high school level OK. There was a time in this country the sexploitation of children was, and in my opinion still, wrong.
While one commented on the fundamentals of the organization when speaking to Taverner's comments: 'Pushing to make it normal. Another step in the downfall of society. No morals.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ion-director-claims-children-born-sexual.html (Archive)
