For decades, public schools that teach sex education have emphasized a key point: that teens should delay sex. If they do not, then they need to use birth control to avoid pregnancy and use condoms to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.
Now, a growing number of states are ushering in new sex education curricula that proponents say will help students build healthier relationships and become more comfortable with their sexuality. They’re having teachers talk to students about consent and catering some of their messages specifically to gay and transgender teenagers so they won’t feel isolated or face bullying.
The changes are happening amid changing attitudes about gender identity and sexual orientation, as same-sex marriage laws have changed, and in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
“There’s a new wave of female lawmakers and students helping to write legislation, testifying, and holding rallies in support of new bills … People who have not had a voice in the discussion are starting to speak up,” said Abby Quirk, a research associate for K-12 education at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
New York, Massachusetts, and Washington state are among the legislatures considering expanding sex education programs this year. While 21 states don’t mandate schools to teach sex education, education departments, even in red states, still provide guidelines for school districts, many of which include language about consent and how to have healthy relationships, Quirk said.
The country may be at the kind of tipping point it experienced during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, when the surgeon general at the time, Dr. C. Everett Koop, stated that schools needed to teach sex education as a way to protect against the virus. His statement on the matter helped build support around sex education, which had long been controversial, and now 39 states mandate schools teach students about HIV.
In the last couple of years, states have passed laws meant to help teach students not to pressure each other into sexual behavior, how to give consent, and how to understand when a partner is not giving consent. Before that, teenagers typically weren’t exposed to discussions about sexual assault in school until they got to college.
Eight states and the District of Columbia now require schools to talk about consent, and 10 states have curricula that have information specific to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender teenagers, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and advocacy group. Although a couple of bills have popped up in Arizona and Alaska on prohibiting discussions about homosexuality, the trend is toward liberalization.
Still, teaching sex education remains controversial, particularly among religious conservatives who say that teens shouldn’t be having sex in the first place and that parents are the ones who should be having discussions with their children. Opponents to state laws think each district should be allowed to decide, or are wary about beginning sex education before the appropriate age.
“There are so many variables when it comes to this issue that are so much better handled by parents than by teachers who have a group of students in the classroom who are all the same age but are at very different stages of development,” said Meg Kilgannon, education associate at the conservative Family Research Council. She worries the permissive attitudes toward sex among teenagers will cause more problems with coercion into sex, not less.
The issue also divides federal lawmakers. A large number of Democrats support a bill that would take away federal funding from programs that only teach abstinence until marriage. Meanwhile, the Trump administration tried to end grants to organizations that were getting funding from the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, which includes information about birth control. However, the move is facing legal challenges.
Still, some support remains for stressing abstinence, as seen last year when Congress overwhelmingly passed a short-term spending bill that included more than $16.6 million for a program that teaches participants “how to voluntarily refrain from non-marital sexual activity.”
Meanwhile, there has been a dramatic drop in the share of teenagers having sex since the late 1980s. The most recent federal study estimates that 42% of females and 44% of males between the ages of 15 to 19 had ever had sex. That’s a drop from 1988 when 51% of female teenagers and 60% of male teenagers had ever had sex.
Federal officials have concluded that this delaying of sex has helped to reduce teen births. They are concerned, however, about the high rates of sexually transmitted infections among people between the ages of 15 to 24, which account for half of the 20 million new infections that occur in the United States each year. No consensus exists on what’s behind these trends, which will make it difficult to assess the impact of new state laws on sex education.
