The Consequences of Poor Sex-Ed

Recently, I stumbled on a sample of the abstinence book we used in my freshman health class in high school. Beside the fact it has not changed a single bit of content since 2003, its content is completely inaccurate. It hasn’t even changed the legal definition of marriage. It also provides small glimpse into the heteronormative conditioning that our inconsistent sex-education standards brings out. Starting with issue of even receiving some type of education, only 22 states require some type of sex-education curricula. Of those, 12 cover sexual orientation, and 9 have “no promo homo” laws that require open discrimination against queer youth. There are many school districts that also discriminate without help from their government. This fosters a hostile school and community environment for a teen who is out,… Read more »