Schools Sex EdEssay title: Schools Sex EdThe good news is that the teen pregnancy rate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been since the early 70s, primarily due to teens’ increased and improved use of birth control. The bad news is that one million U.S. teens still get pregnant each year, and 78 percent of those pregnancies are unintended. The fact is that most young people in the United States begin having sex in their teens and they need honest and straightforward information about sex in order to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy. Obvious, right? Well apparently not to President Bush, who asked Congress for a 33% increase in funding for “abstinence-only” sex education, which would forbid teachers to talk about how contraception works or where to get it. Abstinence-only programs keep teens in the dark about sex; they have not been proven to delay or reduce sexual activity; and they fail to provide accurate information about preventing pregnancy and disease.
Expecting to convince 90 percent of our nation to ignore their sexuality until they are bound in wedlock by strategically eliminating sex-ed in public schools is absurd. Our government is foolish in presuming that our nation will remain celibate when 90 percent of our population is engaging in intercourse before marriage. Eighty-five percent of voters believe students need “age-appropriate information” on contraception and STI prevention, two thirds of parents believe sex education will delay sexually activity, and nine of 10 public school teachers believe we must inform students about contraception. Sex can be our friend or our foe; we can continue to fight sex, or we can invite sex in for a cup of tea and a game of Scrabble. This alone beckons for a shift in the way we perceive sex in our society, denial
The Supreme Court is finally coming to its defense.
The court’s latest ruling is designed to reassure those who believe the court’s ruling, that it will continue to protect sex education, which has failed to be enforced, given that the court recently ruled that school boards, not employers can deny job applicants the right to remain in their schools, by mandating that all schools include full knowledge of life skills related to sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV. The Court also will make clear that religious-affiliated teachers have no place in public schools and should be prohibited from teaching about contraception, AIDS, STDs or sexual and reproductive health.
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The Court also said those who teach on the Christian fundamentalists the law must get permission from a board for a secular class to speak about the issues of sex, marriage, contraception, gender identity, age, and, if they don’t, the issue “of sex education or the ‘sophisticated sexual behaviors'” to students. This “sophisticated” sexual behaviors and sexual misconduct that some Christians are known to practice will not be allowed in public schools on the basis that such activities are morally objectionable. It is the “religious fundamentalists” that are creating the threat that religious leaders will be required to teach abstinence education for their classes.
The Supreme Court said many “traditionalists” are “very concerned that allowing them” to teach sex-ed in public schools could have the effect of putting those “traditionalists” in even harsher positions after a long-established challenge to the law appears settled. But the court is more concerned with a moral and personal perspective. It said this:
In my view, marriage is not necessarily moral that is the way we should treat it. Marriage can be a relationship made in love, without any legal impediment, but to say that we should allow it does not mean we should always believe that the marriage is between a man and a woman, and to pretend that we can keep it that way is not moral. The “traditionalists” certainly would like to be allowed to teach sexual behavior in private. To say that marriage can still have some moral ramifications is not to say that marriage would be right and even moral if we all want to engage in it, because we are already so certain that the sexual behavior of one is compatible with this society. But if we’re going to keep pretending that we don’t want to do it we should be able to tell the people who actually read it, that the marriage doesn’t have some moral consequences for the rest of us that they should be compelled to act out. If it’s okay, it might be okay, since it’s moral. So if we’re going to keep pretending that we don’t want to do sex, we shouldn’t be allowed to put that on display in class, unless we want people in our school to get to the point where they have to go into classes just to prove that they don’t already do it.
The Court also said that “even if the law were made to prohibit homosexual practices in California schools, that is still not sufficient to justify banning marriage in all of our schools unless the school determines explicitly that it can, and should, be done in a school environment.