Despite so much liberal screaming, Florida’s new parental rights bill does not ban the word “gay” or any other such jargon in public schools, nor does its ban on “classroom instruction … on sexual orientation or gender identity” extend past the third grade. After third grade, students are simply required to learn about such topics in an “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” way — a wise stipulation, considering that 9-year-olds still laugh at fart jokes.
But all the dishonest criticism of the Florida law obscures the real point of contention: So many slacktivists believe that even prepubescent children, still chemically incapable of feeling sexual desire, need to learn such topics as queer theory and two spirits. Still, independent of any traditional or conservative opposition to such tomfoolery is the obvious question of utility that is being ignored even at higher grade levels: Why are we doing all this when we can’t even teach actual sex ed correctly?
By “actual sex ed,” I just mean the plain facts — the birds and the bees. Even as teenage pregnancy rates continue to go down, the number of teenagers having unsafe sex is increasing. The risks are growing.
Prior to the pandemic, a little more than a quarter of high school students reported sexual activity. Of those, a staggering 10.7% of students reported using zero birth control, more than the share who reported using a condom as well as some form of medical birth control, including the pill or the IUD. The most common form of reported birth control, a condom, is also the least effective and the most obviously prone to human error. Even worse, the rates of birth control use were lower among students with more sexual partners, or those with the highest risk of pregnancy or STDs.
Sex ed is not just political — it has a practical purpose. Most teenagers can probably skip the lecture on how maybe they are assigned male at birth, but since they identify as a woman, their attraction to other women makes them trans lesbians. On the other hand, most teenagers do need to be told about the risks of unsafe sex and what they can do in squarely practical terms to reduce the risks of pregnancy and disease.
Florida’s sex ed standards and performance are middling, depending on the metric. According to a 2016 Guttmacher study of 2011 data, Florida’s teenager birth rate ranked exactly 25th out of all the states, but its teenager abortion rate ranked sixth-highest. The state requires comprehensive sex ed, including a specific focus on HIV, healthy relationships, and sexual decision-making, although Gov. Ron DeSantis did pass a bipartisan bill requiring that school districts post information about their sex ed programs and notifying parents of their rights to have their children opt-out.
We have failed to teach sexually active teenagers the importance of doing something as simple as using a condom and dating and socializing in a healthy manner, something the pandemic has surely made worse. Before liberals lose their minds over Florida shielding prepubescent children from lectures on the Kinsey scale, maybe they ought to go back to basics.
