"Why We Teach Sex in Church"
by Rev. Kimi Riegel
Feburary 2, 2003

Reading: “The Secret War on Condoms,” New York Times, January 10, 2003, by Nicholas D. Kristof

Over the last few years conservatives have declared war on condoms, in a campaign that is downright weird - but that, if successful, could lead to millions of deaths from AIDS around the world.

I first noticed this campaign last year, when I began to get e-mails from evangelical Christians insisting that condoms have pores about 10 microns in diameter, while the AIDS virus measures only about 0.1 micron. This is junk science (electron microscopes haven't found these pores),but the disinformation campaign turns out to be a far-reaching effort to discredit condoms, squelch any mention of them in schools and discourage their use abroad.

"The only absolutely guaranteed, permanent contraception is castration," one Catholic site suggests helpfully. Hmmmm. You first.

Then there are the radio spots in Texas : "Condoms will not protect people from many sexually transmitted diseases."

A report by Human Rights Watch quotes a Texas school official as saying: "We don't discuss condom use, except to say that condoms don't work."

I'm all for abstinence education, and there is some evidence that promoting abstinence helps delay and reduce sexual contacts. But young people have been busily fornicating ever since sex was invented, and disparaging condoms is far more likely to discourage their use than to discourage sex. The upshot will be more gonorrhea and AIDS among young Americans - and, abroad, many more people dying young.

So far President Bush has not fully signed on to the campaign against condoms, but there are alarming signs that he is clambering on board. Last month at an international conference in Bangkok , U.S. officials demanded the deletion of a reference to "consistent condom use" to fight AIDS and sexual diseases. So what does this administration stand for? Inconsistent condom use?

Evangelical groups do superb work in Africa , running clinics for some of the world's most wretched people – like poor AIDS victims. So it's baffling to see these same groups buying into junk science in ways that will lead to many more AIDS deaths.

(The scientific consensus is simple: Condoms are far from perfect, but they greatly reduce the risk of H.I.V. and of gonorrhea for men, and they probably also reduce the risk of other sexual infections - but more studies are needed to prove the case definitively.

One study by the University of California at Berkeley found condom distribution to be astonishingly cost-effective, costing just $3.50 per year of life saved. In contrast, antiretroviral therapy cost almost $1,050 per year per life.

Yet the U.S. is now donating only 300 million condoms annually, down from about 800 million at the end of the first President Bush's term. Consider Botswana , which has the highest rate of H.I.V. infection in the world – 39 percent of adults. According to figures in a report on condoms by Population Action International, the average man in Botswana gets less than one condom per year from international donors.

In the time it has taken to read this column, 28 people have died of AIDS, including 5 children. An additional 49 people have become infected. It's imperative that we get over our squeamishness, accept that condoms are flawed but far better than nothing, recognize that condoms no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain, and ensure that couples in places like Botswana get more than one condom per year.
 
Sermon: “Why We Teach Sex in Church”

Nearly every Sunday, one of our children and his mother sit right here in the front row. Sometimes, I overhear their conversations. Not intentionally, but just as a matter of the happenings of the morning. One particular morning a few weeks ago the child was closely reading the back of the order of service. You have probably noticed that is where we list the topics the classes will be studying for the week. 

He read:
The Preschool class will be taking pictures  
The K-1-2 class will continue learning about our natural world
3-4 class will work on a class newspaper
5-6 will be learning about diversity of beliefs
7-8-9 will continue the OWL curriculum - sexuality education

When he read this he stopped and looked at his mother. Sounding a bit troubled he said, “What is this?” She very calmly said, “You know where babies come from.” He was now quite upset, “In Church?” he responded. She came back with, “They’re learning about it, not doing it!” I want you to know I have his permission to tell that story today. I told him his reaction was quite typical and I wanted to share it with all of you because perhaps at some point you have felt or will feel the same way. Why are we teaching sex in church?

My short answer to the question: we teach sex in church because we want to raise healthy happy adults and sexuality is part of being a healthy happy adult. Unfortunately, we are surrounded by images that portray a sexuality that is far from healthy. Daily we are exposed to sexuality that is violent and dangerous. Men are aggressors, women are submissive and physical beauty, not love, is the reason for attraction. Misinformation is rampant from the anti-condom campaigns to the notion that AIDS is God’s punishment. Religious messages are frequently negative about sexuality. Gays, Lesbians, Bisexual and Transgender persons are regularly ridiculed, harassed and often seriously hurt. Masturbation, which is normal, and in this day and age life saving, is still treated as immoral. Young people daily engage in life threatening sexual behaviors out of curiosity, out of a desire to fit in, or to feel loved. We owe it to our children and to ourselves to create healthy open attitudes toward sex.  

One of the essential parts of being human is our body. We are human because we walk on two legs, have opposable thumbs, have two eyes that face front and have a sexuality that goes beyond the procreative cycle. While our brains store and interpret the information (making us unique as well), it is our bodies that allow us to perceive the world in all its grandeur and glory. We see the sunsets, and feel the rain. We hear the cry of small children, smell home cooked bread and taste the salt of our own tears. It is through our senses that we learn. The first experiences of an infant are of the body and touch. We learn to crawl and we learn what behavior is acceptable through our contact with others. How we interpret the world depends a great deal on how we experience it with our bodies. Being human is being embodied. Being human is being sexual. We teach our kids to drive a car but we are afraid to teach them how to be healthy sexual beings.  

But that still doesn’t answer the question why at church. Throughout history our religious traditions have played a large role in how we view our bodies and necessarily then how we view our world. In the past, religions have taken a negative view of the human body. Although the body is considered part of God's creation and sex is necessary for continuing the species, more wicked associations with the body have overshadowed these positive ones. Religions drew a connection between the body and all that is sinful. The early Christian and medieval times were marked by a desire to escape the body and find God in the spiritual realm. But Christians are not alone, as most rigorous religious practices consider the body to be evil and the center of that which is carnal and lowly. Sexuality is a sinful attachment to this world and therefore only to be expressed when necessary. One must escape the body to discover what is right and good. This dualistic view with its disapproving attitude toward all that is associated with the body has persisted into modern times. Engrained in us is the sense that the body is corrupt, while at the same time we are constantly receiving essential information from our bodies: hunger, thirst, sensory input. Sex is evil and yet our sexual drive is one of the strongest of our drives. The modern media, which uses sex to sell everything, reinforces these conflicting messages and our fundamentalist cousins would have us leave all sexuality for procreation alone. 

We owe it to our children to help them navigate these waters, we owe it to them to give them complete and comprehensive sexuality education. We owe it to them to provide these within a religious context, a context that emphasizes the values of our tradition, a context that puts value in human dignity, justice and mutuality. A context that treats sexuality as the sacred gift it was meant to be.  

Comprehensive sexuality education is not new to Unitarian Universalists and as a result neither is controversy. Even as early as 1965 our Association, then only a few years old, was making the papers for promoting healthy relationships based on access to information. A church member stopped in my office this week with a folder full of newsletter articles his mother-in-law had clipped on the Reverend Robert Eddy. Rev. Eddy, the minister of the Universalist church of Farmington , her church, was making quite a name for himself, promoting honest sexual relationships based on love rather than entertainment, trial marriages and changing laws regarding sexuality that they might better reflect the reality of people’s lives. He promoted a realistic approach to sexuality education taking into account that teenagers are often sexual. For his outspoken views his leadership as the chairman of the Farmington Youth Guidance Committee was called into question. 

In 1968, amid a huge firestorm, the Association developed the About Your Sexuality Program. Its release in 1971, in Madison , Wisconsin , created protests and much media attention. It was a multimedia program designed to answer all the questions that adolescents have. Its goal was to give young people the information they needed to make informed decisions about their lives. Over many years and through several revisions the program addressed transsexual persons, transvestism, AIDS, and abortion. It had always included information about birth control, femininity and masculinity, lovemaking, dating and courtship, male and female anatomy, masturbation, homosexuality, conception and childbirth, and venereal disease (now called sexually transmitted diseases, STDs).  

One of the most controversial parts of that early program was honest information about gay, lesbian and bisexual people. This in 1968, one year before the riots of Stonewall, where a routine police raid of New York's Stonewall Inn -- a mafia owned bar that catered to gay men – turned into a uprising that lasted on and off for several days. After years of accepting police oppression, gay men were finally angry enough to fight back. Unitarian Universalists were teaching about it.

The other very controversial part were the filmstrips that were still photos of real people being sexual. These visual resources were developed to answer the questions that young people have in honest, genuine and non-sensational ways. 

As late as 1997 this program was still making national media as if we were teaching our young people, using pornography. Bryant Gumble stirred up trouble in Concord , MA , giving media attention to some parents who were angry about the filmstrips their children had seen. These parents hadn’t attended the parent orientation and were understandably surprised when their children told them that they had seen pictures of people masturbating. 

In 1989 there was a call to revise the curriculum to bring it more up to date. It was felt that the AIDS epidemic, the rapid increase of other sexually transmitted diseases among youth, the rising birthrate among teenagers, the explosive debate over abortion, the growing knowledge of the tragedy of sexual abuse, and the appearance of shame- and fear-based sexuality curricula in the schools all demanded a new curriculum. Rising awareness of social issues such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights; gender identity; abortion rights; and AIDS policies increased the need for a curriculum based on respect, compassion, justice, and action. By 1991 the Unitarian Universalists and the United Church of Christ began a seven-year collaborative process that resulted in the new Our Whole Lives Curriculum.  

Yes, the Christians are with us on this one. You see there are many liberal Christians who, like us, teach that sexuality is an integral part of being human. Many Christians today reject the dualistic notion that all that is of the body is evil. An embodied theology has emerged that celebrates our bodies. It is a theology created largely by the marginalized people; women, gays, and people of color. It is a sermon for another day.

The UCC and the UUA are two of the only denominations in which openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons may become ordained ministers. Both have adopted platforms and policies in support of the rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Both the UUA and the UCBHM are also members of the National Coalition to Support Sexuality Education.

What does comprehensive sexuality do for our children today in a world that provides them with easy access to almost every kind of information and misinformation you can imagine? Don’t they get it in school? No, a study of secondary health educators found that only 46 percent teach at all about sexual orientation and that 91 percent of those devote less than two class periods to the topic; 33 percent of those that are teaching the classes felt that gay and lesbian rights are a threat to the American family and its values.[1]  

Can’t they get the information from other places? No, A survey of 1,351 randomly selected television shows by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that over the course of one week 56 percent of programs and 67 percent of prime-time shows contained sexual content in word or deed. Yet only one in ten such shows mentioned contraception, safe sex, or the possibility of delaying sexual activity.[2]

Does comprehensive information really protect our children or if they know about it won’t they do it? A review commissioned by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), released on October 22, 1997 , concluded that:  

Comprehensive programs help delay first intercourse and protect sexually active youth from STDs, including HIV, and from pregnancy. Twenty-two studies examined in the review reported that HIV and/or sexuality education either delayed the onset of sexual activity, reduced the number of sexual partners, or reduced unplanned pregnancy and STD rates. Responsible and safe behavior can be learned. These studies also found that sexuality education is most effective when started before the onset of sexual activity. [3]

In addition, sexuality education helps students to communicate with their parents: Prior to a sexuality education program, half of students reported discussing abstinence with their parents, while 37 percent had discussed contraception. After the program, parent-child communication had risen to 66 percent on abstinence and 52 percent on contraception[4] Comprehensive sexuality education can help create healthy adults, comprehensive sexuality education save our children’s lives. It belongs in church. It belongs in our church.

So what exactly do we teach today? What exactly is this comprehensive five-part curriculum called Our Whole Lives, OWL for short? It is a curriculum that is taught at five different points in the Sunday school. Here at Northwest we are currently only using the program designed for middle school and high school people. There are also programs available for young people in kindergarten, 4^th or 5^th grade, and adults as well. It is, in large part, due to the dedication and commitment of three members of our congregation that we are able to offer such a quality program. They each attended a weekend long training in order to prepare for the programs and two of them teach two classes each Sunday.

Specifically at the middle school and high school levels we teach about:

Abortion, abstinence, body image, and families - affirming that families come in many forms. We teach about gender identity, gender roles, HIV/AIDS, homosexuality and bisexuality teaching that bisexuality, homosexuality, and heterosexuality are all natural sexual orientations. Love, commitment, and masturbation are topics as well. Our Whole Lives affirms that parents are children's primary sexuality educators; and it helps participants recognize that healthy relationships are based on responsibility, respect, love, and commitment. Same-sex relationships are celebrated in the same way that heterosexual relationships are and it teaches that healthy sexual relationships are respectful, consensual, non-exploitive, mutually pleasurable, safe, developmentally appropriate, and based on respect, mutual expectations, and caring.[5]

The program uses discussion, problem solving, role-play, slides, games, speakers, videos, pamphlets, books, and some mini-lectures to provide honest unambiguous information. The slides, which are now drawings instead of still photos, are still among the most controversial parts of the program. I am 100% supportive of the drawings for several reasons: they answer the real questions that young people have in a very honest way, they communicate to the young people that we will tell them everything, setting up an environment of trust, and they allow us to show images of people of all colors, shapes, abilities and ages being sexual. 

Don’t you wish you could take the program? Maybe someday we will be able to offer the adult program as well. For now we can be proud that we are protecting our children the best way we can with honest information, we are giving them a place they can turn to get their questions answered, reminding them that there are adults who care, especially their parents, we are teaching them it’s not only OK to talk with your peers about sexuality it is essential for your health, and we are giving them the skills and information to have those life saving conversations before they become sexual. We are doing all we can to create healthy adults. We can be proud!

So the next time you hear someone talk about sex and kids tell them about the program at our church. The next time someone talks about the importance of abstinence education tell him or her about the program at our church. When you become discouraged by the misinformation, sexually explicit material on the Internet, prejudice and archaic attitudes of our government take heart there is a great comprehensive sexuality program at your church.  

 

Let me conclude with a poem by R.D. Laing called:

The Dilemma of the Adolescent  

There is something I don't know  
that I am supposed to know.  
I don't know what it is I don't know,  
and yet am supposed to know,  
and I feel I look stupid  
if I seem both not to know it  
and not know what it is I don't know.  
This is nerve-racking  
since I don't know what I must pretend to know.  
Therefore I pretend to know everything.  

I feel you know what I am supposed to know  
but you can't tell me what it is  
because you don't know that 1 don't know what it is.  
You may know what I don't know, but not that I don't know it,  
and I can’t tell you.  
So you will have to tell me everything.  
 
And we do!