Assessing Right-Wing Opposition to Sex Education

How do the opponents accomplish their goals? What do they say? One of their main points is that if we start teaching children and teenagers about sex, they’ll start doing it; we’ll be putting ideas into their heads that they wouldn’t ordinarily have, and they’ll start taking advantage of each other. Thus, we as sex educators will violate the innocence of children. Of course, the research has shown that ignorance, not knowledge, stimulates inappropriate behavior and irresponsible actions.

Why do they do it? The main reason that I’ve ascertained is that they do it to promote their conservative ideals. Issues that these people rally around are those that would decrease the influence of government in matters of everyday life. Thus, they oppose the regulation of business and private enterprise in general; they also oppose programs benefiting the general public welfare, such as the Social Security program. They are also interested in cutting school budgets and gaining control of the schools, for they fear that today’s educators are enticing their children away from the virtuous life of the stereotypical nuclear family and the trappings of material success. In international politics, they disagree with the concept of the United Nations—they want the United States out of the United Nations. In short, they want their own people running the school boards and the elected offices of the different cities and states, and soon all evil would disappear.

Let’s contrast the Anaheim experience with that of Hayward, California, which is a suburb of San Francisco. What the Hayward School District did when they were beginning to implement their program was to bring the parents in and they told them exactly what they were going to do: They were going to integrate the sex education program into the social studies curriculum. They thus emphasized that sexuality was an integral part of life as a whole. They then formed the parents into groups and said, “If we’re going to have trouble,” and they anticipated that they would, “we want you to stand up and back us and fight back.” Soon they needed to do just that. The local newspaper had just been bought by the Hearst newspaper chain and the editor took an anti-sex education stand. The parents went to the editor and said, “We support sex education,” and the editor finally backed down and stopped the anti-sex education crusade. When asked later why he had started it to begin with, [according to Dr. Kirkendall], he said, “Sex and sex education is a hot issue; it’s a good way to recruit people for our conservative ideals.”

How do they accomplish this? One of the main ways, which is illustrated by a recent article in Newsweek magazine, is through book and textbook censorship. Again there is no official censorship, but the large publishing companies, to a great extent, bow to the demands of large book-purchasing states like Texas and Florida who are very conservative. They are forced to tailor their books to the lowest common denominator.

One issue we should just touch on that we need to deal with is the issue of pornography. We do know that pornography distorts sexuality and gives false expectations to unsophisticated people. But when weighing the effects of pornography and other explicit sexual or contraceptive information, we need to contrast it with the devastating effects that official ideologies have had on unsophisticated people and the damage the opponents of sex education have caused. There is no censorship of their distortions of facts.

Other ways that they oppose sex education is to write letters to editors, and to call organizations to cancel talks by people prominent in the field. They also “misquote accurately” as Kirkendall once said: They’ve taken tape recorders into his speeches, and then have misquoted accurately, though out of context, from the tapes.

They also train people how to oppose sex education. The basic tenets are: Speak loudly and positively—sound like you know what you’re talking about. If you are refuted on one point, go to another point. But we find that fighting back is our best strategy and does foster our goals of education.

SIECUS, the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States, several years ago decided to ignore the opposition. The people who were most criticized at that time were Lester Kirkendall, Mary Calderone, and Isadore Rubin, and in retrospect, Dr. Kirkendall has noted, they should have fought back. In retrospect also, they now know you cannot ignore it, because it will not go away.

I’d like to quote, in closing, from an editorial from a newspaper called Impact ’79, which is the journal of the Institute for Family Research and Education, 760 Ostrom Avenue, Syracuse, New York 13210 U.S.A. It was written by Dr. Sol Gordon, who [at the time was] the director of the Institute. It details actions we need to take to accomplish our work:

“. . . Write letters to newspapers—why have extremist ideologies developed a near monopoly on the editorial pages? Attend school board, state legislature, and city council meetings. . . . If you see an occasional good television program, write to the station’s director and say that you approve. Support students and teachers who want sex education. We particularly encourage the Parent Teacher Association, the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers to reaffirm their strong position favoring sex education, and to declare publicly that they will support any teacher, tenured or otherwise, who in the course of teaching a legitimate course, is harassed or dismissed. Report all incidents of violations of free speech and press to the American Civil Liberties Union . . .” (I suppose there are other similar organizations in other countries). But we need to act now.

Perhaps the most important issue we who support sex education and other basic issues of choice have to see is that we have a legitimate right and obligation to accomplish our goals. We have to take some of those issues that are used against us and turn them around. A good example is the issue of “pro-life vs. pro-choice.” I think those of us who support pro-choice have to say, “Pro-choice is pro-life.” We can’t allow life, or God, or country—issues common to all of us—to be usurped by conservative elements. We have to emphasize and believe that one religious system or one political system does not definitively outline what’s moral or right for everyone. We have to fight the opposition with the moral justification that what we are doing and promoting is moral, just, and right. It is moral to teach birth control to teenagers who are risking pregnancy through unprotected sex. It is patriotic to protect the future of our nation by limiting our number of children or not having any at all. It is humanitarian and moral to encourage healthy exploration of our bodies and to allow the development of our potentials in relationships based on love, and respect, and the dignity of mankind. Most of us in this field have a sense of why we’re in this field. Somehow we know our work will ease a lot of suffering, that we will make the world a better place. This is our birthright. Pro-choice is pro-life; we need to emphasize this! Education does not foster inappropriate, irresponsible behavior.