Ann Althouse Is A Law Professor
Apparently, Wisconsonians (?) are a sympathetic people:
York notes that “nearly all commentators” have accepted Obama’s assertion that he voted for the bill because he was concerned about protecting young children from sexual predators, but:
The fact is, the bill’s intention was to mandate sex education, especially concerning contraception and the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases, for children before the sixth grade and as early as kindergarten. Obama’s defenders may howl, but the bill is what it is.
If you still think the McCain ad lies about Obama, please explain why, using the text of the ad.
It seems to me that all the McCain ad does is decline to accept Obama’s self-serving characterization of the reason why he voted for the bill. But study the text and the legislative history of the bill, as York has, and try to explain how it can possibly be considered a lie to say that he voted for comprehensive sex education for kindergartners.
York’s entire investigation relies on this clause:
Each class or course in comprehensive sex education in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.
Now, two things have to be assumed here in order to get to Althouse’s reading. The first is that the K through 12 marker requires that comprehensive sex education be taught in every grade level contained therein. That’s a bizarre reading of the law, requiring you to think that a curriculum which was never taught every single year before and which wouldn’t be taught every year after the passage of the bill would be made into a mysteriously yearly mandate. The other assumption is that the only thing which the bill is mandating is the same comprehensive sex education for every grade level from K through 12, which