Responding to Fake News About Minnesota’s Comprehensive Sex Education Bill

Mark Satta
Nov 6 · Unlisted
Photo by Hello I’m Nik 🇬🇧 on Unsplash

Given that we’re constantly being reminded about “fake news,” why do we keep falling for it?

Research and conventional wisdom alike would suggest that it’s got a lot to do with the fact that we’re living in an increasingly polarized society where many of us overestimate how different the political views of those in the opposite party are. Under such circumstances, it’s easy to see our political opponents as less rational — and perhaps less human —than we are. And thus, it’s easier to attribute outlandish views to them.

While fake news occurs both on the right and the left, research shows that currently the political right is particularly susceptible to fake news. This is not because conservatives are inherently more gullible or anything like that. Rather it is because of what Yochai Benkler and his colleagues call the “propaganda feedback loop” style that dominates the right wing media. It’s this style of media that props up unfounded ideas like pizza gate and various ‘deep state’ conspiracies.

Currently, that propaganda feedback loop is spinning out propaganda pieces putting forward inaccurate claims about a sex education bill that is being sponsored by some members of the Minnesota Legislature. The bill is not very long and can be read in its entirely here.

The purpose of the bill is to develop a model sex education curriculum that provides “medically accurate instruction that is age and developmentally appropriate.” The bill puts forward information about the process by which such a curriculum would be developed, but it does not outline many specifics.

The basic contents of the actual bill have not stopped propagandists from vilifying the bill with misleading claims. Today, a video was shared in my social network titled “Planned Parenthood Sexualizes Children in Minnesota.”

The video mixes together two types of context. First, it provides images and information about a book on sex ed designed for teens and pre-teens ages 10 and up called It’s Perfectly Normal. Second, the video covers footage from a rally protesting the Minnesota Comprehensive Sex Education bill.

Set to melodramatic music, the video misleads viewers in several ways.

First, by putting information about It’s Perfectly Normal together with information about the rally opposing the Comprehensive Sex Education bill, the video implies It’s Perfectly Normal is addressed in the bill. But the bill says nothing about the book.

Second, by titling the video “Planned Parenthood Sexualizes Children in Minnesota,” the video implies that Planned Parenthood is responsible for the book and the bill. But Planned Parenthood is responsible for neither. (Planned Parenthood has spoken favorably about the bill but does not appear to be taking credit for the bill.)

Why give the video such a misleading title? The best explanation seems to be that whoever posted the video wanted to tap into the deep hatred many political conservatives have for Planned Parenthood in order to generate clicks. The title exhibits an interest in clicks over truth.

Third, the video refers to It’s Perfectly Normal as a “textbook” (which it is not) that is “now given to children ages 4–10 in Minnesota Elementary Schools” (which it is not). The likely source for these misleading claims comes from the fact that some Elementary Schools in Minnesota have It’s Perfectly Normal as part of their library collection. But that’s a very cry from what is implied by saying the book is a textbook given to children as young as 4.

Discovering these issues with the video was not difficult. I easily found the bill with a Google search, and it probably took me only about five minutes to read the whole bill.

Addressing fake news isn’t a challenge that can be solved overnight. But in the meantime, when we have the energy, we can respond to fake new pieces one at a time. So if you run across fake news about Minnesota’s Comprehensive Sex Education bill, here are a few points you can offer in response.

1) This bill says nothing about adding the book It’s Perfectly Normal as part of it’s curriculum.

2) It’s Perfectly Normal is marketed to children age 10 and up; not children as young as 4. See, for example, Barnes and Noble, which recommends the book for kids age 10–14.

3) The bill explicitly states that sexual health education must “respect community values and encourage students to communicate with parents or guardians; faith, health, and social services professionals; and other trusted adults about sexuality and intimate relationships.”

4) The bill explicitly states that any “model program must include medically accurate instruction that is age and developmentally appropriate.”

5) There is a process by which schools can petition to use a sex ed curriculum other than a model curricula (although from the bill alone it is hard to tell how easily such waivers would be granted).

At one point in the video, a speaker in the rally states that “This issue crosses all demographics, all ages, all parties, all religions. Nobody wants their children to be sexualized.”

That’s true. Nobody (or at least almost nobody) wants their children to be sexualized. But if nobody wants their children to be sexualized, then why are the people at that rally and the people sharing this misleading video so quick to think that is precisely what Minnesota legislators are trying to do?

The logical consequence of the speaker’s claim is that the proponents of the Minnesota sex ed bill are not seeking to sexualize young children because nobody wants young children to be sexualized. But this realization seems to have been lost on the speaker. Instead the speaker follows up her claim that nobody wants their children to be sexualized with the claim that “We have a winning message because we have the truth.”

The irony of her comment that she has the truth while failing to see the logical disconnect between her adjacent claims hits so hard you can almost taste it. But I fear that the peddlers of fake news have gotten some people so distracted choking on rage that they fail to taste the bitter irony of the fact that they’ve turned their political enemies into fanciful political nobodies.

For me, realizations like that can make the problems of fake new and rage commodification seem too big to address. My response for today is to break off a more bite-sized task by debunking one fake news story at a time.

Unlisted

Mark Satta

Written by

Attorney/philosopher writing about law, religion, politics, philosophy, queerness, books, and pop culture, among other things. He/him

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