The D.C. public school system is overhauling its sex education curriculum, but not everyone is happy, according to the Washington Times. Opponents to the proposed guidelines say the curriculum is biased against abstinence-only education, promotes homosexuality as innate and is not age-appropriate.

The proposed guidelines state the following:

• Ninth-graders should be taught to “analyze trends in … contraceptive practices, and the availability of abortion.”
• Eighth-grade students should be taught the definition of sexual orientation “using correct terminology” and learn that some people “may begin to feel romantically and/or sexually attracted to people of a different gender and/or to people of the same gender.”
• Sixth-grade students should be taught that “people, regardless of biological sex, gender, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity and culture, have sexual feelings and the need for love, affection and physical intimacy.”

Sex education’s role in D.C. may be under particularly scrutiny right now. According to the article, a recent report released by city officials says the number of AIDS cases per 100,000 residents in the District is much higher than the national average and that HIV cases in recent years have increasingly resulted from heterosexual contact.

The proposed guidelines still need to be given final approval by the school board before the standards are used to develop a health curriculum for public school students.

A Milwaukee, Wisconsin television station’s investigative report says kids are being exposed to sex education in unintended places, including bookstores. According to the broadcast report, “sexually graphic” books were found very close to children’s sections in area bookstores.

Our cameras caught some kids doing more than just walking by the books. We spotted a boy and a girl in their mid teens lingering in the self help sex book section at the Barnes & Noble at Mayfair Mall. They went thru several different books, many of them with explicit photos of adults in sexual positions. They picked up several different books, all of it just feet from small children.

According to the report, Barnes & Noble’s response to parents’ complaints was the following: “We strongly recommend that they [parents] keep a close watch on their children and keep them away from material they may find offensive.” Borders wrote that stores are told to place potentially objectionable material on higher shelves where they may be out of the sight of youths.

Whose responsibility do you think it is to be sure young kids aren’t exposed to potentially objectionable materials, even in public places? Do you think bookstores need to have a greater role, or is it up to parents to monitor their children?

Ten public health researchers have asked Congress to reduce funding for abstinence education, according to The Washington Times.

“We want to see that the best programs are used” and that “they’re based on science,” said Dr. Santelli, a department chairman at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

The letter warned that the programs withhold “potentially life-saving information” about birth control and ignore the health needs of homosexual, bisexual and transgender youth.

According to the article, the federal government spends about $213 million in abstinence education. The Democrat-led Congress added $28 million to the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) program in the 2008 funding bill for the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education departments.

President Bush recently vetoed the $606 billion bill because it had too much in discretionary spending. The House failed to override the veto and lawmakers are reworking the bill.

You can view a related post about recent studies examining the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education.

Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton vowed Thursday to boost U.S. spending on HIV/AIDS prevention and encourage abstinence and the use of condoms to eradicate it, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Part of the solution, she said, is to teach “abstinence, be faithful and use condoms if necessary.”

At the Global Summit on AIDS event, reiterated a $50-billion plan announced days ago to fight AIDS and malaria.

The plan would increase U.S. spending to fight AIDS by about 20%, according to David Bryden, a spokesman for the Global Aids Alliance. All of the Democratic presidential candidates have committed to the same funding proposal, he said.

Other presidential candidates weighed via a video about their stances on AIDS prevention and sex education.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney and Arizona Sen. McCain praised AIDS-fighting efforts initiated by President Bush, with McCain saying he would favor continuing an “abstinence-only approach” to education about sex and sexually transmitted diseases in U.S. humanitarian efforts abroad.

For more detail about the various presidential candidates’ stances on sex education, please see this related post. The Kaiser Network’s presidential news and analysis Web site gives a good overview of Clinton’s speech and other news outlets’ coverage.

Health advocates and students were arrested outside the White House today during a protest right before World Aids Day, according to The Washington Post.

 Demonstrators said the Bush administration’s response to the spread of AIDS has been ineffective. They called for increased funding and an end to abstinence-only sex education requirements for U.S.-funded HIV and AIDS programs internationally. They said the disease also has been largely ignored at home in the nation’s capital, which has the country’s worst rate of infection.

AVERT, an international AIDS charity, has a Web page devoted to the relationship between HIV infection rates and sex education.

According to a Los Angeles Times article, there is an increasing national push among public health officials and educators for more HIV prevention efforts aimed at aging baby boomers and seniors.

In Arizona, volunteers regularly have passed out free condoms at community centers, and state health workers in Florida host safe-sex programs in retirement communities. In Broward County, Fla., the Senior HIV Intervention Project recruits retired boomers and older residents throughout the region to become “safe-sexperts” who can convince their neighbors to get tested for STDs.

The article suggests seniors are overlooked in HIV prevention and safe sex education initiatives because the over-50 population is a relatively small segment of the population at-risk for sexually transmitted diseases.

Approximately four times as many HIV diagnoses occurred in people ages 25 to 44 as in those 50 and older, according to a 2005 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But this makes seniors more vulnerable because they are overlooked and may have a false sense of security, or a sense of immunity to STDs as they grow older.

Older patients may feel uncomfortable discussing STD risks. But in addition, doctors are also potentially uncomfortable talking about these issues with patients old enough to be their parents or grandparents, according to a recent study backed by the National Institutes of Health.
Another factor to consider is that people now are living longer than previous generations have, and enjoying extended sex lives because of hormone therapy and erectile dysfunction drugs, according to the article.

What do you think? Do you think more funding should be allocated for HIV education and prevention efforts aimed at seniors? According to the article, the majority of funding for preventive education over the last two decades has been aimed at traditional high-risk populations, including teens, gays and urban residents.

A Maine woman has lodged a formal complaint about a sex education book, saying it violates the city’s obscenity ordinance.

JoAn Karkos refused to return the book, “It’s Perfectly Normal” by Robie H. Harris, and urged police to issue a citation against Lewiston Public Library. The library eventually had police issue a summons for the book’s return.

According to other news articles, Karkos learned about the book from American Life League’s protest of the book, including a full-page advertisement in the Washington Times last year that likened the book to porn.

The American Life League released a video news release about the book this week. The American Life League is an opponent of Planned Parenthood and says it plans to release other news releases about the pro-choice organization’s activities. Planned Parenthood published an interview with the book’s author last year in which he responded to critics’ objections to his book.

How explicit do you think children’s sex education books can be without being too much for kids? Have you read or seen this book? You can read excerpts of the book.

A task force has recommended that Denver high schools offer birth control, according to the Los Angeles Times. The school board has not formally considered the recommendation, but the proposal has stirred the debate about whether schools should provide contraception and, if so, whether parental consent should be required.

Denver’s teen birth rate is “more than double the statewide rate of 24.3 births per 1,000 girls age 15 to 17, and Denver school officials are considering a proposal to dispense contraceptives in its six high-school-based health clinics, which serve the district’s most impoverished students,” according to the article.

Opponents say the easy availability would encourage youngsters to have sex.

Proponents counter that sexually active teens should have as much access to birth control as possible.

Recently, a Maine school decided to offer birth control to middle schoolers, leading to controversy and widespread publicity. But most of the country’s school-based health clinics do not dispense contraceptives, according to a spokeswoman for the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care quoted in the L.A. Times article.

In light of last week’s Democratic presidential debate in which Dennis Kucinich explicitly stated support for sex education and birth control, I wanted to post an overview of the candidates’ policies. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States posted a helpful policy update in August, based on candidates’ past speeches and public statements.

Here’s a summary of the a few of the candidates’ policies, according to SIECUS:

Democrats:

• Barack Obama supports sex education for kindergartners if it is age-appropriate, such as learning the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching to educate young children on what to do if facing an abusive situation.
• Hillary Clinton was a co-sponsor of the Putting Prevention First Act, which would also establish a federal funding stream for comprehensive sex education.
• Dennis Kucinich is the only Democratic presidential candidate who has co-sponsored the Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act—legislation which would establish federal funding for comprehensive programs that teach about abstinence, condoms, and contraception.

Republicans:

• Rudy Giuliani’s position on sex education is somewhat unclear. As mayor of New York City, Giuliani supported condom availability in public schools, but hasn’t spoken publicly on his views since seeking the presidential nomination.
  
• Mitt Romney checked “yes” to the question, “Do you support the teaching of responsible, age-appropriate, factually accurate health and sexuality education, including information about both abstinence and contraception, in public schools?” in a 2002 questionnaire from Planned Parenthood. But as governor of Massachusetts, he was a supporter of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.
• John McCain supports abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

Women’s eNews offers additional information about even more candidates’ views.  You can watch last Thursday’s Democratic debate or read the transcript. The next presidential debate (Republicans) is scheduled for Nov. 28.

A researcher at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville is questioning results of a Ohio State University study in February that claimed teens who lose their virginity earlier than their peers are more likely to become juvenile delinquents.  According to the Washington Post article, “so obvious and well established was the contribution of early sex to later delinquency that the idea was already part of the required curriculum for federal ‘abstinence only’ programs.”

There was just one problem: It is probably not true. Other things being equal, a more probing study has found, youngsters who have consensual sex in their early-teen or even preteen years are, if anything, less likely to engage in delinquent behavior later on.

The new study “really calls into question the usefulness of abstinence education for preventing behavior problems,” Harden [a leader of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville study] said, “and questions the bigger underlying assumption that all adolescent sex is always bad.”