Imagine entering a classroom, having a seat, your professor takes to the lectern and tells you: “There is an equation, its successful completion results in a separate entity. You will need to know how to do it for the test, but you also cannot do it before the test.” Excuse me? “Oh right, and based on some of your personal preferences or identities, some of you may not be able to take the test at all.”
This, albeit oversimplified, is the United States stance on sex education. The federal government only provides grant money to states that uphold the stipulations of abstinence only education listed in Title V of the Welfare Reform package. However, funding for such programs began as far back as the Reagan administration in 1981. It is important to note that eight states have decided to no longer participate in the program — California never accepted any funding for the program.
There are several problems with the suggested curricula for this program. It contains medically inaccurate (read: wrong, incorrect, false) information regarding AIDS, condom efficacy, and pregnancy. It promotes gender stereotypes, spreading claims such as men like sex for physical fulfillment and women like the financial security. It is indirectly discriminate against gays and lesbians.
The main point of this program is to promote abstinence until marriage. While a few states have recently given same-sex couples the opportunity to get married, the federal stance is that marriage is reserved for a man and a woman. This means, according to the program, gay and lesbians shouldn’t have sex.
The alternative we should be pursuing is comprehensive sex education.
Comprehensive sex education does not advocate morals, religious views, or use fear tactics. Despite what some extreme right wings might think, it does not promote or encourage sex. Nor has it been found that students exposed to comprehensive sex education are any more likely than students of the abstinence only programs. In fact, they have been found to put off their first sexual encounter and report more positively on it than their abstinence-only counterparts.
Comprehensive programs provide only factual information regarding sexual behavior and ideas. It also encourages students to wait for sexual activity in non-biased language. Providing anything other than factual, non-biased information regarding health is a violation of students’ rights. Continuing to use the program after several studies have proven it to be ineffectual is a waste of tax payer dollars. Insisting that it also be used in countries that we are providing financial support to is culturally chauvinistic and ineffectual.
Sex education based on primarily Judeo-Christian religious views in schools violates the separation of church and state. With all of the problems on Wall Sreet and the world economy, isn’t it time the United States stopped wasting funding on ineffectual, propaganda programs?