The “comprehensive” sex education bill that we alerted you to in March has been re-written and re-introduced as HB 3027 and will soon be heard in the Illinois State Senate.

Background

HB 3027 is completely unnecessary and an intrusion into local control. Public schools in Illinois already have the ability to teach “comprehensive” sex education if they wish. Local public school administrators do not need a mandate from Springfield telling them they must teach comprehensive sex education when the preponderance of evidence suggests that authentic abstinence education is successful.

Our own Laurie Higgins identifies a number of significant problems with the bill:

• HB 3027 requires that “course material and instruction shall place substantial emphasis on both abstinence… and contraception…” First, “substantial emphasis” is vague, ambiguous language open to interpretation, Second, typical “comprehensive sex ed” curricula give short shrift to abstinence teaching both in terms of amount of material and tone. Typical sex ed subordinates abstinence to contraception.
• Three different sections of HB 3027 require that sex education “material and instruction shall be developmentally and age appropriate, medically accurate, and complete.” The word “complete” is ambiguous and potentially opens the door to the inclusion of deeply problematic material. For those districts that want to teach about methods of contraception, the term “complete” is unnecessary in that elsewhere in the amendment is wording that requires contraception to be taught.
• HB 3027 defines important terms, but “abstinence” is not defined. What will students be taught to abstain from? Will they be taught to abstain from just vaginal intercourse — or will they be taught to abstain from all erotic interactions. Does abstinence education include abstaining from oral sex, mutual masturbation, anal sex, bestiality, and paraphilias?

What is “Comprehensive” Sex- Education?

“Comprehensive” or “Abstinence Plus” sex education refers to sex-education curricula that emphasize and encourage contraception use, rather than abstinence. In fact, a study of the most common “comprehensive” or “abstinence-plus” programs found that a mere 4.7 percent contained any reference to abstinence at all. (Comprehensive Sex Education vs. Authentic Abstinence: A Study of Competing Curricula by Shannan Martin, Robert Rector, and Melissa G. Pardue, Special Report, August 10, 2004.)

Moreover, the requirement that sex education material and instruction be “developmentally or age-appropriate” is problematic because there is no societal consensus on what constitutes developmentally and age-appropriate content.

SIECUS “Age-Appropriate” Guidelines for Sex Education The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States’ “Comprehensive Sexuality Education Guidelines” recommends teaching 5-8 year-olds about masturbation and homosexuality; teaching 9-12 year-olds about cross-dressing; and teaching 12-15 year-olds about abortion and sexual fantasies. (See IFI’s Addendum.)

SIECUS is the national go-to organization for content guidelines for comprehensive sex-ed curricula.

The evidence that comprehensive sex educators provide for their dismissal of abstinence education is poor. For example, they criticize abstinence curricula by saying that virginity pledges are ineffective. But virginity pledges do not constitute abstinence curricula. Virginity pledges are part of some abstinence curricula.

Comprehensive sex educators also assert that abstinence education is a failure because students who have been through abstinence programs are no more likely to be abstinent than are students who have been through comprehensive sex ed programs. The problem lies with the logic in this argument. If both groups of students are equally sexually active and, therefore, abstinence curricula are failures, then so too are comprehensive sex ed curricula failures.

Contraception-centered sex-education curricula encourage children and youth into early sexual experimentation. They mislead youth and create a false hope that condoms will provide sufficient protection from the physical, emotional and social consequences of early sexual activity. Authentic abstinence education programs provide youth with life and character skills, not condom skills. Sexual activity among youth is far too costly for adolescents, families, society and taxpayers.

Passing HB 3027 would mandate the teaching of curricula that most parents and taxpayers would find objectionable.

SENATE BILL WOULD REQUIRE PUBLIC SCHOOLS TO CHOOSE INAPPPROPRIATE CONDOM- TRAINING SEX ED PROGRAMS AND OUTLAW ABSTINENCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS

SENATE BILL 1619, sponsored by State Senator Heather A. Steans (D-Chicago), is a legislative proposal that would create a so-called “Personal Responsibility Education Program Act.” This bill is scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Public Health Committee at the State Capitol in Springfield on Tuesday, March 8th at 1:00pm.

Background

SB 1619 mandates that all elementary and secondary public schools that offer sex education or sexual health education programs must choose only programs from a list of curricula approved by the Illinois Department of Human Services. The affect of this would be to shut out all abstinence education programs that focus on abstaining from sex until marriage and that stress character-building. Abstinence education programs aimed at older age-groups have research-based and well-documented information on what sexually transmitted diseases are and how they are contracted as well as teen STD statistics.

The only approved curricula would be so-called “comprehensive sex education” programs which include condom-training, teaching “tolerance”(i.e. approval) of homosexual lifestyles; various ways of sexual self-gratification; condom usage; information on how to be close to a person without having intercourse, including “body massage, bathing together, masturbation, sensuous feeding, fantasizing, watching erotic movies, and reading erotic books and magazines [from Focus on Kids – ages 9-15].” Another program for adolescents, “Be Proud Be Responsible,” states, “Go to the store together. Buy lots of different brands and colors [of condoms]. Plan a special day when you can experiment. Just talking about how you’ll use all of those condoms can be a turn on” (80). [Emphasis added.]

SB 1619 states that approved curricula must be “medically accurate and developmentally and age appropriate.” It also states that “medically accurate” means “verified or supported by the weight of research conducted in compliance with accepted scientific methods and published in peer-reviewed journals…or comprising information that leading professional organizations [like Planned Parenthood’s Alan Guttmacher Institute]….” Despite the fact that abstinence education programs are both medically accurate and supported by sound research, the pro-comprehensive sex ed proponents reject them for ideological reasons, and it is their voices that the Department of Human Services will hear.

Additionally, the so-called “peer-reviewed journals” refuse to publish articles that provide evidence that abstinence education is more effective than “comprehensive sex ed,” so there will be no peer-review reviewed journal articles to support abstinence programs. The system is rigged to keep abstinence programs off the list of possible choices even though they are more effective in stopping and/or preventing sexual activity in young people than comprehensive sex ed programs.

Recently, the U.S. Center for Disease Control reported that abstinence is on the rise, saying that “in 2006-2008, 29 percent of women and 27 percent of men ages 15 to 24 reported not having any sexual contact compared with 22 percent in 2002.” This only reinforces the claim that students can keep commitments to sexual purity.

SB 1619 also states that program “instruction must be free from bias in accordance with the Illinois Human Rights Act.” Thus, the approved programs will be those that focus on “tolerance,” that is, approval, of homosexuality — one of the bases for a protected class in the Illinois Human Rights Act.

The bill also removes “until marriage” in the requirement that all sex education courses teach “abstinence until marriage.” There are two purposes behind this change. First, since homosexuals in Illinois cannot marry, some argue that teaching abstinence until marriage is “discriminatory” and in violation of the Illinois Human Rights Act.

Second, by leaving in just the word “abstinence,” the law allows for teaching that abstinence need only be maintained until some other criterion is met (e.g., until “the second date,” or until “he says he cares about you”). Because of their biases, SB 1619 proponents want to eliminate the long-standing and explicit commitment of the State of Illinois to “abstinence until marriage.”