Throwing sex ed in reverse

A bill to come before the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee would roll back currently successful programs

By Tony Giampetruzzi

For nearly twenty years, Maine’s kids have been learning a lot about sex in some Maine schools. And, in the past 5 years, the way that those kids have been learning about the birds and the bees has led to some pretty positive statistics. For instance, studies show that Maine has one of the highest rates of contraception use among sexually active teens, which probably explains why Maine has one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the US. In a state where just about every health statistic puts us at the end of the list, it would seem that comprehensive sexuality education, a statewide program of abstinence-based sex education, works here. Educators say so, and so do Maine parents, 9 to 1, says Rick Galena, executive director at the Maine Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance and member of Plain Truth for Maine Youth. But Galena and others are worried that that could all come to an end.

This week, the legislative committee on education and cultural affairs will begin hearings on L.D. 1261, “An Act to Promote Abstinence in Sex Education and through Public Education,” sponsored by Representative Jay MacDougall (R-South Berwick), and co-sponsored by a Republican contingent that includes Gerald Davis (R-Falmouth) and Kevin Flynn (R-South Portland). It is a bill that, if passed, would shift sex education in Maine from an abstinence-based program to an abstinence-only program, and that alone, says Galena, would be catastrophic to the youth of Maine. However, the bill goes even a step further, proposing to force sex educators to teach that homosexuality is not an “acceptable” lifestyle.

“This bill is frightening,” explains Galena. “It’s all about politics, not public health. For more than twenty years Maine has been funding comprehensive family life education which can include sex education if individuals schools want it to. The program that has worked covers sexuality and is, in fact, abstinence based. What’s being proposed, though, will never work.”

L.D. 1261 is full of code, says Fran Mullen, director of Education and Training at the Family Planning Council of Maine. “It’s really dangerous because to an uncritical eye, it doesn’t look too scary,” said Mullen “What it will do, though, is take away local control and it totally conflicts with a system that is working now.”

“If this passes it will be absolutely disastrous,” said Tami Eldridge, executive director at Portland Outright, an organization that works with gay and lesbian youth.

Why are these people so nervous? Because each of them has been working for years to help schools and individuals approach sex responsibly and sensibly and, they say, L.D. 1261 is far from responsible or sensible.

What the bill seeks to do is breathe life into federal money that was earmarked for abstinence-only sex education, but has been sitting in state government since the U.S. Congress passed an abstinence-only grant program six years ago. “If your state got funds, it would have had to eliminate any comprehensive sex education and move to an abstinence-only based statewide program if that money was made available to schools,” said Galena. “Maine was actually a leader in coming out to say that this was bad public health policy and a number of constituencies encouraged the Department of Health and Human Services not to apply for the money.”

While the state went ahead and applied for the money anyway, the powers that be agreed not to fund schools. Instead, the money was used for TV public service announcements including the sterile “Not Me, Not Now” campaign.

Apparently MacDougall and his co-sponsors feel that now is the time to take this thinking into the schools, and tack on some homophobic sentiment while they’re at it.

In addition to an even greater emphasis on abstinence, the proposed measure would go further in rolling back currently successful programs. It would require schools to “teach contraception and condom use in terms of actual effectiveness from field studies instead of theoretical laboratory effectiveness”; cease condom distribution at schools; force educators to teach that homosexuality is “not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public”; and set-up a state-run agency — the Maine Abstinence Oversight Council — to oversee the program, thereby taking away local control of programs that already work for prospective school districts.

All that and more is what makes this bill wrong, says Galena. “First, it promotes programs that have been proven to be ineffective. Second, it is blatantly offensive and discriminatory to gays and lesbians and, third, it takes away local control by creating a statewide program,” said Galena. “The risk to gays and lesbians is especially dire because it has been shown that this type of discrimination increases the risk of suicide, substance abuse, and violent victimization. This is a potion for disaster for gay and lesbian kids.”

Mullen says that everyone will suffer. “It’s just really divisive and is basically designed to reduce the number of children born to unwed mothers. The problem is that this is not a public health approach, and they are not going to be able to make their case on that basis.”

Eldridge agrees and points to key language in the bill that should offend more than just gays and lesbians.

“The bill says that emphasis should be placed on abstinence as the only 100 percent form of birth control and there really is nothing wrong with that from a behavioral-theory point of view. The bill doesn’t say that you can’t discuss contraception and stuff like that or that you can only talk about abstinence.

“But, the language that is used in the bill is negative, fear-based, and some of the statements of the bill are not based in fact, they are based on a moral imperative with roots that are simply not in behavioral science.”

According to Eldridge, who will be speaking against the bill on Thursday, March 29, the proposed mandate to emphasize the failure rates of forms of contraception rather than success rates “really sets off alarms” especially in the context of teen pregnancy. “They are saying that (teen pregnancy) is terrible in Maine and they’re creating hysteria around the issue. The fact is, Maine has one of the lowest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation. Yes, abstinence is one positive way to prevent teen pregnancy, but there are a lot of other positive ways as well.”

Eldridge goes further to point out that the bill suggests that teens should be instructed to basically deny all sexual contact before marriage. “Come on, do we really think that adolescents should be non-sexual beings. If so, we’re fooling ourselves. They are and that’s a biological truth. We can put our heads in the sand if we want, but it will be to great detriment,” says Eldridge. “Further, the term marriage is used throughout the bill and that is very troubling. They are making the assumption that sex only occurs naturally in marriages. That is very offensive, especially to gay and lesbian couples who can’t get married even if they want to.”

Representative Glen Cummings (D-Portland), who sits on the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee, agrees with Eldridge. “I’m sad to say that the bill is disappointingly out of touch with the teenagers in my district,” he says. “I’m more disappointed to say that in my opinion it will place our gay and lesbian students in danger, because there is language that is intentionally, in my mind, designed to deny their reality and their sexuality, that’s very dangerous.”

Also sitting on the committee, Representative James Skoglund (D-St. George) backs up Cummings, saying “it has no practical application at all.”

Though Cummings thinks that some conservative Republicans on the committee “might be attracted” to the bill, he’s not sure if they would would come out with a split report. Either way, Cummings says that “in a strongly Democratically controlled house, I don’t think [the bill] would have much legs,” and probably wouldn’t pass.

However, Cummings is still looking forward to the bill’s hearing so that he and the committee can get at ways to use the federal money earmarked for sex education. “I would have to hear if there is a way to get federal money,” he says, “without harming what I see now as the ability of gay and lesbian teenagers to live their lives free of fear and discrimination.”

And, as far as the instruction of “gay is bad” language of the bill, Eldridge says that such a proposal is complete bunk.

“I just don’t understand where they are coming from. Absolutely no public health perspective has said that homosexuality is a bad thing. If you read any sex education guideline out there, they all say that homosexuality should be talked about as a positive, natural identity,” says Eldridge. “Maybe they are correlating homosexuality with the loss of YES on 6 or the myth that AIDS is a gay disease, but I have to say that it’s really unlcear to me. They are obviously making a statement of moral beliefs and couching it in public-health language.”

The bill will begin its formal review with the hearing this week and critics say that it should be watched closely.

“I hope it won’t pass, but there is a possibility, so don’t discount it,” said Mullen. “This is a tricky one that doesn’t look so bad to some people.”

Tony Giampetruzzi can be reached at groovejet4@aol.com.