Sexuality Education

Sexuality education is the curricular area that addresses human sexual development, identity, and orientation as well as sexual behavior across the life span. Historically, public school systems began offering sexuality education classes in the early 20th century, in Chicago. However, these early classes were generally limited to issues of personal health and what was called, at that time, “social hygiene.” Explicit sexuality education did not become commonplace in the public school curriculum until the 1970s, even though many comparable programs were housed under the more neutral sounding titles of “health education” or “family life education.”

By the late 1970s, a growing resistance mobilized against such programs. In addition to harboring hostility toward the civil rights movement and other social liberation movements, opponents focused on public school policies that they believed promoted godless-ness and immorality. Given the opposition's deep unease with public discussions of sexuality in general and adolescent sexuality in particular, rescinding sexuality education classes became a favorite target for their activism. During the 1980s and 1990s, opposition activists launched a series of court challenges to these programs, but they found little success (see Brown v. Hot, Sexy & Safer Productions, 1995). Further, to date, no decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court directly address this point. Consequently, activists refocused their efforts in reshaping extant policies and procedures at all levels of governance, whether local, state, or federal.

Ironically, the HIV/AIDS pandemic indirectly assisted opponents of comprehensive sexuality education. Across the United States, public school districts without sexuality education programs, or those employing perfunctory curricula, embraced sexuality education as part of the larger public health response to HIV/AIDS. As a result, activists realized that they would not be able to remove sexuality education entirely from public school curricula. To this end, opponents of comprehensive sexuality education refocused their efforts by promoting “abstinence-only” sexuality education or curricula that focused on encouraging adolescents to refrain from sexual activity until marriage. While the efficacy of these programs has long been questionable at best, with a political change in the U.S. Congress in 1994, abstinence-only sexuality education found friendly, and national, political support. By 1996, then-President Clinton signed into law the first federally funded abstinence-only sexuality education program.

Currently, while the federal government continues to fund abstinence-only education, even if it is now doing so at reduced levels, there is wide public support for comprehensive sexuality education, not abstinence-only. Additionally, questions remain about [Page 761]whether the content of many of the federally funded abstinence programs is factually accurate. Moreover, the evaluation research regarding this federal program indicates that students who have participated fail to refrain from initiating sexual activity prior to heterosexual marriage and may be more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behavior, in particular, regardless of their sexual orientations or genders.

Citing the overwhelming public health evidence, local school boards can make strong legal arguments in support of comprehensive sexuality programs, particularly by invoking “compelling state interest” in reducing sexually transmitted diseases as well as unintended pregnancy. Additionally, there is evidence that some of the established abstinence-only programs may run afoul of the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by invoking religious justifications for stressing sexual abstinence until heterosexual marriage. However, in some locales, the political risks for local board members and administrators of embracing comprehensive sexuality education would probably outweigh these legal considerations.

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