Tag Archives: sex ed

STD Awareness: Fighting STDs with Education

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Here in Arizona, Tucson Unified School District has been taking steps toward adopting a comprehensive, inclusive, age-appropriate, and medically accurate sex education program, but it’s been repeatedly delayed by a vocal minority. In September, a vote was put on hold after the superintendent recommended changing the proposed curriculum to focus on abstinence as the preferred method for avoiding STDs and unintended pregnancies.

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Additionally, many opponents of TUSD’s proposed curriculum believe its inclusiveness of LGBTQ kids is tantamount to “indoctrination,” that this type of education “sexualizes” children, and that discussions of gender identity will confuse students. LGBTQ kids have traditionally been ignored or demeaned in sex education programs, and their health matters too. Presenting medically accurate and age-appropriate information does not indoctrinate or sexualize children — it simply helps them make healthy decisions, no matter who they are. And these days, students need to be empowered with as much knowledge as possible to make decisions that protect their health.

Confronting the STD Epidemic

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its annual report on sexually transmitted diseases. It did not contain good news. For the fifth straight year, STD rates are climbing.

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Everybody Deserves Good Sex Ed

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This guest post comes from the Planned Parenthood Arizona Education Team’s Casey Scott-Mitchell, who serves as the community education & training coordinator at Planned Parenthood Arizona.

Is sex education part of your school day? If you are getting information in your classroom about birth control, consent, healthy relationships, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), then you are among a small number of students in Arizona who get this essential health information.

In the state of Arizona, sex education is not currently required — which means it is up to your school district to decide if they want you to have sex education in the classroom. Unfortunately, most school districts have chosen not to provide sex ed to their students.

Arizona doesn’t require sex education in the classroom.

Beyond that, there are a couple of other laws that have affected how sex ed is taught even if your school district decides to provide sex education in the classroom:

  • We are an “opt-in” state — meaning that a parent or guardian must sign a permission slip for you to participate in a sex education class at school.
  • We had what are referred to as “No Promo Homo” laws on the books until April of this year — meaning that teachers could not represent being gay in a positive light, and they could not discuss methods of safe sex for “gay sex.”
  • Comprehensive sex education is not required — meaning that if a district chooses to provide “abstinence-only” sex education (programs that only promote refraining from sexual activity as a method of safe sex and do not review topics like birth control, condoms, etc.) they are allowed to do so.

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Falling Short: Sexual Health and LGBTQ+ Youth

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This guest post comes from the Planned Parenthood Arizona Education Team’s Casey Scott-Mitchell, who serves as the community education & training coordinator at Planned Parenthood Arizona.

We know most young people in Arizona are not getting sex education in their schools — or if they are, it is often abstinence-only, not fact-based, and not inclusive of all students’ identities. Comprehensive sex education programs do a better job of approaching sexuality from a more holistic perspective covering a range of topics such as STDs, relationships, birth control methods, reproductive anatomy, and abstinence, at an age-appropriate level and utilizing fact-based information. Additionally, comprehensive programs are often more inclusive of students’ identities — specifically various gender identities and sexual orientations.

Schools should be responsible for educating all students about keeping themselves healthy.

However, even with comprehensive sex ed, we often fall short of inclusivity when addressing topics of pregnancy prevention and choices, healthy relationships, and sexual health.

As educators and providers of sexuality information to young people, when we talk about pregnancy we often slip into language that assumes (heterosexual and cisgender) identities, which leaves many folks out of the conversation. We all have a gender identity, a sexual orientation, and sexual behaviors that we engage in — sometimes those pieces line up in a way that is “predictable,” but oftentimes, they don’t.

For example, in working with a student who is a cisgender girl, how often are we going to automatically assume she is attracted to boys, and that she will then be having vaginal/penile sex and therefore be at risk for unintended pregnancy? The answer is often. Continue reading →

The Price of Inaction on LGTBQ Homelessness

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Infographic on the polar vortex. Image: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

When the polar vortex hit the U.S. last month, sending temperatures down to record lows that hadn’t been seen in a generation, I was in my own vortex of thoughts and reactions. I felt a guilty pleasure at the warm weather we were enjoying here in Arizona. I groaned when President Trump, instead of expressing concern for the millions who would face below-freezing temperatures, seized the opportunity to tweet his doubts about “Global Waming (sic),” even though five seconds on Google could easily explain how extreme weather, both hot and cold, fits within the projections of climate change science.

A comprehensive look at homelessness examines laws and public policies that put many LGBTQ people on the streets.

I also resented the online trolls I’d encountered months before, when a caravan of asylum seekers was approaching our border, who argued that we should take care of our own homeless people before we let in any more immigrants. It was a cynical framing, that we could only care for one or the other — and where were their concerns for the homeless now, when people on the streets throughout the Midwest and parts of the Northeast were at risk of dying from exposure? With wind chill reaching 75 below in some places, the cold hit levels that could cause frostbite within minutes, in addition to hypothermia and difficulty breathing.

A lot of those trolls, I remembered, had mentioned homeless veterans in particular, to the exclusion of other homeless people. It added another layer of cynicism. If they cast their compassion too broadly, they might have to reconcile it with notions that blame the poor for their own poverty, as if shortcomings in work ethic or financial planning are the only culprits, and inherited wealth, the vagaries of the economy, and other factors play no role in where the chips fall for each of us.

There are other uncomfortable facts people push aside if they avoid taking a broader, more comprehensive look at homelessness. One glaring example is the collective responsibility for laws and public policies that put many LGBTQ people on the streets. Continue reading →

The Racist Roots of the War on Sex Ed

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JBS-supported billboard accusing Martin Luther King Jr. of communist ties. Image: Bob Fitch photography archive, Stanford University Libraries

The 1960s were a decade of dramatic social and political changes, many of them catalyzed by the shock of assassinations or the dawn of culture-changing technology like the birth control pill.

It would seem, then, that by the end of the decade it would have taken an especially grave development to prompt warnings of a “subversive monstrosity,” a “mushrooming program” that was forced upon an unwitting public through an insidious campaign of “falsehoods, deceptions, pressures, and pretenses.”

The John Birch Society published those words 50 years ago this month in their January 1969 newsletter. What atrocity spurred JBS founder Robert Welch Jr. to write this clarion call? No trigger warning is needed for this one. He was alerting his readers to the “filthy Communist plot” known as sex education.

It wasn’t just premarital and extramarital sex that stirred anxieties. So, too, did interracial sex.

Welch’s alarmist language was common currency in an organization that was known for its anti-Semitism and its espousal of conspiracy theories. They were traits that kept the Birchers’ numbers modest throughout the 1960s and ’70s — an estimated 20,000 to 100,000 members — and led to the group’s decline in later decades. The JBS, a far-right group that advocated for limited government, got its name from a Baptist missionary and military pilot who was killed by Chinese communists — an early martyr of the Cold War.

However fringe they may have been, Welch’s words signaled the beginning of intensive backlash against sex ed among a broader base of conservatives. Within months, that backlash put organizations like the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Medical Association on the defensive. As the debate raged, the NEA sought allies nationwide in churches, civic groups, and the media to save sex ed. By the following year, the NEA was reporting that sex ed programs had been “canceled, postponed, or curtailed” in 13 states and were under scrutiny in 20 state legislatures. Continue reading →

Meet Our Candidates: Hollace Lyon for State Representative, LD 11

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The time to fight back — and fight forward — for reproductive justice is fast approaching. The stakes are high in this year’s state election, with candidates for governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and other races on the ballot. The Arizona general election will be held November 6, 2018, with early voting beginning on October 10. Voters need to be registered by October 9 to cast their ballots. Reproductive health has been under attack, both nationally and statewide, but Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona has endorsed candidates who put our health and our rights first. Get to know them now in our series of “Meet Our Candidates” interviews, and make your voice heard in 2018!

[R]etired U.S. Air Force Col. Hollace “Holly” Lyon is facing Republican Mark Finchem for a seat in the Arizona House in Legislative District 11, which fans out from the Interstate 10 corridor across northwest Pima County into Pinal County. A Washington state native and resident of SaddleBrooke, she first spoke to us in 2014, when she won our endorsement but not her race. Her position on women’s health — now as then — is that it should be accessible to all, and that no woman should be made to feel guilty or ashamed about seeking whatever care she needs.

“Democracy doesn’t work if people don’t work at it, or are hampered from being involved.”

Before joining the military, Col. Lyon taught middle school for a year, and supports comprehensive sex education for young people as an integral part of health care. She retired from the Air Force after 26 years of service, gaining expertise as an information technology expert. Her last Air Force assignment was as the Pentagon’s director of education and training for 90,000 IT personnel. She then worked in the private sector. Retiring once more in 2008, Holly moved to Arizona with her wife, Linda, to care for her mom.

Col. Lyon took time from her busy campaign in August to answer our questions by email.

Since we last spoke, how has your commitment to serving Arizona grown? What has happened during that time to give you hope, and what has happened to strengthen your convictions?

Much has happened to give me hope and to strengthen my convictions. Dr. Hiral Tipirneni’s close race [in a special election against former Arizona Sen. Debbie Lesko, a Republican, for an open seat the 8th Congressional District] was not just inspiring because of her great showing, but also because she ran largely on a health-care-for-all platform, and the voters responded to it! That gives me hope that voters are beginning to recognize the role that government plays in their lives, either for better or worse — and it should be, and can be, for better. Continue reading →

Meet Our Candidates: Matthew Marquez for State Senator, LD 20

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The time to fight back — and fight forward — for reproductive justice is fast approaching. The stakes are high in this year’s state election, with candidates for governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and other races on the ballot. The Arizona primary election will be held August 28, 2018, and early voting began on August 2. Voters need to have been registered by July 30 to cast their ballots. Reproductive health has been under attack, both nationally and statewide, but Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona has endorsed candidates who put our health and our rights first. Get to know them now in our series of “Meet Our Candidates” interviews, and make your voice heard in 2018!

[L]egislative District 20 represents Northwest Phoenix and is a little on the red side; however, it had one of the highest early return rates for Democratic early votes in the 2016 election and the Congressional District 8 special election has galvanized networks, voters, and Democrats — which is a new feeling for Legislative District 20.

“I want to create change with you and be a voice for you.”

There are two contenders in the state Senate race, both completing our intersectional endorsement questionnaire with a score of 100 percent. The PPAA Board of Directors brings together a wide range of community members in making election decisions. Together, they evaluate candidates and campaigns to determine how to invest the dollars of our donors — and the sweat of our volunteers. PPAA supports candidates willing to stand and fight with Planned Parenthood, and given the current political environment with the reactivation of so many grassroots voters, we’re looking to Matthew Marquez to take the Senate seat in Legislative District 20, which is currently held by Sen. Michelle Yee, an infamous opponent of Planned Parenthood.

Mr. Marquez was gracious enough to share his responses with us as he took a break from campaigning on July 30, 2018.

Please tell us a little about your background and why you’re running for office right now in this political climate.

My story begins here, in Phoenix, with my mother. As a single parent, she took on the role of both my mother and my father, working several jobs but still making sure she was there in the morning to take us to school. She took my brother and I to all our practices and games, and supported us wholeheartedly. I don’t know how she did it but I know we had what we needed. My story, unfortunately, is not unique. Continue reading →