PRESS RELEASES
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Young people deserve accurate information about sexuality and health issues. The Safe Schools Coalition http://www.safeschoolscoalition.org/ works to support gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth in the schools.
The following information was provided to ERW by the Safe Schools Coalition.
In Washington State, the only sexuality education that must by law be offered to every child is 8 hours on HIV/AIDS (one hour per year beginning in 5th grade). Otherwise, whether and how to teach about sexual health is left to local school boards to decide.
Some districts, many with financial support from the federal government that requires an abstinence-only approach, prohibit any discussion of condoms and heavily emphasize waiting until marriage. This type of approach denies the very existence of GLBT youth in the classroom. It shames those who have already had any kind of sex, even non-consensual. It disrespects the families of children whose parents aren’t married. Some districts use curricula and guest speakers that actively disparage condoms and other forms of risk-reduction, giving half-truths at best and outright misinformation at worst. Some abstinence-only curricula reinforce stereotypes about gender and sexual orientation. For more information about abstinence-only curricula, click here.
For several years bills have been introduced in Olympia that tried to set standards around sexual health education. These bills have all died. Last year a bipartisan request from 41 state legislators asked the Department of Health (DOH) and the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to develop voluntary Guidelines on Sexual Health Information and Disease Prevention. The agencies published those guidelines in January, 2005. Click here to see this common sense document that establishes a very reasonable baseline.
Recently, a new bill has been proposed
("The Healthy Youth Act"), in both the
House and the
Senate, with support from a growing
list of organizations and professional associations.
Why we need the Healthy Youth Act
About 60% of Washington teens have had sex by age 18. Almost all will have had sex within a decade after they graduate.
Although state teen pregnancy rates are declining, 12,000 Washington teens still become pregnant every year and 70% of those pregnancies are unintended.
Sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates among teens are climbing; 6,200 cases are reported among Washington teens each year and many more go undetected or unreported. Untreated chlamydia or gonorrhea can lead to infertility. Some forms of genital wart virus (HPV) can lead to cancers of the cervix or penis. Having an untreated STD makes you more vulnerable to HIV infection. Nationally, half of all new HIV infections are in people under age 25.
While the federal government spends more tax-payer dollars each biennium on abstinence-only grants to schools, 40% of sexually active high school students said they didn’t use a condom at last intercourse. Besides containing misinformation and bias, there is no conclusive scientific evidence these programs actually work. There is evidence that some comprehensive sexuality education programs do work (in helping students delay first sex or reduce their number of partners or their frequency of sex). For more about the research, click here.
What the Healthy Youth Act does
It affirms that local school boards in Washington state can still decide whether to teach sexual health education (except that they must continue to teach HIV/AIDS).
It requires that when they do teach sexual health education, they must do so in accordance with the best practices outlined by the DOH and OSPI Guidelines for Sexual Health Information and Disease Prevention.
It affirms that sexual health education must include support for abstinence but not to the exclusion of disease and pregnancy prevention.
It requires medical and scientific accuracy in sexual health education program content, just as we expect in math and civics classes.
It requires that instruction and materials be age-appropriate and appropriate for use with students of all races, genders, sexual orientations, and ethnic and cultural backgrounds and students with disabilities.
Equal Rights Washington (ERW) works to ensure and promote dignity, safety, and equality for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Washingtonians.
