This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
For the second year running, a bill to update Utah's curriculum to allow for comprehensive sex education died in committee at the Utah Legislature.
Utah instead will continue its strategy of keeping kids ignorant on the hope it keeps them chaste, even though that has never been shown to work — here or anywhere else.
The purported reason Rep. Brian King's comprehensive sex-ed bills always die is that sex education is the parents' role. The schools, it is said, cannot provide the moral framework needed to keep it from being just a how-to manual for all-too-eager teens who already face a slew of sexual encouragement from modern media. Instead, Utah and several other states rely on "abstinence-based" curricula that forbids teaching about forms of contraception, among other information.
There isn't a shred of evidence that abstinence-based education is effective in reducing teen sex. If anything, the research shows that comprehensive sex education better prepares teens for the oversexed world than simply expecting their parents to handle all that preparation. (Parental support and boundary setting are important positive factors, to be sure.)
Utah legislators are showing a couple of positive signs this year on the sex-ed front. That same House committee also declined to advance a bill that would have required parents to opt in before their children received instruction about sexual abuse. This was more "parents should be the teachers" thinking, but it ignores the tragic fact that sometimes parents are the abusers. Those parents won't opt in, and it's their children who need the instruction most.
And this week saw a bill introduced to remove language that prevents "advocacy of homosexuality" in sex-education instruction. Such language is clearly discriminatory, and the bill's sponsor admits it is an answer to a lawsuit filed by Equality Utah to strike down the language.
The thing about sex education is that it's science education. We're all about STEM, right?
Honestly, you can't adequately teach biology without paying some attention to reproduction and the role that sex drive plays in sustaining species. And when that species is human, that discussion also should include the science and history of preventing pregnancy, which didn't begin with the invention of oral contraceptives in the 1960s. People have been managing fertility since they first understood what the biological process is. In other words, since they first learned the science.
And are all parents really up to the subject? How does an intrauterine device work? How about the morning-after pill? How long does sperm stay viable in a female reproductive system? Just saying "don't do it" is not teaching.
This is about giving our children complete educations. If we don't do that, our kids won't keep up with those in blue states who are getting the whole picture.