Readers Speak Out About New Sex-Education Curriculum

Many critics say that these classes "usurp parents' role." Many parents have a hard time talking to their kids about sex. Some tell their children that it's wrong, just "don't do it!" Sometimes they don't say anything. When this happens, most kids and teenagers go to their friends for information, and usually get the wrong idea or facts.

Critics also say that "teaching about sex spurs teens to try it." But studies have actually shown that sex education decreases pregnancy and disease rates. If you aren't given the right information, you could get HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases or become pregnant. If you become pregnant, you might have to drop out of school. If you get a STD, then it will stay with you for the rest of your life.

If youths aren't educated about sex and its responsibilities, diseases and consequences, where will they get truthful answers when they need them? When youths are given the right information, they are better equipped to make decisions that can affect their whole life.

Lee Geiser

Chevy Chase

Move Forward, Not Back

The new eighth- and 10th-grade sex-education curriculum is a long-overdue step forward.

As a researcher and professor of higher education who teaches sexuality issues, I am appalled at how much abstinence-only education and other repressive measures have attenuated my students' education by the time they get to college. They are much less informed on basic health issues than students their age used to be. We need to go forward, not backward.

As I teach my students, Montgomery County is becoming a global community that combines many different cultural assumptions. It is important that we learn to talk about sexuality openly and non-judgmentally, and make the largest amount of accurate information available that we can. High school students are already discussing this. We just need to give them a healthy classroom space in which to do it and do it well.

Loraine Hutchins

Takoma Park

Parents' Roles Unchanged

As a former member of the Advisory Committee on Family Life and a Montgomery County public school parent who also works in the field of teen pregnancy prevention, I strongly support the new curriculum.

The protests by those who oppose adding information about homosexuality and proper condom use are hugely misguided. Emphatic claims that teaching kids about contraception will spur them to have sex ignore solid research showing that comprehensive sex education that encourages teens to delay sex and includes information about contraception is most effective in getting kids to wait longer to have sex and use protection when they do.

This long debate over a relatively short lesson plan has drowned out the most important point of all: When it comes to decisions about sex, love and relationships, teens say that parents influence them more than anything else -- more than friends, the media, siblings, religious leaders and, yes, more than teachers and sex educators.

Schools may be where formal sex education takes place, but it's at home where kids soak in the truly meaningful aspects of these topics. Parents are the ones who can go beyond the "what" to the "why." Schools can't, nor should they be expected to, do all that. So whether you're a parent in favor of the new content or opposed to it, you've got plenty of work to do with your kids after the school bell rings.

Karen Troccoli

Bethesda

You Call That Tolerance?

The new Montgomery County sex-ed curriculum could be summed up in one sentence: Shut up, sit down and listen to our one-sided lesson on tolerance, and we don't want to hear any of your bigotry about the U.S. Constitution.

Retta Brown

Rockville

Brown is a former member of the Montgomery County Citizens Advisory Committee.

Changes Are Welcome

I am an HIV counselor for the Whitman Walker Clinic and the president of Latin@s En Accion, a Washington-area Latino lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization.

On a professional level, I am really pleased to see such an innovative curriculum that not only focuses on a social issue but a very important health issue.

Many of the young men and women facing issues related to sexual education as it relates to sexual orientation or gender identity that I come across through my advocacy work happen to live in the Silver Spring, Rockville and Gaithersburg areas.

It has been my experience that when you help young kids to deal with sexual identity issues they are more likely to be prepared and empowered on other issues such as substance abuse.

There is a child that will benefit from the much needed education that at many times other peers deny them.

Ruby Corado

Washington

Face Sexuality Head-On

Let's keep our children informed and educated. Hiding our heads in the sand will not curb the behavior of our young people. The more education that our children have, the better equipped they will be to make decisions and to deal with the world we live in today. Sexual orientation is not a choice, and homophobia is all about lack of education.

Kathleen Soto Mayer

Gaithersburg

Being Gay Is a Choice

I am very disturbed and deeply saddened by the incredible bias of the Montgomery County school board. They have chosen to teach only one side of the story regarding homosexuality in their new sex-ed curriculum.

Why one side of the story? Because people can choose to live a gay life, or they can choose to change and come out straight. How do I know this? Because I made the change many years ago, and today I am living my dream.

My wife and I recently celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, and we are the proud parents of three remarkable children. I am living my dream because someone informed me that I had a choice -- to live a gay life, or to seek change and be straight.

Why is Montgomery County denying our students the right to choose for themselves? Where is the tolerance, diversity and equality? One side of the homosexual issue is all they are advocating. I am very sorry for our students and future generations.

Richard Cohen

Bowie

Cohen is director of the International Healing Foundation, which promotes the idea that changing from gay to straight is possible.

Educating Straight People

My daughter is a lesbian who had to go to Canada to get married. She now lives in New Jersey, where she and her partner are raising a beautiful baby boy who just turned 1. As I am 60, social conversations often turn to the question: "Do you have kids?" When I respond, I make a point of telling them the story about my daughter and her family.

I'm sometimes amazed at the obvious discomfort that some people seem to feel as I'm talking. My small contribution is to educate straight Americans about gay Americans.

I might not have to do that so often if young people learned a few facts about sexual orientation and gender identification while they were in school. This is why I support the Montgomery County school board's approval of the decision to include lessons on these issues in its health courses, which I'm hoping will include discussion about prejudice and discrimination against gay people.

Mark F. Wurzbacher

Takoma Park

Update Is Long Overdue

We are the parents of three children: one who graduated from Montgomery Blair High School in 2000 and two who are entering the eighth and sixth grades this fall. We strongly support these classes. It is past time for MCPS to address sexual orientation and the issues caused by ignorance and misunderstanding.

The curriculum has been available online and we have read it in its entirety. While it is a fabulous anti-bullying curriculum, it is not strong enough in one particular area: It does not make clear that all of the mainstream medical associations in the United States agree that homosexuality is not a disease or a disorder. Only if a student asks will a teacher say that the American Psychiatric Association does not consider homosexuality a disorder. This is a disservice to all of the students, but especially to those who are questioning their own sexual orientation.

The other "controversy" over this curriculum is a video demonstration of proper use of condoms. Come on, people. There has been a video demonstration of condom use since 1994. The old video was outdated and too long. All research about condoms agrees that careful and consistent use increases the protections against pregnancy and STIs. The full curriculum, which is presented over several years, makes it clear that only abstinence is 100 percent effective against both pregnancy and infection. The video also makes this point. Why would anyone stand in the way of this long-overdue update?

Letitia Hall

and Gavin Brennan

Silver Spring