![]() ![]() To be honest, it didn’t strike me at first as particularly dramatic. The class started to murmur at my son’s attempt to challenge this visiting educator. (When I got home, I discovered it is a 501(c)(4) organization-a lobbying group that does things like trying to stop “anti-abstinence justices” from getting federal judgeships.) “You can look up anything on the internet.” She referred him instead to the National Abstinence Education Association’s website. He gave his teacher a copy of what he had brought. “Then why are you teaching abstinence when it doesn’t decrease the amount of premarital sex and increases dangerous practices, including sex without contraception?” he said. He asked her if her teaching of sexual practices was evidence-based. Thomas-started class by asking if there were any questions from last time. The visiting sex-ed presenter-let’s call her Ms. (What can I say? We’re a household of data geeks.) ![]() He then remarked to me that in class, he had turned to his classmate and said, “I can see I’m going to be spending some time with Google Scholar tonight.” Having heard previously from me about the ineffectiveness of abstinence education, he wanted to gather some data about it that he could present to the teachers. How do you know if you’re sexually compatible? (3) Whomever you love enough to marry deserves to have you well-practiced at sex before you marry. (2) Marrying someone who you haven’t had sex with is a potential disaster. I told my son why I think teaching teenagers abstinence is stupid, channeling all I’ve come to understand thanks to years of listening to the Savage Lovecast: (1) Sex is pleasurable, and there’s no good reason you should deny it to yourself if you have a consenting partner and you’re on the same page. It’s not abstinence only, but it may as well be. Now he’s a freshman in high school, and his sex ed is being taught in a health class by a gym teacher in conjunction with some “special helpers.” Two evenings ago, as we were driving back from the vet with a pet rat suffering from a bad foot, my son broke it to me: They are teaching sexual abstinence in the class. (I am a sex researcher and I work on intersex he knows a lot about sex anatomy.) In middle school, he had to help the teacher explain something about sex anatomy when the teacher was stumped and my son happened to know the facts. In elementary school, he apparently learned that HIV is hereditary because you get it from your mother. ![]() Until yesterday, I only ever found out what happened in my son’s sex-ed classes by asking him about it. ![]()
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