The Other Paper covered the Sex Ed hearing this week...

Published: Thursday, February 25, 2010

It’s a big week for sexual-health education, as the Sex::Tech Conference will convene Friday in San Francisco, the city where all no-nonsense sex-talk seems to begin.

Educators, software developers, students and sexual-health professionals will spend the weekend discussing sex ed in the digital age. The main focus will be on utilizing new technologies in order to better educate youths on STD/HIV prevention and sex as they navigate through competing, often politicized sexual-health information.

The same mission was on the minds of Ohio lawmakers, educators and health professionals Tuesday as the House Committee on Education heard testimony onH.B. 316, also known as the “Act for Our Children’s Future.”

Introducing the bill in December, state Rep. Stephen Slesnick (D-Canton) emphasized the need for revision of the abstinence-based curriculum currently used in Ohio schools.

“This legislation will require that if a school district offers any type of sexual-health education, then it must be comprehensive, medically accurate, age-appropriate and abstinence-inclusive, providing ways to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS,” said Slesnick.

Seems like a no-brainer. So why is Slesnick introducing this bill as if these were revolutionary concepts rather than a common-sense approach to sex ed?

For those who have yet to read them, current rules on sex ed in public schools read like a Bible-thumping scene straight out of Footloose. Among the problems in the current law that H.B. 316 seeks to address is the omission of GLBT students from the curriculum due to the requirement that students be taught that sexual activity is acceptable only after marriage.

“As a gay student, how can I be expected to uphold a standard of abstinence until marriage when I live in a state where I cannot even marry?” asked Daniel Sparks, a Parma High School junior who testified before the committee in favor of H.B. 316, according to transcripts of proponents’ testimonies that were posted online by Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Central Ohio.

“Right now, my state and school district are allowing myself and countless others to be left out of a curriculum so necessary and so needed.”

Sparks told legislators that the sex-ed portion of his health class was based on the idea that sex before marriage is immoral. He said it was shaped by Operation Keepsake, an organization funded through federal abstinence and family-values grants that believes, according to its website, “in healthy relationships, in sexual restraint and in marriage.”

Sparks testified that his fellow students treated the course as a joke, mainly because they had a hard time thinking about marriage at age 14.

Elise DeVore Berlan, an attending physician in Nationwide Children's Hospital’s Section of Adolescent Health, testified on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics Ohio Chapter. Berlan told the committee that studies have shown abstinence-only programs like those currently required in Ohio’s public-education system are ineffective.

“Alternatively, many studies have demonstrated that comprehensive sex-education programs are effective in delaying onset of sexual activity, reducing number of sexual partners and increasing use of condoms and contraception,” Berlan testified. “Our children and youth deserve medically accurate sex education, so that they may make responsible decisions around sexual activity.”

Ohio’s current sex-ed curriculum defines abstinence as the “only means of prevention and protection that is one hundred percent effective against unwanted pregnancy (and) sexually transmitted diseases,” and omits references to birth control, condoms or other methods of protection.

Ohio law requires that sex-ed programs primarily teach children the “potential physical, psychological, emotional, and social side effects of participating in sexual activity outside of marriage” and of conceiving “out of wedlock.” Adoption is the one option to be emphasized should a student face an unwanted pregnancy.

Under Slesnick’s bill, parents will still be able to opt out of sexual education, but no gay or sexually active students would be left behind, as they are under the current program. H.B. 316 would “stress the value of abstinence education but not to the exclusion of” educating sexually active students about contraception and disease reduction. Information would need to be age-appropriate, objective, medically accurate and free of religious doctrine, according to the proposed law.

The Rev. C. David Morgan of Calvary Presbyterian Church in Canton testified before the House education committee that the bill was a long overdue correction of Ohio’s sex-ed policy. The clergyman gave his blessing to the law, which, he said, would provide students with a comprehensive sexual-health education based on “measurable data rather than the wistful wishes that arise from the fog of misinformation.”


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