CLOSE TO HOME: Sex mis-education in schools

American culture pelts young people with confusing images of sex in movies, music and advertising. The last thing teenagers need is to receive more misinformation about sex in school.

That’s the crux of the controversy over Free to Be, an agency teaching in Sonoma public schools.
Free to Be has received millions of dollars to promote the idea that sex should occur only in heterosexual marriage.

What’s wrong with these programs is not that they encourage teens to delay sexual activity. State law requires all sex education to teach the benefits of abstinence. What’s wrong with these programs is that they use misstatements in their zeal to condemn any sexuality, adult or teen, outside of marriage.

For example, as a federal grantee, Free to Be may not encourage the use of contraceptives. Like many abstinence-only programs, Free to Be exaggerates the failure rates of condoms. But condoms, in fact, are highly effective in preventing transmission of HIV, HPV and other sexually transmitted infections. We want sexually active teens to use them.

To obtain federal dollars, Free to Be must pledge to teach that:

• Sex outside of marriage causes psychological and physical harm.
• Children born to unmarried parents inflict harm on their parents and on society.

These statements are false. Millions of unmarried adults who have sexually intimate relationships are emotionally and physically healthy. Most children whose biological parents never married are a joy to those around them and grow up to contribute to their communities.

These untrue messages are also biased and hurtful. Imagine being a gay or lesbian student, or a student whose parents never married or, because they are same-sex partners, can’t marry. How would you feel sitting in a classroom hearing stigmatizing statements about you and your family asserted as scientific fact?

Schools have an obligation to rebut the bigotry that fuels harassment and bullying — not promote it under the guise of health instruction.

Medically inaccurate and biased sex education has no place in California schools. In 2004, the Legislature put teen health first and passed a law requiring sex education to be comprehensive, science based and free of bias. Students must learn the benefits of delaying sexual activity, while also obtaining the tools they need to make responsible choices — to resist peer pressure, develop healthy attitudes about sex and, when they become sexually active, use contraception and protection against infections.

Multiple studies show that California’s approach works.

The Journal of Adolescent Health reported that students who received comprehensive sex education were half as likely to become pregnant as those taught only about abstinence. Other studies show that comprehensive sex education delays initiation of sex and reduces sexual risk-taking.

In contrast, federal abstinence-only education has been shown, time and again, to be an expensive and dangerous flop.

Just this month, the Journal of Adolescent Health reported that teen pregnancy rates are rising since 2006, after 15 years of marked decline in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The reason? While adolescent sexual behavior has not changed — teens are just as likely to have sex now as they were in the 1990s — contraceptive use has dropped. The study’s authors link the 10 years and more than $1.5 billion spent by the federal government on education that emphasizes the failures of contraception with rising teen pregnancy rates.

That’s why major medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association and the Society for Adolescent Medicine, support comprehensive sex education.
The rest of the nation is beginning to heed the evidence and follow California’s lead. Approximately half the states no longer accept federal abstinence-only funds and, in May, President Obama proposed discontinuing federal abstinence-only funding and instead providing funding for comprehensive teen pregnancy prevention. This change couldn’t come too soon.

Sonoma County teenagers get enough hooey about sex outside of school. In class, they need and deserve effective, medically accurate comprehensive sex education that includes but is not limited to abstinence.
Their health and futures are at stake.

Margaret Crosby is an attorney with American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, and Dr. Norma Jo Waxman is associate clinical professor of family and community medicine at UC San Francisco.