Timeline of Sex Education Reform
in Volusia County Public Schools
May 2008 - May 2009
last updated: June 30, 2010
Contact: Lynn Koller
Ormond Beach, Florida
Introduction
Volusia County Public School officials have made some significant changes from the original "abstinence-only-until-marriage" program administered in 7th through 12th grades from 2000 through 2008 by a veiled religious organization, Deltona-based Pure Energy. This organization used federal funding received for abstinence-only education in public schools to fund the Central Florida Pregnancy Center, which advocates against women's reproductive rights, and used a curriculum containing false information and lacking a factual foundation that promoted a homophobic, at least mildly misogynistic message to students. The material contains false information about contraception and, frankly, is just creepy.
However, Volusia County is still a long way from a
comprehensive sex education program based on
facts over ideology that
addresses the spectrum of gender and sexuality, will help our
students make healthy choices, and will help prevent
unplanned pregnancies and the transmission of
STDs, along with providing students with a
genuine understanding of human sexuality as a
driving force of human behavior. If you are interested in supporting sex education reform in Volusia County Public Schools, please contact me. (Your personal information will not be shared without your permission.)
In the News
In the latest example of powerful political abstinence-only advocates tripping over their genitalia, the married Republican Mark Souder resigned from Congress on May 18, 2010, because he was caught having sex with one of his aides - who he shot a pro-abstinence video with (ouchy).
According to Mike Larsen on the Huffington Post: "Souder made a name for himself as an evangelical Christian who embraces family values such as fighting AIDS prevention programs that include information on safe sex. So, I find it wonderfully ironic that a man who preached abstinence-only for AIDS prevention was brought down by his inability to abstain from his aide."
Of course, Souder is no teenager, and he made a healthy sexual choice, according to abstinence-only dogma: You should never, ever have sex before marriage. Souder has been married to his wife for 36 years. (It just wasn't his wife who he was having sex with.)
I'm in no position to cast stones or judge the inside of anyone's marriage or their sexual choices within the context of that marriage, unless they're in a position of power and their choices reflect that they are hypocritically pushing an untenable, misguided agenda onto my children and community.