Parents in the town of Manning are in an uproar, and well they should be. Recently, 7th, 8th and 9th grade students in Clarendon School District 2 were given a voluntary Health Behavior Questionnaire. We received a copy of it from the good folks at WLTX, who recently aired a story on the survey.

Here are just a few of the questions from the 17-page survey. Be forewarned, some of these questions are highly graphic in nature…

• Have you ever put your mouth on your partner’s penis or vagina or has your partner ever put their mouth on your penis or vagina (some people call this “giving or receiving oral sex”).
• During the past 3 months, how many different people did you receive oral sex from?
• Have you ever had sexual intercourse (male penis in female vagina)?
• How old were you when you had sexual intercourse for the first time?
• When you had sexual intercourse for the first time, how old was your partner?
• During your life, with how many people have you had sexual intercourse?
• During the past 3 months, with how many people did you have sexual intercourse?
• When was the last time you had sexual intercourse?
• Did you drink alcohol or use drugs before you had sexual intercourse the last time?
• The last time you had sexual intercourse, did you or your partner use a condom?
• During the past 12 months, how many times did you try to get pregnant or try to make someone pregnant?

One parent, interviewed by WLTX, said she was shocked. “If they would have just asked them one time, just asked them if they had ever had [oral sex] and ended it, it would have been fine… [but] for kids that did not know what it was, they now know and they shouldn’t. That’s the parents’ job, not the school’s.”

As a parent of a middle schooler, I completely agree. I have to admit, if these questions had been posed to my 11 year-old son, not only would it have opened up discussions about sex that he’s not yet prepared for, but I can guarantee you that it would have opened up a very heated discussion at the next school board meeting for the sex ed committees that approved the questionnaire.

Admittedly, the questionnaire did say that “(c)ompleting the questionnaire is voluntary”, but it begs one fundamental question… at what cost is research data on students understanding about sexual issues crossing the line?

Parents, we need to wake up and realize that there are forces out there that are slowly beginning to infiltrate our schools and indoctrinate our children with sexual philosophies that go against many of our core conservative values. They have to be stopped.