Dennis Dailey's students have put up a website called waglelies.com to show their support for the professor and to expose the hatchet job Kansas state senator Susan Wagle has done to him. It's a good source of information about both Dailey's human sexuality course and Wagle's crusade against Dailey, his course, and other courses like it. It also inadvertantly confirms that as far as Dailey's students are concerned, the primary benefits of Human Sexuality in Everyday Life are not academic, but therapeutic. Here is how the site defends the course against Wagle's claim that it "promotes sexual anarchy," presented in concise, outline form:

III.ÝThe Course
A.ÝPerception that course promotes ìsexual anarchy.î
1.Ý Promotes sex in totality rather than casual intercourse.
Emphasizes context of giving, caring relationship.
Accentuates importance of emotional risk-taking.
Dissuades self-validating behaviors.
Conveys intercourse as relatively small but important aspect of overall relationship dynamic.
B.ÝImmediate Benefits.
1.ÝStronger self image for students.
2.ÝLoss of guilt and shame.
Primary cause of most destructive sexual behavior diminished or removed.
Grants confidence and hope for better future.
3.ÝCloser, Healthier relationships at home and work.
Close relationships do not equate to sexual intercourse.
Greater and more accurate interpersonal communication.
Better knowledge of self and others.
Lays foundation for strong family values.
C.ÝÝLong Term Benefits.
1.ÝDecreased divorce rate.
2.ÝStable homes equate to stable children.
3.ÝCounters intergenerational cycles that lead to break downs in communication and relationship.
4.ÝReduced Crime.
Fewer children learning life ìon their own.î
Self-knowledge, awareness and acceptance reduces behavior that snowballs into violent crime.
Grants tools to solve future, unforeseen conflict within self and others.
More expendable state income through increased personal success and fewer ìwards of the state.î

Taxpayers don't want to pay for KU students to get course credit for getting in touch with their sexuality, but they will gladly pay for KU students to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to be sensitive, successful social workers and therapists. The list above actively works against this last, most reasonable justification for Dailey's course. From the list, you'd think KU undergrads were all a bunch of sexually conflicted delinquents who need the course in order to prevent them from going on to lives of crime, divorce, repression, and dependency on the state. And that doesn't bode well for either Dailey's credibility or the social workers-to-be who pass through his course: the last thing their future clients need is caseworkers who can't tell the difference between the person who needs guidance and the person who is doing the guiding.

I found your blog on Instapundit, discovered Dennis Dailey was in the news, and, since I actually took the class in question, put up a long post on the subject on Iberian Notes in case you're interested. Your coverage has been great. Keep us informed.

While I may disapprove of Wagle's method (and doesn't she have a great name), I'm beginning to understand what she objects to in this course.

In another era, the issues addressed in this course were thought to be best addressed in the church and the family. I think that I agree, although in practice I'm aware that this is unlikely to happen for a lot of people.

KU is ultimately a bureau of the State of Kansas. Here we have the ultimate in worship of the state -- a pseudo-scientific sanitary program for dealing with our spiritual and sexual lives. It's a godawful idea, but there is an acknowledgement here that the kids are unlikely to be getting that from religion.

I may be doing too much thinking for Wagle. I just have a feeling she'd like to see parents and church doing this work, not the state. I agree.

No one wants to side with Sen Wagle, but many see Dailey's course for what it is, "therapeutic blather". I watched Sen Wagle on OReily last night and she did make sevral points that impressed me. The KU's investigation of the affair did seem a bit hasty and what she thought was going to be an investigative committee turned out to be a committee of one. She ended up playing phone tag with the investgator (she does have a life outside of Topeka and Lawrence)and ended by saying she thought the investigation was a whitewash. She seems to be doing what she was elected to do. That she is taking on the sacred cow of academic freedom is what sticks in everyone's craw. So, I believe my analogy with McCarthyism in a previous post fits. Most know that this course is crap, that it is taught gives legitimacy to more "therapeutic blather" for the classrooms at KU and critics are reluctant to take on the school and the professors without hedging for fear of being considered rubes. At some point the taxpayers and more important the parents need to ask just what is going on here.

THis is going to end in tears. John MOney started as a respected researcher at Johns Hopkins and now he's a raving nut, forcing children to act out sexually in the name of therapy (see the book "The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl", which despite its title, is not as pot-boiler.) This KU guy is going to cross the line with a student if he hasn't already. There's something very strange about him and his class, I think. And I'll bet it as a very easy A, which is why peopel majoring sociology or wanting to be social workers are defending it.

I've noted this in prior comments, but I'll say it again--my wife TA's for a course much like this, and it is for that reason that I have had my doubts about the course from jump. The point of the course seems to be, more than anything else, to convince young people that they can't be healthy sexually unless they are willing to disclose copious amounts of personal sexual information to total strangers without shame; also, there is an enormous amount of pressure brought to bear on very young students to sort of "loosen up" and experiment in all sorts of kinky alternatives.

It might be good advice, but it isn't why people send their kids to college. Frankly, there's something more than a little creepy about the swingers, sex shop owners and unlicensed sex "therapists" who come to these classes furiously promoting their lifestyle as if they were selling vaccuum cleaners--and combing every fresh crop of college freshmen looking for a new batch of "business partners," at the encouragement of the school (which is also the home, incidentally, of the Kinsey Institute).

I don't know much about this course in particular, and I'm certainly no fan of Wagle's methods--but there is a very legimitate concern over what exactly is supposed to be accomplished in the classes.

I just read John's first-person account of the course. It sounds every bit as idiotic as such courses often are, complete with a True Believer rather than a professor teaching, and generations of students quietly laughing at him and taking home their easy A year after year. I think it reflects well on John that he managed to get a B. He must have sensed that it would be worse than any sexual humiliation to get an A as a result of this particular interaction.