Mission America

Christian Commentary on the Culture

Ohio Fights Against Risky Sex Ed Teaching

by Linda Harvey

Pushing the boundaries of the law is a specialty of the Left, particularly on sexuality. Invent new issues, push the limits, and then use liberal activist judges to back up illegitimate actions.

Ohio is one of twenty-six states where abstinence sex education is not only required by state law, but where it must be stressed in sexually transmitted disease education. The state’s “abstinence-until-marriage” bill was a huge victory for conservatives in 2001. Diligent parents exposed the Ohio Department of Health’s use of Center for Disease Control’s sexuality curricula called “Programs that Work,” which were replete with detailed advocacy of contraceptive use and promotion of abortion.

So one would think that individual school districts in Ohio would be eager to cooperate with Ohio law, right? Not if groups like Planned Parenthood, GLSEN — the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, Human Rights Campaign and NARAL-Pro-Choice Ohio can sneak in explicit “comprehensive sex education” under the radar, especially in big-city, more liberal school districts.

In violation of Ohio law, schools are promoting a graphic and comprehensive sex education (CSE). Ohio children are being harmed as they are drawn into premature sexual activity in all directions through instruction that tells them all sex is normal and manageable.

Ohio Value Voters investigated in June 2019, and issued a detailed report. OVV found that curricula are being taught to Ohio children that unfortunately line up with the “15 Harmful Elements” of CSE programs, a set of criteria identified recently by the national Protect Child Health Coalition.

These elements are sexualizing children at an early, nonconsensual age and encourages statutory rape. This curriculum does the following:

  • teaches children to consent to sex
  • normalizing anal and oral sex
  • promotes homosexual/bisexual behavior
  • teaches children sexual pleasure
  • promotes solo or mutual masturbation
  • eroticizes condom use
  • promotes early sexual independence
  • fails to establish abstinence as the goal
  • promotes gender confusion
  • teaches abortion and contraception
  • promotes peer-to-peer sex education
  • advocates for sexual rights
  • undermines and violates traditional values and beliefs
  • undermines parental rights
  • refers children to use harmful resources

For instance, OVV found that in Cuyahoga County in Cleveland area, schools and educational programs are using radical curricula like Draw the Line/Respect the Line, FLASH, Making Proud Choices and Planned Parenthood’s Get Real, among other jaw-dropping CSE lessons. These programs violate most or all of the “15 Harmful Elements” mentioned above.

Draw the Line teaches 8th graders in small groups exactly how to use a condom, suggests couples put them on together and that this can be pleasurable. The teacher’s manual advises, “During classroom demonstration and practice, unroll the condom over the index and middle fingers of your hand.” The students are told where to obtain condoms and advised that “anyone can buy condoms regardless of age or gender.”

FLASH normalizes deviant behaviors and fails to disclose risks. In Lesson 12, high school students are told, “Once the condom is on, the couple has vaginal or anal sex.” In one of many sex-enabling scenarios given to students is this one featuring two boys: “Jorge and Luis want to stay abstinent, but things have been getting heated”. The solution is, of course, to have “protected sex.” This curriculum also normalizes gender confusion, teaching students, “When a person’s gender identity is not the same as their assigned sex, it is often called transgender.”

Making Proud Choices, developed for middle school students, uses actual penis models and urges students to find ways to make condom use more pleasurable. Among the many astonishingly inappropriate messages, one lesson will have students introduce themselves and state which pronouns they would like to be called.

In a scripted role-play, a girl is high on drugs and has unprotected sex. She is urged to go to a “reproductive health clinic” as soon as possible and obtain emergency contraception. Nowhere are the students told that if fertilization has occurred, this medication acts as an abortifacient (a chemical abortion). Making Proud Choices also advocates abortion by stating that if pregnancy occurs, among her choices, “she can have an abortion. Because the pregnancy is happening in her body, the woman gets to make this decision independently."

Get Real is for middle school, children ages 11 to 14. One scenario given to students is this one: “You got pretty buzzed at a party and were having lots of fun. You’d heard a lot about oral sex but had never had it before. When the opportunity presented itself at the party, you decided you were having so much fun . . . why not? You figured that it wasn’t really sex, and everyone was wasted and hooking up”.

As with the other programs, Get Real arm-twists young adolescents, even to the point of public shaming, to embrace “LGBT” indoctrination, as in this instruction from the 8th grade teacher’s manual: “Two of the scenarios are written about a relationship between characters of the same sex, which may cause students to struggle. If this happens, it is the perfect opportunity to remind students of the message from Lesson 7-3 and 7-4 about becoming an ally and creating a safe school environment.” In other words, it is not “safe” to have any objections to homosexuality — students must become “allies.”

Cincinnati schools are using the National Sexuality Education Standards, which follow CSE programs and advocate teaching the 15 Harmful Elements as well. Columbus area schools are partnering with Syntero, an outside group that brings the CSE curriculum “Healthy Bodies/Healthy Futures” before student groups.

All of the above and much more are detailed by Ohio Value Voters in its report.

So whatever happened to the Ohio law mandating abstinence as the standard? Certainly a prompt remedy is needed at the administrative or legislative level to bring these non-compliant districts into line.

Or else the children of Ohio will continue to be harmed by the misleading, obscene, and unhealthy elements of these programs.

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Originally published by Eagle Forum, Feb 2020