In support of sex ed

My state legislature just passed a law severely restricting sex education.  If we don't hear about sex, the thinking must go, it won't happen.  At least, teenagers won't do it.

Others have argued about the truth of that statement elsewhere, and I don't want to go there for this post.  For the point of this post, let's assume it is true.  If we don't tell teenagers what sex is, then they won't have sex while teenagers.  No more unwed mothers.  No more abortion clinics -- or at least, no teens in there. That's great!

The thing about sex, though, is that it's actually a pretty natural, normal thing.  Eventually, these teenagers are going to grow up, and be in healthy, loving relationships, and happily married, and they're going to want to have sex.  And then what?  Well, sex is this scary thing that we don't talk about.  So now the healthy adults don't know what they're doing or what to expect, or even that there are options for birth control besides abstinence and abortion.  Where do they go now to learn these things?  How can we teach them?  How can we let them know that sex is a healthy part of a normal relationship?  How do we teach our daughters to stand up for their sexual well-being if we are afraid to use the word sex in front of them?  We missed our chance.

So let me be honest.  As a teenager, I hated health class, and sex ed, and I really didn't want to be there.  On the other hand, the intention wasn't really to teach the sixteen year old me frozen in time.  The point of health class was to help me and the rest of these teenagers to develop habits and learn facts that they would need into adulthood.

For example, most of us had parents who took care of our cooking, and yet we all had to learn about nutrition.  Why?  Because someday in the near future we would all be adults, making choices about what we would eat that would affect our overall health and well being.  Daily.  And all those parents who didn't want their kids messing up their kitchen when they were teenagers?  Tough.  They didn't let their kids opt out of the nutrition week.  Because nutrition is about the adult the teenager will become.

So back to sex.  Eventually teenagers will be adults, and living on their own, and they'll need to make their own choices on food AND sex.  And the more education we can give them now, the better those choices will be.  The more fear and secrecy we build around this horror called sex, the more ashamed they will be to learn about it, and the more their relationships will suffer.  Not just their teenage relationships.  Also their healthy, normal adult relationships.

Dear state legislators, I don't mean to offend you, but sex is totally normal and natural.  In fact, even your parents had sex.  At least your biological ones did.  And those teenagers?   Knowing a little about sex, even including options for contraception and not just abstinence, can really improve their future spectacular marriages -- the ones that I know you are aiming for when you pass this law in the first place.

If we don't teach our kids about sex in high school, we are missing an important chance.