CNN’S ROLAND MARTIN OWES NYC PARENTS ANAPOLOGY: Calls School Parents “Ignorant and Whiny” for Expressing Concern Over Controversial Sex Ed Curriculum

Roland Martin, CNN commentator


New York, NY—Oct. 31…CNN contributor Roland Martin owes an immediately apology to New York City school parents who have expressed legitimate concern about a controversial sex education program  that will be mandated in all city middle schools and high schools in just nine weeks, the New York City Parents’ Choice Coalition today demanded. In a piece appearing on CNN’s website Roland writes:

“There are few things more annoying than listening to ignorant, whiny parents complain about a school district teaching their children about sex.”

“Roland Martin needs to immediately apologize to concerned city school parents, and if he won’t, CNN needs to do it for him,” said NYC Parents’ Choice Coalition Executive Director and former State Assemblyman Michael Benjamin (D).
“How dare Martin call parents ‘whiny and ignorant’ for having an opinion on what’s best for their children. We aren’t preventing a single city parent from enrolling his or her children in the mandated program; all we are asking is for an alternative for families who find the planned program culturally hurtful and offensive.”
According to its printed curriculum, the controversial Department of Education sex ed program will, in addition to sending students to corner drug stores to catalogue condom brands and to abortion clinics to inquire about confidentiality policies, refer middle- and high-school children to a sexually-explicit website (www.goaskalice.com)where lessons in sadomasochism, group sex, and bizarre sexual fetishes are taught (The DoE denies it uses books with Go Ask Alice references, but the books are listed on the curriculum, and the city has ordered and received them,according to their publisher.)
The NYC Parents’ Choice Coalition, which is composed of multi-denominational organizations representing tens of thousands of New Yorkers, is asking the City of New York offer not just one, but two sex ed curriculums from which parents can choose for the children – the controversial one it has planned and a more traditional, abstinence-based program. The two programs are proven equally effective in meeting the city’s stated goals of reducing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.
Last summer, the City decided to mandate a one-size-fits-all sex education program without consulting parents and without making any plans to inform parents about exactly what their children – as young as 11 – will be taught about sex. The Coalition has been calling on the Department of Education (DoE) to schedule Town Hall Meetings in communities across the city to explain in detail what this new curriculum will entail in individual schools – but the DoE has remained silent. Parents have a right under federal law to know what their children are being taught.
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