by Lola

The Catholic Church has long tried to keep Mexico’s sexuality under its massive thumb, gaining millions of souls through disapproval of birth control, while averting its gaze towards married men having affairs, steamy telenovelas and other goings on. But you know how it is: the tighter you try to hold onto something, the more you lose it.

Now Mexico City governor Marcelo Ebrard proposes “Responsible Sexuality” by distributing a high school text book in public schools (oh, and the metro) entitled “Your Future in Freedom, for a responsible sexuality and reproduction health”. Or something to that effect. My powers of translation are at an all time low today.

I wonder how loud the Catholic officials will scream. I predict to High Heaven.

The presentation was done at a “World Village” forum set up as part of the recent XVII International Conference on AIDS. According to Ebrard, the objective of this publication is to give youths the necessary information so they can practice sex freely (free sex???) and educate them about their sexual and reproductive rights.

Sounds mighty mighty progressive to me. Especially in a Catholic nation known, again, for its severe allergy to birth control.

Topics include birth control (yikes), relationships and emotional issues between couples, sexually transmitted diseases and legal abortion (double yikes).

The book is 168 pages long, with a print run of 580,000. I think there are more than 580,000 sexually-active teenagers out there in Mexico City, but I could be wrong. It’s a start, though. Plus, they can learn to share more than their bodies, I guess.

According to Ebrard, the books to be distributed in the metro are there because “we all have the right [to own the book]”. Cool.

This is a SERIOUS sign of the times. If someone would have come up with a book like this 20 years ago—never mind the fact that it’s being distributed in schools—the priests would have happily brought back the Inquisition in one fell swoop.

Bravo.