Teach Minnesotans Responsible Sexuality

The Minnesota Family Council held a press conference at the State Capitol on Tuesday, attacking comprehensive sexual health education in public schools. Barb Anderson (pictured) and other anti-comprehensive sex education activists pulled examples of medically accurate statements from the curriculum out of context, and called them “obscene” and “bizarre.”

Anderson and the Minnesota Family Council would like schools to teach sexual health education that does not teach about sexual health: Anderson advocates an abstinence-only until marriage curriculum. (“Just Say No” hasn’t worked for the war on drugs, maybe it will work for sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy?)

more inside Abstinence-only curriculum often leaves out the “obscene” and “bizarre” medically accurate information, and instead teaches that “condoms have the highest failure rate of any birth control method.” Instead of encouraging sexually active teens to use methods of protecting themselves from STDs and pregnancy, abstinence-only discourages the use of any method except abstaining from sex.

The problem with the curriculum Anderson advocates is that it leaves people out. Abstinence-only until marriage puts lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students in a paradoxical place. Can they have sex only in Massachusetts? Does a civil union allow them to have sex? If so, then they better move to Vermont or New Jersey. Or how about if they register for a domestic partnership?

Conservative groups and politicians like to use higher rates of STDs against the LGBT community as a reason why LGBT people are immoral (without mentioning that lesbians have the lowest STD rates of any population). The only solution that these groups offer, however, is “reparative therapy” or “praying the gay away.” This dangerous and unproven therapy does nothing to prevent STDs, and instead causes emotional problems and sometimes suicide.

Abstinence-only sex education would also do a disservice to the vast majority of Americans who have sex before marriage. For 50 years, most Americans have had sex before marriage, even in the conservative dream decade of the 1950s. According to the National Survey of Family Growth (PDF), “Among those born in the 1940s and turning 15 from 1954 to 1963, 82% had had premarital sex by exact age 30, and 88% had done so by exact age 44.” Today, more than 75 percent of Americans have had premarital sex before age 20. Without medically accurate information, they will be ignorant about their bodies, ignorant about STDs and ignorant about pregnancy.

The Minnesota Family Council has a herculean task ahead of it. Somehow, it has to persuade more than three-quarters of the population to stop having sex before marriage so that its abstinence-only approach is effective. Otherwise, its curriculum does nothing but leave people unprepared for the responsibilities of sexual activity.

When it comes down to it, telling teens about the realities of sexual activity will certainly delay the age of first sexual intercourse. I remember sitting in a Planned Parenthood sex education course with my parents way back in 1992 (I was in eighth grade). They talked about “cottage cheese-like discharge,” dying from AIDS, and that our dreams and aspirations would take a backseat when we become responsible for the life of another human being, especially if we have to do it as a single parent. All those things would happen, if we weren’t responsible and had sex too soon, or didn’t take the proper precautions like using condoms when we finally did have sex.

What really helped was our parents were there with us, and did a lot of the teaching.

The Comprehensive Family Life and Sexuality Education Act, if passed by the Minnesota Legislature, would strongly encourage parents and the community to get involved in teaching responsible sexuality. It’s clear that parents or teachers aren’t enough and a comprehensive approach is needed. But an approach that doesn’t teach all the basics of sexual health and mandates waiting until marriage ignores 80 percent of the population and does nothing to foster a sexually healthy Minnesota.

Photo by T.W. Budig, ECM Capitol Reporter