Guest Blogger: March 2009 Archives

Ryan Valentine serves as the Deputy Director for the Texas Freedom Network, a nonpartisan organization of religious and community leaders who advocate a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties.

The only thing more controversial than teaching about sex in public schools is teaching about religion and sex. Most teachers and administrators don't have to be told this. They wisely stick to the biological and scientific aspects of sexuality education in the classroom, while leaving moral and religious guidance to parents.

Except in Texas.

According to a new study of sex education materials used in Texas public school classes, almost ten percent of Texas school districts mix inappropriate religious content in their sexuality education instruction. Not surprisingly, the particular expression of religion that dominates in Texas secondary schools is Christianity, primarily beliefs held in fundamentalist Protestant traditions. Some of this content is explicitly and pervasively religious in nature, like a program used in three districts, whose Web site states:

We can be born again of The Almighty Himself. We then take on His character with all of its resultant self-control, benefits, and great responsibility. You will be amazed when the "sperm" of His Spirit connects with the "ovum/egg" of your spirit and you become a "new person" with His character. How? Read about it in your Bible.

Other materials provide a strict religious test for dating, telling students that they cannot date anyone who is not a Christian. A student handout from a Central Texas district provides an example of this type of religious discrimination:

For a Christian, this is the time where he or she would find out if their potential marriage partner is also a believer in Christ. The Bible warns us that believers and unbelievers should not team up, because those living in the light (of Christ) and those living in darkness cannot live in harmony. (2 Corinthians 6:14-15)

Another district provides students with a handout entitled "Things to look for in a mate." First on the list:  How they relate to God. Is Jesus their first love?  Trying to impress people or serve God?

Of course, moral guidelines like these are a part of many religious traditions and perfectly appropriate to discuss in homes and houses of worship. Imposing a religious test for  dating becomes problematic, however, when it is taught in a public school setting to students who come from a variety faith backgrounds (or none at all). One can easily imagine the problems the question "Is Jesus their first love?" poses for Jewish, Muslim or Hindu students sitting in a Texas classroom.

And it is not just the theology that is questionable; these faith-based programs also have trouble with medical facts. One unapologetically Christian abstinence-only program gives this bizarre advice to students:   If a woman is dry, the sperm will die. If a woman is wet, a baby she may get!

Unconstitutional religious instruction is just one of the myriad problems with abstinence-only classroom materials. Students in Texas regularly encounter factual errors intended to discourage the use of contraceptives, as well as other mistruths, distortions and stereotypes about gender and sexual orientation. The report "Just Say Don't Know: Sexuality Education in Texas Public Schools" - sponsored by the religious liberties watchdog group Texas Freedom Network - is available at www.JustSayDontKnow.org.

Though this study documents problems in Texas classrooms, those in other states shouldn't be too smug. Given the federal government's huge investment in abstinence-only education over the last decade, these same materials may already be in a public school classroom near you.

Guest post by Sharon Salzberg, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass., and The Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.

I went to India in March of 2008, journeying there for the first time in 12 years. For over three decades India has been my spiritual home, the place where I first found meditation practice, discovered my innermost values, and forged my authentic life.

I'd gone for teachings the Dalai Lama was conducting--the first three days primarily for Indians, the next five primarily for Westerners (this latter group included many of the early translators from Tibetan into other languages.)

As it turned out, I arrived in India about 10 days after protests and demonstrations broke out in Tibet, which, as the Dalai Lama put it, "are the outburst of long pent-up physical and mental anguish of the Tibetans and the feeling of deep resentment against the suppression of the rights of Tibetan people."

It is a tragic situation, with many deaths, imprisonments, and injuries.  I heard traumatic, personal stories of relatives suddenly behind bars--perhaps never to be heard from again; of a mother looking for her son, work-boots in hand, in case he was sentenced to hard labor; of violence and murders. They were stories hard to even hear, let alone, as I can only imagine, live.

We were all wondering what in the world the Dalai Lama, who must hear these stories over and over again, all the time, day after day, would say. His comment at the beginning of each of these two teaching sessions was, amazingly, "My mind is filled with disturbing thoughts, but my heart is very steady."

How could he accomplish that, someone asked. After a while the Dalai Lama talked about his practice, especially tonglen, which is a method, as Ani Pema Chodron describes it, "for connecting with suffering --ours and that which is all around us-- everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other's pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness."

It was tremendously inspiring to see the Dalai Lama, in the midst of the awful situation faced by Tibetans and the sorrow and sense of helplessness felt by all of us, delineate such a clear path: the possibility of strength of action born from compassion, rather than hatred. It is one thing to say that and mean it from the comfort of one's climate controlled, very nice hotel room in New Delhi, having faced some minor challenges in the day, and it is quite another to say it and mean it when the people you are leading are in devastating pain, and you may never get home again.

The strength of the Dalai Lama's vision is expressed in his insistence that a solution to the Tibet situation needs to (and would be) beneficial to the Chinese people as well. In circumstances where it would seem so many of us would fall into rigid determinations of us and them, or confuse vengefulness for enduring strength and courage, or mistake compassion for weakness, the Dalai Lama continually points to another way. As an example of this, in March of 2003 the Dalai Lama issued this statement on war:

"We have seen that we cannot solve human problems by fighting. Problems resulting from differences in opinion must be resolved through the gradual process of dialogue. Undoubtedly, wars produce victors and losers; but only temporarily. Victory or defeat resulting from wars cannot be long-lasting. Secondly, our world has become so interdependent that the defeat of one country must impact the rest of the world, or cause all of us to suffer losses either directly or indirectly.

Today, the world is so small and so interdependent that the concept of war has become anachronistic, an outmoded approach. As a rule, we always talk about reform and changes. Among the old traditions, there are many aspects that are either ill-suited to our present reality or are counterproductive due to their shortsightedness. These, we have consigned to the dustbin of history. War too should be relegated to the dustbin of history."

I've always been encouraged by my Buddhist teachers to stretch the boundaries of aspiration, eg "Why not aspire to be a fully liberated being, for the sake of all beings," even while doing the daily, or moment-to-moment work of trying to make those aspirations real. The Dalai Lama is my primary model for a life of realization: manifesting both the heights of the immense aspiration we must have and the groundedness of the work we must do in each moment.