This past Sunday, I sat down in front of the television for the Simpsons-watching that serves as my weekly “Damn, Monday’s almost here” reminder. Instead of the usual segue (which involves a local weatherman standing in front of a cheap plywood map), I was greeted with an urgent warning: “The following program contains discussion of gay marriage. Parental discretion is advised.” At first I thought the warning was a clever joke thrown in to poke fun at the recent censoring craze. But when the episode was over, and various media outlets ran articles on the controversy, my amusement was replaced by confusion.

The warning was real. L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Parents Television Council, told The New York Times, “You’ve got a show watched by millions of children. Do children need to have gay marriage thrust in their faces as an issue? Why can’t we just entertain them?” So on a show in which the ostensible hero throttles his own son, exposes his rotund, jaundiced butt and is so incompetent that he routinely threatens Springfield with impending nuclear holocaust, it’s the discussion of gay marriage that should give parents pause?

I’m often baffled by the lengths to which people will go to shield their children (and sometimes even themselves) from things that they consider “unsavory.” Books are banned; television shows and movies are censored or cancelled; products are boycotted; eyes and ears are covered and mouths sing “Lalalala I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” We’ve created a culture of ignorance, a world in which people sincerely believe that what you don’t know can’t hurt you — and that if you cross your fingers, maybe it will just go away.

The representation of gays isn’t the only thing that gets parents’ collective gorge rising, of course; sex writ large has the honor of being the most concealed — and yet most discussed — topic to emerge from human sentience. In the 1950s, Lucy and Ricky slept in separate beds, making Little Ricky’s presence somewhat mystifying; now, although sex has become a mainstay of all the major media, the government funnels millions of wasted dollars ($167 million this year, to be precise) into abstinence-only education, which presumes that teenagers won’t have sex if they’re not given any information about it.

Unfortunately, in practice, abstinence-only education not only fails to reduce the rates of teen sexual activity, it actually increases the number of teens having unprotected sex — with the added benefit of girls panicking when they get their first period because they think they’re hemorrhaging.

Lost in the sex shuffle is the debate over teaching evolution in schools, which brought us such classics as Inherit the Wind and the movie adaptation of Inherit the Wind. Though this particular brand of ignorance — namely, the desire to completely eliminate any mention of evolution from the curriculum, despite the fact that it’s accepted by the entire scientific community and half of the American population at large — is abating, it’s being replaced by a slightly less virulent strain: the desire to eliminate any mention of creationism or intelligent design in the classroom, despite the fact that it’s accepted by the other half of the American population. “It’s a scientific abomination,” progressives cry — well, sure, but it’s a pervasive ideology that would take about five minutes to explain.

Ignorance isn’t a party issue; it transcends party lines and promulgates itself as a distinctly nonpartisan lifestyle. The difference is that whereas the right embraces ignorance in a misguided attempt to protect children whose decision-making capabilities are vastly underestimated, the left chooses ignorance to avoid being (gasp) politically incorrect. Take, for example, the recent hubbub about Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, who stated last month that part of the reason women are underrepresented in the sciences and math might be due to innate differences. Feminists across the country bristled: how could he even suggest that there might be differences between men and women?!

Here’s the thing: although Summers is — and this is a scientific term — a douche, there are differences between men and women. I’m not talking about biological differences; I’m talking about the drastic underrepresentation of women in the hard sciences, the difference in SAT scores, the wage gap and any number of other discrepancies. To tiptoe around one of the possible explanations instead of testing it empirically is itself unscientific (no wonder it’s what women want!), and because discovering the cause is the first step in eradicating the problem, we all lose out.

“But what if we do studies and find that there are innate differences? Then everyone will think women are inferior!” First of all, there isn’t even evidence to suggest that women are, on average, worse than men at math and science; the consistent finding is that it’s males’ greater variance that makes the difference. And, secondly, you’re the one who interprets such a finding to be damaging. Where you see inferiority, I see opportunity for discovering how to teach math and science to girls in a more salient way.

We shouldn’t be afraid of finding out the truth. Yet we are — and our fear speaks volumes about how convincing we really find the opposition. Summers’ censors are really afraid that he’ll turn out to be right; the Parents Television Council apparently finds homosexuality so appealing that it thinks exposing kids to it will lure them to the “dark side.” Scientists currently pounding out angry e-mails because I suggested creationism be mentioned in schools, what are you so afraid of? That a group of students who have just been given a scientifically rigorous explanation of evolution would look at creationism and think it a viable alternative?

In an ideal world, disagreements would be valued for their aid in paring the truth; unfortunately, this is hardly an ideal world. Ignorance may be bliss, but it’s blissful ignorance — we owe it to ourselves to aim higher.