Op Ed: Comprehensive Sex Education

Ok, here's your chance to write out a speech which makes a criticism you passionately believe, and make a strong case for it. I would like you to blog a three paragraph Op Ed against someone or something ("X is really bad/wrong/etc."), and offer the three strongest pieces of empirical evidence you can find in support of your claim.  Be sure to cite sources so that your readers can check your data. For this exercise I'm not going to require you to make your warrant explicit, just make sure you use strong empirical proofs or starting points that support your conclusion.  Your instructor will assess the strength of your argument on the quality of your premises (starting points) as empirical proofs.

America's Puritanical roots may no longer manifest in Scarlet Letter-like shaming, but it would be foolish to assume the conservative culture around sex is completely eradicated. One of the most irresponsible doings of many American school systems is a lack of comprehensive sex education for students.Abstinence-only programs often distort facts and do not inform students, whether straight or LGBT, enough about the importance of safe sex. As such, remaining willfully ignorant of the desires and behaviors of today's youth can misinform them, increasing the likelihood of health problems and risky behavior.

Abstinence-only or a lack of comprehensive sex education endangers teenagers by purposefully leaving out important information. According to a report released in 2004 by the U.S. House of Representative's Committee on Government Reform, 80% of common federally-funded programs that focused only on abstinence had distorted and misrepresented information. Purposefully shielding teenagers from the realities of the world can leave them without the tools they need to handle the situations they have not learned. Furthermore, it has not been shown that comprehensive sex education leads to more sexual activity among students, as is the common fear. In fact, research done by Douglas Kirby in 2007 showed that after comprehensive sex education, 40% delayed sexual initiation, reduced the number of partners, or increased the use of protection; 30% reduced the frequency of their sexual activity; and 60% reduced unprotected sex. As these findings indicate, teaching students about contraception does not necessarily make them more likely to have sex earlier and more often. Lastly, sex education programs often do not address LGBT sex. This poses a risk for LGBT-identifying students; for instance, about 1 in 5 of new HIV infections occur in gay and bisexual youth aged 13-24, according to the CDC. A lack of education about safe sex in non-heterosexual sexual relationships can lead to such health risks, especially since, as the CDC reports, only 41% of public American schools as of 2014 are required to instruct on HIV prevention.

In today's world, public education is expected to prepare students for their futures and for the real world. Yet, a lack of comprehensive sex education does anything but. With studies displaying that teaching about contraceptives does still lead to a decrease in sexual behaviors, the fear of the contrary is not legitimate. There is no reason why we should expose our children to misinformation at the expense of their sexual health.