Sex Education

All good parents worry about certain things with their kids.  Drugs, alcohol, sex, and rock and roll (just kidding on that last one).  One of the horrible truths is that my kids are some of those "higher risk" kids everyone talks about on the media and in posh social work journals. 

Our community's public school district has privatized their sexual education.  I think we all know why, in this tumultuous political environment it makes more sense to move that liability to a private company.  However the company our school district choose is an anti-choice, Christian organization (think picket signs with fetuses).  When we asked what they taught about the LGBTQIA the response was "nothing".

This was unacceptable to us.  We've always been very open to our children about relationships, sexual health, rape, consent, STD/STIs, and biological facts.  All within age appropriate language.  Even though we're open to these conversations and have actively pursued them in some instances, we all know that there's just some things you won't ask your parent.

Instead, you might ask the educator in the "anonymous question, feel free to ask anything" stage of the class a fairly innocent, completely relevant question like, "How do gay people have sex?"  If you don't think my child finding her question tossed in the trashcan after the class was damaging to her self esteem and sexual health then you don't know the first thing about children or families.

My kids now sit out of sex ed with the super-religious kids. t makes my heart ache when I think about all the LGBTQIA kids in that school (if the 1 and 10 stat is true that's like 100 or so kids) who are either ignored completely by the curriculum or actively dismissed by the educators. Makes me wish I had more time to advocate for those other kids in the school.

Beyond the LGBTQIA specific implications I find deeply disturbing is that these classes did not speak about consent in regards to sex.  This wasn't brought up at all.  How damaging is that?  How can we ask our culture why so many women get raped when we don't treat consent as worth talking about with our children?  

How we cope:

1. We didn't sign the sex-ed permission slip.  Sorry kids, bad education is worse then no education.

2. We didn't leave it at no education.  We reached out to organizations in our community who might be able to do more inclusive sex ed.  (This is one of the many, many services that Planned Parenthood offers, as well as other healthy, scientifically based educational programs).  Our kids will be attending alternative sex ed... what a weird concept.  We certainly try to education them, but know that that external voice can sometimes make the difference.