By Sara Thomas

 

For decades, abstinence-only educators have been criticized for using fear tactics to scare young people into abstaining from sexual activity until marriage. A new campaign appears to follow that trend. Parents for Truth is a new campaign, funded by the National Abstinence Education Association and promoted by Focus on the Family, that is trying to recruit one million parents over the next three years to fight comprehensive sexuality education programs like those taught by Planned Parenthood.  Claiming that comprehensive sex ed is everything from "very graphic and explicit" to "[encouraging of] sexual activities that put teens at risk," Parents for Truth writes that parents are being "deliberately misled" by advocates of comprehensive sex-ed programs.
 
Parents for Truth also argues that comprehensive sexuality education is not age appropriate, medically accurate, or supported by parents.
 
Research tells a different story.
 
The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) is an organization whose purpose is to promote universal access to comprehensive, medically accurate information about sex. They are responsible for organizing a National Guidelines Taskforce, a group of experts in adolescent development, health care, and education who put together recommendations for sexuality education programs for students from kindergarten through twelfth grade that meet specific age-appropriate needs of youth and adolescents. Comprehensive sexuality education programs like the Be Proud! Be Responsible! curricula, which has been targeted by Parents for Truth for being age inappropriate, is supported by the Center for Disease Control because the program has been shown to reduce the number of sexual partners and increase condom use among students who attend the program. In contrast, a study conducted by Mathematica shows that abstinence-only programs do not reduce sexual activity.
 
Parents for Truth contends that comprehensive sexuality education programs put teens at risk by providing medically inaccurate information, claiming that they "overstate the effectiveness of condoms, underestimate the risk of certain sexual activities, and infer that sex can be made safe and without consequences as long as a condom is used." In fact, comprehensive sexuality education programs teach traditionally accepted rates of condom effectiveness (98% effective at preventing pregnancy). Indeed, abstinence-only programs have been proven to under-represent condom effectiveness and studies by the Department of Health and Human Services and congressional findings show that 80% of abstinence-only programs contain "misleading" and "scientifically inaccurate" information.
 
A survey conducted jointly by National Public Radio, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Kennedy School of Government shows that parents are strongly supportive of comprehensive sexuality education: between 75 and 81% of parents of middle and high school students supported the inclusion of information about where to get contraception, how to use birth control, masturbation, and information about diverse sexual orientations in sex ed programs in schools. Abstinence-only programs do not address any of the above and actually warn against incorporating any related information.
 
SIECUS finds that the ten most widely used and accepted abstinence-only programs isolate and marginalize lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) students. Not only does the use of marriage as the standard for sexual activity isolate LGBTQ students who are still unable to get married in most states, but these programs assume all people are heterosexual and either eliminate discussion about same-sex couples or imply (or explicitly state) that LGBTQ people are abnormal. Abstinence-only programs like the Family Accountability Communicating Teen Sexuality (FACTS) tell teachers to discourage same-sex "sexual experimentation" because they claim it will lead to confusion. Other programs actually prohibit teachers from answering student questions about the LGBTQ community. A policy that requires silence about LGBTQ people may be emotionally damaging to questioning students in need of information and support.
 
These abstinence-only programs also rely heavily on gender stereotypes. Take, for example, the Sex Respect student workbook, which reports "A guy who wants to respect girls is distracted by sexy clothes and remembers her for one thing. Is it fair that guys are turned on by their senses and women by their hearts?" These kinds of stereotypes can place responsibility for both partners' actions on a woman, eliminate accountability for men's behavior, and also ignore students who do not conform to traditional gender roles.
 
Finally, the abstinence-only curriculum tell students that divorce is the leading cause of childhood depression and that the majority of students who commit suicide come from single parent homes. This devalues and labels as inferior students who live in anything other than a two-parent, heterosexual, nuclear family.  Pregnant or parenting students are also stigmatized and subjected to the claim that "bearing children out of wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child's parents, and society."  SIECUS reports that alienation may prevent students from seeking resources that will help them remain in school and be successful parents.
 
Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Campaign to End Teen Pregnancy support comprehensive sexuality education programs as the best way to help youth make informed and safe decisions about their bodies and their sexuality. Independent research studies by Mathematica Policy Research have found that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs are ineffective in delaying sexual activity among young people. The University of Washington also found that comprehensive sexuality education programs are better at reducing teen pregnancy than abstinence-only programs. Parents for Truth claims that these organizations are trying to mislead parents about the contents of sexuality education programs and imply that they are endangering students with false information. Reputable studies that are supported and/or sponsored by the above organizations demonstrate that complete and accurate information about sex works better to prevent disease and pregnancy than efforts to scare students with false information about physical and emotional traumas of pre-marital sex.
 
Several recent studies report high success rates for comprehensive sexuality education programs in reducing pregnancy and STD rates and increasing the use of condoms, while also delaying sexual activity among youth. However, rather than examining the best possible programs to ensure safe and healthy youth, Parents for Truth appears to be focused on making inflammatory accusations to discredit comprehensive sexuality education.