The Politics of Sex Education
Do pre-teen (8-12year olds) and teenaged children need to be educated in a mature, uncensored, common sense, inclusive way about commonplace, healthy human sexuality? The Surgeon General of the United States seems to think so, and so do I!
The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/29/nation... reported on June 29, that Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher had finally released his long awaited report entitled The Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/se... The report, two years in the making, is on the state of sexual health and education in the United States. What Dr. Satcher had to report was not pretty, nor was the response to the report surprising, given the varying levels of debate surrounding this issue.
One very important message of the report is that the abstinence only message of sexual health conservative cling to like a life raft in rough seas, is not working and that a more mature approach should now be offered to the nations youth. Dr. Satcher defined abstinence as celibacy outside of a "mutually monogamous relationship," not necessarily marriage, and went on to say that, "Every child needs to have equity of opportunity for sex education…” In the report Dr Satcher stated there was insufficient research to back claims that courses teaching abstinence until marriage had any success in delaying sexual activity among unmarried teenagers. Such programs, which account for the single largest federal effort in sex education, teach that the only reliable way to avoid pregnancy and disease is to remain chaste until marriage.
In what Dr Satcher described as a bid to give scientific grounding to the volatile debate over sex education, he urged communities today to provide young people with thorough and medically accurate sex education as a way to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, rapes and sexually transmitted diseases.
While Dr. Satcher praised the value of teaching abstinence, he said that youngsters also needed instruction in human sexuality; I could not agree more. His report found no scientific support for fears that talking about sex in the classroom led teenagers to have sex at an earlier age. But several studies showed that when students who had taken sex education did become sexually active, they were more likely to use protection.
The report also called on individuals and communities to respect diversity in sexual orientation, saying there was little evidence that sexual orientation, once discovered in adolescence, could be altered. The report went on to say that there was proof that physical abuse, insults or isolation of young people who are gay can undermine their mental health, sometimes resulting in depression or suicide.
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