Schools are a hub of information created to educate students on a myriad of topics, including sex education. The United States' lack of medically accurate and LGBT inclusive sex education laws is appalling and must change. While sex still seems to be a taboo in our modern culture, the consequences of irresponsible sex ed are dire. Teen pregnancy, STDs, abuse and bullying are all preventable if the right information were given to our students.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, only 24 states and the District of Columbia mandate sex education at all.
Only 10 states require that sex education be medically accurate. But four of these aren’t mandated to give sex ed.
So, only six states MUST have medically accurate sex education.
This is ridiculous.
Many states opt for an abstinence-only approach.
Abstinence-only-until-marriage: an updated review of U.S. policies and programs and their impact, an article in the Journal of Adolescent Health, says "Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs threaten fundamental human rights by withholding information about human sexuality and potentially providing medically inaccurate and stigmatizing information. They systematically ignore or stigmatize many young people and do not meet their health needs."
John Santelli, a professor of pediatrics and public health at Columbia University, and a past president of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine and a Public Voices fellow wrote an article in the Washington Post called: “Abstinence-only education doesn’t work. We’re still funding it.”
He says, “mainstream health professional groups, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Society of Adolescent Health and Medicine, have come out strongly against abstinence-only approaches and in support of education that promotes healthy sexuality.”
He continues by saying that this agreement is not surprising, given the emphasis in medical ethics on providing patients with all the information they need to make wise choices.
Pediatricians feel the same way about educating children and adolescents.
According to the CDC website page “Sexual Risk Behaviors: HIV, STD, & Teen Pregnancy Prevention” among U.S. high school students surveyed in 2015
- 41 percent had ever had sexual intercourse.
- 30 percent had had sexual intercourse during the previous 3 months, and, of these
- 43 percent did not use a condom the last time they had sex.
- 14 percent did not use any method to prevent pregnancy.
- 21 percent had drunk alcohol or used drugs before last sexual intercourse.
Only 10 percent of all students have ever been tested for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
According to a 2014 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that surveyed teen girls between the ages of 15 and 17, most young women don’t receive formal sexual health instruction until after they’ve already become sexually active.
This is an unfortunate missed opportunity for teens to receive the medically accurate information they need to prevent pregnancy and STDs.
Not only is sex ed medically inaccurate or non-existent, it is not LGBT inclusive.
The Guttmacher Institute also
Bigotry is defined as intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.
Three states actually require only negative information on sexual orientation, specifically frowning upon anything non-heterosexual.
Teachers in some states (i.e., Arizona, South Carolina) and individual school districts are explicitly prohibited from even mentioning any LGBT-related content in a positive way, if at all.
LGBT sexual education is virtually untaught in schools because it is deemed socially unacceptable.
LGBT+ students are being taught that being themselves is inherently wrong, which ostracizes them from society at a young age.
This discrimination is unacceptable!
Education and mental health is more important than attempting to adhere to an archaic notion of heterosexuality and chastity.
Times have changed, and our sexual education should reflect that.
According to GLSEN’s 2013 National School Climate Survey: nearly six in 10 LGBT+ students reported feeling unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation and almost three-quarters of LGBT+ students (74.1%) had been verbally harassed based on their sexual orientation; over a quarter (27.2%) experienced this harassment often or frequently.
As long as it is acceptable to treat the LGBT+ community as unnatural and subhuman, these problems with persist.
Hate often comes from the fear of the unknown, and the LGBT+ community wouldn’t be an unknown if sexual orientation were taught in schools.
So what is being done already?
The Real Education for Healthy Youth Act. These grants cannot be used for health education programs that: deliberately withhold health-promoting or lifesaving information about sexuality-related topics, including HIV; are medically inaccurate or have been scientifically shown to be ineffective; promote gender stereotypes; are insensitive and unresponsive to the needs of survivors of sexual abuse or assault, sexually active youth, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning youth; are inconsistent with the ethical imperatives of medicine and public health.
TheNational Sexuality Education Standards: Core Content and Skills, K–12 states that we must provide clear, consistent and straightforward guidance on the essential minimum, core content for sexuality education that is developmentally and age-appropriate for students in grades K–12. Specifically, the National Sexuality Education Standards were developed to address the inconsistent implementation of sexuality education nationwide and the limited time allocated to teaching the topic.
An LGBT+ inclusive approach to sex education includes LGBT+ people and issues throughout the sex education curriculum; does not assume only heterosexuality in its definitions of sexual activities or discussions of romantic relationships. It challenges the gender binary (i.e., that there are only two genders, male and female, and that are mutually exclusive). It will pay more than token attention to transgender people and concerns and avoids relegating LGBT+ issues to “special topics” and instead includes discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity throughout the curriculum.
So far I have not found any legislation that mandates medically accurate and inclusive sexual education Nationally.
Sex is a biological function, and should not be a taboo that cannot be discussed and shrouded in mystery.
This discussion is vital to the health of our youth to prevent teen pregnancy, STD’s and stigma against the LGBTQ+ community
