* So, back in 2003, state Sen. Barack Obama voted for a bill in commitee that expanded non-mandated sex education classes to far younger students. Previously, sex education was available by state law only to children in grades 6 through 12.

The proposal, sponsored by Sens. Carol Ronen, Maggie Crotty, Susan Garrett and others (but not Obama) passed Sen. Obama’s Health & Human Services Committee on a 7-4 vote.

It was backed by the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault, the Lake County Health Department, the IL Public Health Association and the IL Champter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, among others.

* One of the changes, besides the school grade range, was this (all changes underlined)…

All course material and instruction shall be age and developmentally appropriate.

* One of the stated goals of the bill was to make sure that younger children were informed how to avoid sexual predators, and the language on that section of existing law was tightened up (again, proposed additions are underlined)…

Course material and instruction shall teach pupils to not make unwanted physical and verbal sexual advances and how to say no to unwanted sexual advances and shall include information about verbal, physical, and visual sexual harassment, including without limitation nonconsensual sexual advances, nonconsensual physical sexual contact, and rape by an acquaintance. The course material and instruction shall contain methods of preventing sexual assault by an acquaintance, including exercising good judgment and avoiding behavior that impairs one’s judgment.

* The bill came up in Obama’s 2004 campaign against Republican Alan Keyes when Keyes made this point during a candidates debate…

“Well, I had noticed that, in your voting, you had voted, at one point, that sex education should begin in kindergarten, and you justified it by saying that it would be “age-appropriate” sex education.”

* Obama responded to Keyes…

“We have a existing law that mandates sex education in the schools. We want to make sure that it’s medically accurate and age-appropriate.

“Now, I’ll give you an example, because I have a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean.

“And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age. So, that’s the kind of stuff that I was talking about in that piece of legislation.” [Emphasis added]

Keyes was so outrageous on everything else that nobody really bought into his argument.

* Sen. Susan Garrett, one of the co-sponsors, said today that, as she remembers the bill, it never required schools to teach sex education and it allowed an opt-out, both of which are correct.

* This is what Obama told the Daily Herald in 2004…

“‘Nobody’s suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it,’” Obama told the Daily Herald. “‘If they ask a teacher ‘where do babies come from,’ that providing information that the fact is that it’s not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that’s going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards.’”

* However, the proposal was certainly controversial. It was never brought to the full Senate for a vote and the Republicans were against it. Even so, former GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney tried to make it an issue, but it never caught fire.

* And, now, it’s become part of the presidential campaign via an ad by Sen. John McCain…

* From the ad…

“Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family.”

* From an AP story…

McCain’s ad is to air in parts of Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri and Wisconsin, as well as on the Discovery channel.

* Mclatchy fact checks the ad and pronounces it way off base…

This is a deliberately misleading accusation. It came hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad critical of McCain’s votes on public education. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did vote for but was not a sponsor of legislation dealing with sex ed for grades K-12.

* Marc Ambinder also jumps in…

But the gap between the implication (Obama has liberal, radical views about sexuality) and the reality in this ad is pretty big and fairly consequential.

* The Obama campaign is furious…

“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

* My own take: The bill in question was just too hot to deal with at the time, and remains so today. Too often in Springfield, legislators vote for legislation in committee just because it’s supported by a friend, or a fellow party member, or to advance it along because they support the concept but realize that it needs further work.

Obama has said time and again that he supports the concept of teaching sex ed to kindergartners to help them avoid sexual predators, but that’s not completely what this bill was about. If he wanted to just help kids learn the warning signs, he could’ve sponsored a bill to do only that. This bill went beyond that scope.

For instance, here is some of the proposed language…

Course material and instruction shall present the latest medically factual information regarding both the possible side effects and health benefits of all forms of contraception, including the success and failure rates for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

Again, this was all supposed to be age and developmentally appropriate, but the above language had absolutely nothing to do with keeping very young kids safe from sexual predators.

Still, McCain’s TV ad is way, way, way over the top and is terribly misleading, if not downright scandalous. It probably deserves whatever criticism it gets.