Hannah Soyer
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The summer after my freshman year of high school, I spent two weeks in New York City participating in a creative-writing program for teens. One of my most memorable experiences wasn’t the museums or Broadway shows or blissed out time spent writing in a notebook in my dorm room, it was a run-in with a man who was selling “Obama condoms” on the street. Either way, the creators of these condoms were ingenious in deciding to pair two representations of liberation together. Who knew that nearly five and a half years later the president would make a proposal that made the linking of these two things even more appropriate?
In his proposed budget for fiscal 2017, President Obama has cut a $10 million grant for abstinence-only sex ed in public schools. While this should have happened sooner, it is a victory nonetheless. It might go without saying, but “abstinence-only sex ed” refers to a sexual-education curriculum that does not teach kids to use any form of birth control, from condoms (Obama-theme or otherwise) to the pill. The only way to not get pregnant, they teach, is to not have sex. Obviously, this sort of curriculum is heavily supported by religious people and far-right conservatives. However, it does not belong in our public schools. The First Amendment “prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion,” and the major proponents of abstinence-only sex ed often justify it through their religion.
On top of failing to educate young adults about effective ways to not get pregnant and effective ways to not get a sexually transmitted infection, this sort of sex ed does not make room for the realistic discussion of all types of sexualities. Even those health classes that do teach different kinds of birth control are often still behind the times in other things.
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I took a health class in my high school five years ago. I remember when our teacher told us all about the pill, but then proceeded to inform us that she thought parents putting their daughters on it was simply asking for trouble, because it was essentially the parents telling their daughters it was fine to have sex. This completely disgusted me. There was no mention of the other health reasons a female may be put on birth control, and it was certainly a way to make the female students in the room who were on birth control feel ashamed.
I was also upset about the complete lack of discussion of any sort of sexuality besides heteronormative binaries. Homosexuality was never talked about in a prejudice-free, completely open, and realistic manner, and the psychology and physiology of gender vs. sex was never even brought up. Transgender or transsexual weren’t considered valid identities. Of course, they are valid, but these identities were never talked about. The most discussion that we had about this in my high school occurred in my advanced-placement psychology class. But this class wasn’t required, and so not every student was getting the information. If we want health class to be effective, it’s high time we update it to reflect the reality of the times.
Obama’s budget isn’t set in stone. Congress has to approve it, which it has until October to do. It probably won’t be easy for the members to accept this cut and agree on it, considering the majority of Congress is Republican. But let’s hope they do, as refusing to fund abstinence-only sex ed is the first step in making high-school health classes more effective.
