Lynn Koller
Hometown News, July 25, 2008
The Friday night event at the Unitarian Universalist Society in
Ormond Beach promised free cookies, along with a panel discussion
focused on the topic of reforming the abstinence-only sex education in
Volusia County public schools to a scientifically-valid program that
teaches students about human sexuality based on facts rather than
didactic quasi-religious rhetoric. The panel consisted of Kevin Aplin,
vice president of Florida's Brevard chapter of the ACLU; Jenna Cawley,
director of education and advocacy at Planned Parenthood of Greater
Orlando; and myself.
Despite the setting and the panel, the
issues at-large would have appealed to the most
politically-conservative attendees. Note: Agreeing with the ACLU and
Planned Parenthood on the issue of sex education reform in Volusia
County does not, under any circumstances, make you a de facto member of
these organizations. Instead, you could consider yourself aligned with
the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics,
American Psychological Association and every other major health
organization.
Aplin described the grassroots effort last year in
Brevard County to eliminate its abstinence-only program in favor of
comprehensive sex education. Cawley explained the difference between
these two types of curriculums. Abstinence-only programs are typically
run by religious organizations, exclude or alienate those who aren't
heterosexual, and offer students no information on contraceptives other
than to point out their deficiencies. Comprehensive sex education
programs offer students fact-based information on sex, relationships,
and contraception, while still promoting abstinence as the healthiest
choice for middle and high school students.
I spoke about the
organization that has provided sex education to Volusia County students
through the most recent school year, Pure Energy, run by the Central
Florida Pregnancy Center Inc./Resources for Women located in Deltona.
This is a religious group that receives tax money for sending its
untrained representatives into Volusia schools spouting ideological
platitudes about sex and marriage. Large studies, like the April 2007
study commissioned by the U.S. Congress, have repeatedly proven
abstinence-only programs ineffective in reducing teenage sexual
activity, pregnancy, or sexually transmitted disease rates.
Virginity-until-marriage
vows are an inherent component of most abstinence-only programs,
including Pure Energy's. These vows are almost always broken and are an
insult to those gay and lesbian students - and their families and the
community-at-large - who are legally prohibited from marrying, as well
as anyone who chooses not to marry. We are under no obligation in
Volusia County to teach students this kind of narrow-mindedness and
intolerance, particularly from programs totally ineffective in doing
anything but devaluing a large segment of the unmarried population,
undermining individual parent's beliefs about sex and marriage, and
insulting our children's intelligence, all while it squanders our
taxpayer dollars.
Opponents of abstinence-only programs clearly
don't advocate casual sex with multiple partners - or that teenagers
have sex at all. Instead, they oppose that students receive harmful
propaganda from a church-based organization that uses its
abstinence-only federal funding to subsidize its ministry and
"pro-life" pregnancy center that surreptitiously receives much of its
federal funds.
Florida Statute 1003.46(2)(a) states that public
schools must: "Teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of
marriage as the expected standard for all school-age students while
teaching the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage." While the
wording of this statute is problematic in both logic and intent, it
doesn't preclude teaching about the larger spectrum of human sexuality.
And, fortunately, Florida Statute 1003.46(1) allows districts to
"provide instruction in acquired immune deficiency syndrome education"
and how to control the spread of HIV, which is essentially impossible
to do without discussing contraception and sexuality.
The
citizens of Volusia County have the right to decide that they would
prefer the school district provide their children with a fact-based
curriculum of sex education, as other Florida counties have done, and
as we do in other academic subjects, such as American history as a
mildly ironic example.
Florida Statute 1003.42(2)(f) demands that
we teach American history "as factual, not as constructed" and that it
"shall be viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable." Not only that,
but the history of the Holocaust is "to be taught in a manner that
leads to an investigation of human behavior, an understanding of the
ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping, and an
examination of what it means to be a responsible and respectful person,
for the purposes of encouraging tolerance of diversity in a pluralistic
society and for nurturing and protecting democratic values and
institutions."
Imagine this: Volusia County adopts a sex
education program that is factual not constructed, is knowable,
teachable, and testable, leads to an understanding of human behavior
and the ramifications of prejudice, and encourages tolerance of
diversity in a pluralistic society ...
It could happen. As the
Volusia County School District evaluates its sex education curriculum
options this year, please support the adoption of a comprehensive
curriculum that demonstrates these qualities, as well as effectiveness
in reducing teenage sexual activity, pregnancy, and the spread of
sexually transmitted diseases.
Lynn Koller is a freelance writer and assistant professor of communication at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
