What Sex Education Didn't Teach and What it Definitely Should Have

Why abstinence isn’t the only answer

In Salt Lake City, University of Utah students come together around a conference table to discuss access to sexual reproductive health. It’s barely nine a.m. and the conference room table is filled with various coffee cups and an assortment of bagels while the white fluorescent lights flicker around the room. Members and attendees all nod in agreement. They’re discussing the new cameras that have recently been installed on campus for safety reasons. Junior Grace Mason, President and founder of the Campus Contraceptive Initiative, lounges in a chair next to her pain au chocolat with her Macbook open ready to start the meeting. 

When Mason founded the CCI, she knew there was an issue with access to sexual reproductive health care and the related lifelong implications of contraceptive use. She realized in her research that much of that problem relates back to the reproductive education that’s being taught in Utah and within the United States. 

Around the U.S., there are three main approaches to teaching sexual health: abstinence-only, abstinence-plus and comprehensive curricula. According to the Guttmacher Institute, only 39 states mandate sex and/or HIV education. Similar to other states, Utah requires an abstinence-until-marriage approach to teaching sexual reproductive health.  

The problem with the teachings of abstinence-based programs is that they simply don’t provide a comprehensive framework on sexuality and health. The consequences are dire. Salt Lake Health County recently released their reports earlier this year and among the two highest infectious diseases were chlamydia and gonorrhea. Who are the primary individuals making up that number? You guessed it: teenagers. The two reported diseases were more common than the flu, hepatitis C and tuberculosis. 

Gary Edwards of Salt Lake County Health Department executive director said, “This is alarming, and an indicator that our current approach to sexually transmitted disease education is not working. Teens need accurate, realistic, and comprehensive STD education.” That begs the question: why abstinence is still being taught around the country?

IN THE CLASSROOM

Health teacher Dana Carr sits across rows of orange and white desks in the upper wing of Timpview High School. Carr glances down at the recorder and then toward the door where some students linger outside in the dance hall after school. 

Carr has been teaching for a total of 12 years. She began her teaching career at a residential treatment center, where she taught health for six years before transitioning to a public school setting. This is where she has been teaching for the last four years. 

Timpview is a high school neatly placed on the fault line of the Wasatch mountains in Provo, Utah. Located in Utah County, Provo is a predominantly religious city where roughly 82 percent of the population identifies as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. One defining characteristic of the church is its stance on premarital sex, discouraging members from having sexual relations before marriage.

Sexual reproductive education has changed in the last few years in Utah, Carr explains as she rests her hands on her desk. The curriculum on sexual reproductive health used to be abstinence-only. “You could only teach abstinence. And you weren’t even supposed to be talking about contraception [or] any of those things.” 

In recent years, the state of Utah has adopted small changes in policies. These changes allow teachers to educate about contraceptive use, a previously gray area. The policy adjustments changed the curriculum to an abstinence-until-marriage approach. Carr understands that most kids are sexually active or will be in the near future. She points out that at the end of the day, they make their own choices. 

She also wants to encourage her students to be healthy. Carr looks towards the door, “Of course we know that the teen pregnancy rate in Utah is outrageous. We know that. So we’re trying to say, okay well, obviously, a lot of kids are having sex. So how do we protect them not only from the STDs and all that, that’s out there but also educating them on if maybe you’re not ready to be grown up maybe [...] you shouldn’t be having sex. If you can’t talk about it with your partner then you probably shouldn’t be engaging in it. Right?”

According to the Journal of Adolescent Health, “Today, despite great advancements in the science, implementation of a truly modern, equitable, evidence-based model of comprehensive sex education remains precluded by sociocultural, political, and systems barriers operating in profound ways across multiple levels of adolescents' environments.”

Predominant faith-based states such as Utah represent how sociocultural environments can heavily influence how sex education is taught. In September, several conservative groups went to the Utah Board of Education meeting to protest the new law passed in 2018 which allows teachers to answer spontaneous questions asked by students, that come up when teaching sexual reproductive education. The concerns of groups like Utah Eagle Forum and Pro-life Utah mimic many of the concerns from parents and individuals all over the nation. Parents want their kids to be referred to them about these questions. 

Carr knows that many of her students might not get this information somewhere else. For many of her students, health class is the first and last stop. She leans back in her chair and raises her hands in the air slightly, “There’s not another time when you get that information. I mean, after high school you don’t have a health class that you have to take and learn about. A lot of them are like ‘ugh, I don’t need to know this.’ You know? They’re like I’ll learn this somewhere else, but where else are you going to learn it?”  

Expecting families to teach their children about comprehensive sexual education isn’t something to rely on. When leaving sexual reproductive health topics to the families of students, an array of possible outcomes might occur. For example, students might receive incomplete or incorrect information, if any at all. 

Carr thinks about her students’ background. “You know, a lot of kids aren’t getting it at home. Obviously. I mean a few might.” She sighs, “There’s [the student who might say] oh we talk about this all the time at my house. Okay, but 95 percent of the other kids are probably are not talking about it. And they’re not going to talk about it in depth.” The implications of relying on this unpredictable system of education produces a generation that is ill-informed and that searches for answers elsewhere.

THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS 

This leaves many students to find their own resources and fill in the gaps where their sex education failed them. The Center of American Progress stated that “adolescents receive information about sex and sexuality from a multitude of sources, including the media, school, religious organizations, family, and peers. And as the sources of sex education become even more diverse and are presented in ways that may be inconsistent, confusing, or misleading, educators must leverage these sources and align messaging to help young people determine how best to engage in positive, healthy relationships.”

There is a lack of representation for LGBTQ+ individuals in standardized sex education. Lakshan Lingam, 21, recalled their own experience with their sexuality within queer exclusive sex education. “Personally, I received the majority of my sexual education from LGBTQ+  individuals who figured out queer sex on their own. I was also incredibly fortunate to have come across a number of sex-positive individuals that were willing to communicate their own sexual experiences.”  

Lingam had graduated from Timpview, having received the abstinence-only curriculum. Under current policy, LGBTQ+ identities in Utah are not explicitly included in the curriculum. While Carr explains that in her classes she does go over contraceptives offered for both parties, she doesn’t physically explain how to use these contraceptives.

 Lingam continues, “In the State of Utah, our sex education is minimal and highly focused on shame-based and abstinence-only education. Sex education should be largely focused on safe sex, queer-inclusive, and spectrum-based research that should include porn and media literacy in a way that does not shame specific identities and expressions.” 

 Isaac Delgadillo, 22, a University of Utah student who also graduated from Timpview High School, talks about his experience with finding answers. He leans back on the sofa, trying to remember his experience. “Pretty much it wasn’t there. [My sex education] it was non-existent essentially. What happened was I never really was taught. I had to learn on my own.” 

Growing up in the LDS church, Delgadillo said he felt like he couldn’t talk about his feelings towards women because of the strong religious presence in his life. Delgadillo struggles for the right words. “You were kinda shunned for, for, for thinking about---for being too crazy about your feelings toward women. I guess is kinda what it was. Growing up in the priesthood and church as well. You were taught to suppress those feelings kinda. As a result, it was more attractive.” Much of what he learned about sex was through trial and error in past relationships and the internet. 

The internet has become the substitute for sex education people never got in the school system that allows them to fill in the gaps as they please. Accessibility to questions has never been easier in this day and age with smartphones at the reach of a hand. Experts concluded in a study that “adolescents use the Internet for sex education and that adolescents are interested in various sex education topics, like STIs and pregnancy.” Researchers Laura Simon and Kristian Daneback found that the information that most adolescents find online is of varied quality, but that they can ultimately evaluate these sources and determine the information that is well qualified. 

Thinking back to his childhood, Delgadillo recalls that conversations about sex with his family never happened. The occasional ‘don’t have sex’ speech would come up but that had been the extent of it. Mainly, he tells me the internet was the place for answers. “We would google it, honestly. Youtube it sometimes. How to use this, ‘blah, blah, blah.’ And it would really be funny cause, I mean it was awkward for both parties.”

Non-profit organizations such as Planned Parenthood are tackling this issue with teen council committees around Utah. Teen council is a program by Planned Parenthood, that is created of a voluntary student body from local schools around the area. Teens apart of the council go around their communities and teach about comprehensive health education. 

The way it works is a Planned Parenthood educator discusses various sexual health and relationship issues with teen council members. Afterward, council members take what they learned and go and create classroom presentations and talk to their peers. Long before attending the University of Utah, Mason was an advocate for Planned Parenthood serving on their Summit teen council, where she went to teach about comprehensive sex education around her community. 

Mason takes a sip of her americano as she recalls her experience with teen council, “We taught [about] healthy relationships or contraceptives or we would teach about like LGBTQ+ health and stuff like that. And so the groups kind of expanded to more of this broader health group.”

LET’S TALK ABOUT REPRODUCTIVE ACCESS

“The Campus Contraceptive Initiative was formed with the idea that we need to uplift sexual and reproductive health,” Mason tells me. “In a three-prong-way of using research, policy to understand how we are, where we are and to advocate for better policy. Educating folks on services and availability.” 

The meetings that Mason’s group holds each month for CCI  are to provide literature on resources and educate students on their contraceptive options. Their presentations involve identifying local clinics, identifying what to do if you have insurance or don’t, and campus resources. At all of their meetings, they have a big bowl filled with condoms and lubricants for students to grab if they want. 

Last year in 2018, Mason held a Valentine Day themed meeting in February. In this meeting, there was a panel of sex experts who spoke to students about their experience with sexual health, provided information about contraceptives, Title X and insurance. A prominent theme at this meeting was various students collective experience with shame and sexuality. 

Mason talks about the shame that people generally expressed about their sexuality when growing up in Utah. She said, “Knowing that our state legislature is predominantly LDS and from just Christian teachings broadly there’s a lot of shame that comes with sexuality. And particularly here [in Utah] I think there’s an understanding that sexuality is not a positive aspect of someone’s life. Whereas we know that sexuality is an integral part of people's life. And so I think here the culture says diminish that. Like whatever it is--diminish that. You can have romance but sex is not supposed to be talked about.”

Natalie Wilson, 21, is a University of Utah student who recalls a particular experience when she was growing up in the LDS church. She was at a young women's church meeting when the lesson began, “I remember at the beginning of our meeting they gave us a piece of gum and we didn’t think anything of it. Then they began the lesson about sexual purity.” Wilson scrunches her face in disgust toward the memory, “At the end of the lesson, they asked us to take out our gum and hand it to the person next to us and begin to chew our neighbor’s gum. Of course, we all refused. Then my leader said something along the lines of ‘that’s how boys feel when they find out you’re not a virgin. No one wants to chew a used piece of gum.’” She remembers thinking that her sexuality had nothing to do with a used piece of gum. “I’m not something to be consumed. I’m a person,” she said. 

Mason and her team are trying to change the way students at her university view sexual reproductive health with the help of Dr. Kyl Myers. Dr. Myers is the director of the statewide contraceptive initiative, Family Planning Elevated and a research assistant professor in Obstetrics and Gynecology. 

Dr. Myers is aware that access to health care isn’t easy, especially for people of color and underrepresented populations. Dr. Myers knew this when she approached Mason during her freshman year in college. She said, "Grace we’re looking into expanding contraceptive access across the state with Family Funding Elevate." Dr. Myers was interested to know what research is out there about collegial health care accessibility, and how students at the University of Utah were able to access care. 

“That sent me down the biggest rabbit hole of my life,” Mason said eyes wide tilting her head slightly. What Mason learned is that many of the students at her university weren’t able to access the student healthcare offered on campus. Given Mason’s previous history working with organizations like Planned Parenthood and pursuing a career in health communication and policy, it seemed like a no brainer to start an organization for students on campus.  

Dr. Myer turns to the group around the conference room, “a lot of [access to healthcare] does have to do with socio-demographic types of things like your income, your insurance, and where you live.” She clicks to the next slide, “my goal is to give you an overview so you are better able to talk to people about how they can access sexual reproductive health services.” 

As someone who is informed about the healthcare system, Dr. Myers thinks that the system is pretty complicated to navigate. Providing information at these meetings to students gives them  the tools they need to succeed now and later in life. These tools allow them to know how to access services and learn what benefits their insurance offers. Sexual reproductive health care is a lifelong issue and it’s important to understand the implications it has when people aren’t given information about this topic. 

The landscape of sexual reproductive health in the United States hasn’t changed much. Minor changes occurred within the Obama administration. Those same changes have reverted during the Trump administration. Until then, organizations like Planned Parenthood, Campus Contraceptive Initiative and Family Planning continue to provide information on comprehensive sex education and resources.

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 Let’s Talk about Sex  

Sexual Health Is More Than STDs

Sexual health is more than preventable diseases it about being emotionally, physically, mentally healthy. Being healthy can be understanding what you like and what you feel comfortable with. Learning to listen to your partner and your own needs is just as important aspect of sexual health. 

Know That You Have Options

Not all forms of birth control work the same way. Did you know that a condom is the only form of contraceptive that protects from STDs? There are various forms of birth control but they aren’t all equal. There are pros and cons to each. Talk to your doctor about what is the best option for you. Don’t be afraid to go around and experiment with various types of contraceptives. 

What Consent Looks Like

Yes, no, maybe? Consent is all about communication. And it doesn’t have to be awkward. Consent doesn’t have to be verbal, but agreeing verbally about what you’re willing to do can help both of you respect each other’s boundaries. Remember that consent can be withdrawn at any time. You are allowed to change your mind at any time. Positive consent might look like a “hell yes!!!” from your partner physically or verbally. Or it might be asking: “Is this okay” before continuing.

Sex Doesn’t Undermine Your Value

Virginity can be a sensitive topic, especially the way sexuality has been understood throughout history. Depending on how you grew up viewing sexuality it can come with mixed emotions and that’s okay. Sex is just another aspect of life. There is nothing particularly positive or negative about it. Your self-worth isn’t determined by the people you’ve chosen to let into your life. Whenever you do decide to have sex make sure that it is on your terms and that you are comfortable, safe, and ready.