I watched the Rob Reiner-directed movie "The American President" a couple of weeks ago on television. I can never resist watching, at least to see the hilarious part where Michael Douglas, as the president, valiantly defends himself against charges (lodged by his evil Republican foe, Senator Bob Rumson) of being "a card-carrying member of the ACLU."

"Yes, I am!" Douglas bravely intones. "But the more important question is, why aren't you, Bob? Now this is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights, so it naturally begs the question, why would a senator, his party's most powerful spokesman and a candidate for President, choose to reject upholding the Constitution?"

Sometimes I laugh so hard that I spit soda through my nose. One suspects that this is actually the view of the ACLU held by Reiner, Aaron Sorkin, and much of the rest of Hollywood. The ACLU isn't a radical leftist organization pushing a particularly insidious agenda--it is merely the defender of the great rights given to us by James Madison, et. al.

In reality, of course, only the most delusional, burned-out hippies (or Californians) could still hold such a view of the ACLU. I was reminded of this while perusing a press release from the Northern California chapter of this courageous constitutional bullwark. The release was entitled "Landmark survey finds majority of state’s schools in violation of confusing sex education laws."

Apparently, the ACLU's beef is that sex education in California schools is not uniform and monolithic enough. The press release is in conjunction with a California Assembly bill that would impose more uniform standards on what sort of sex education can be taught there.

SB 71, authored by Senator Sheila Kuehl, updates the current laws and eliminates contradictions by establishing a new definition of comprehensive sexual health education, setting age-appropriate grade floors for required topics, creating a new uniform parental consent policy, and ensuring that instruction is age-appropriate, scientifically current, and bias-free.

Ah yes, bias free. That will certainly be nice. As it turns out, some bias has crept into California sex education regarding female contraceptives, for which the ACLU chides them. According to the full ACLU report, some of the nefarious schools:

...emphasize failure rates in their classes. One respondent stated that the primary message taught about contraception is that it has "low effectiveness." In fact, research shows that the failure rate for women using contraception correctly and consistently is less than 10% for nearly all methods--in comparison to an 85% failure rate when no method is used and a 25% failure rate for women using periodic abstenence.

The ACLU is similarly irked about the teaching on condom use for preventing STD's and pregnancies:

Nearly 10% of schools that cover condom effectiveness stated that they emphasize the failure rates and ineffectiveness of condoms in their classes. Some of the comments were: “Not a safe method of prevention of HIV and pregnancy,” “ineffectiveness and risks are emphasized,” and “failure rate may be as high as 25%.” In fact, research shows that male condoms are 97% effective in preventing pregnancy in perfect use and 86% effective in typical use.

Are you catching the drift of this yet? The ACLU is annoyed with many California public schools because they are failing to give school children enough faith in Trojans. It's not that they are refusing to mention contraceptives, mind you. The flaw is that they are not presenting them optimistically enough. They are not working hard enough to give kids confidence in condoms. While some schools are saying to kids "Condoms may still not protect you from pregnancy and disease," the outraged ACLU is saying "That's a lie! Condoms will protect you from all those things! You have nothing to worry about!"

So just remember, the ACLU "is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights." And of course, right there in the Bill of Rights you'll find it in plain black and white: "No teacher shall ever give children a conservative estimate of the effectiveness of contraception. They must never err on the side of safety, but rather must instill boundless confidence in America's youth that as long as they use a condom, everything will be fine."

So why aren't you a member, Bob?