Teaching Sexual Abstinence to Teenagers

Recently, I went to a center for teen­age girls where the teacher asked what they would like to discuss most. Human biology? Care for their infant? Physiology of childbirth? Family planning? The girls showed no interest. Then the teacher asked, “Would you like to discuss now to say no to your boyfriend without losing his love?” All hands shot up. — Eunice Kennedy Shriver

In the midst of the pitched battles over sex education, there is a consensus about this: Sexual behavior is determined by values, not mere knowledge. Consequently, sex education must educate young people about the moral dimensions of sexual conduct. There is also now a consensus among experts in adolescent development and those who have witnessed the destructive effects of premature sex: Sex is not for kids, and abstaining from sexual rela­tionships is in the best interests of teenagers themselves and society at large.

The challenge now before schools is to help young people make the moral decision not to get sexually involved. Happily, large numbers of teenagers are relieved to be given good reasons for staying away from sexual involvement and strategies for doing so.

There is a clear and present need to help young people understand the moral issues involved in sex and to develop sexual self-control:

· According to the Centers for Disease Con­trol, sexually transmitted diseases are now at an all-time high among teenagers. Each year 2.5 million adolescents will contract a sexual­ly transmitted disease.
· Although, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, more teenagers (47 percent) “regularly used” contraceptives in 1988 than in 1982 (22 percent), the overall teen preg­nancy rate remained the same — one reason being that more teens were having sex. Each year one of every ten U.S. teenage girls becomes pregnant.
· Nearly a third of all abortions in this country are performed on teenagers — more than 400,000 a year.
· Of the teenage girls who give birth, about 60 percent are unmarried. One of every four babies in the U.S. is now born out of wed­lock (compared to one of 20 in 1960).
· Most teen mothers will spend at least part of their lives as single parents, often on public assistance. Teenage childbearing is one of the root causes of poverty.
· The babies of teenage mothers, compared to infants born to women in their 20s, are more likely to be abused, held back in school, exhibit behavior disorders, have emotional problems, become drug-addicted, and later become teenage parents themselves.

Data, however, don’t tell the whole story. Talk to teachers and others who are close to children and adolescents and you will hear story after sad story testifying to the changes that have taken place in the sexual attitudes and behavior of the young.

· A nurse who does substitute teaching in central New York health education classes told of high school students who, before the start of one class, “talked and joked openly about their sexual activities, who was doing what with whom, what went on the night before, and so on. I was speechless. When I finally asked them if they didn’t ever worry about AIDS, they just laughed.”
· At an Indiana high school a teacher says, “The air is thick with sex talk. Kids in the halls will say — boy to girl, girl to boy — ‘I want to f— you.'”
· A ninth-grade teacher in Alberta, Canada, told of a 14-year-old boy in her class who watched pornographic movies at home with his father. “He’s going to see it later any­way,” was the father’s comment. After months of watching such movies, this boy sexually abused his cousin, a three-year-old girl.

Not all children and teenagers, of course, fit the disturbing patterns described in these stories. But virtually all young people have been affected, in some way, by the eroticized environment that is the legacy of the “sexual revolution.” A generation of children has grown up in a society in which large numbers of adults, preoccupied by sex themselves, no longer try to protect children from premature exposure to sex or even from exposure to pornographic and perverted forms of sexuality. Moreover, television, movies, and supermarket magazines all send the message that sex is the central and indispensable source of human happiness and that sex between uncommitted persons is standard human behavior. Rock lyrics — in songs such as “I Want Your Sex” — beckon young listeners toward early sexual gratification.

One could describe all this, without ex­aggeration, as a kind of psychological sexual abuse of children. From very early ages, chil­dren are immersed in a culture that inundates them with sexual information and images they are not developmentally ready to evaluate, ov­erstimulates them sexually, divorces sex from moral values, and consequently reduces their chances of growing up sexually in a healthy, moral way.

To this pervasive distortion of childhood, add child sexual abuse as traditionally defined — the physical violation of a child by an adult (or, with increasing frequency, by an older child). Physical sexual abuse in this country is rampant. A major study by the University of New Hampshire’s David Finkelhor estimates conservatively that one in four girls, and at least one in seven boys, is sexually abused at least once before they reach age 18.

What have been the effects on children of all these betrayals of trust and assaults on their bodies and spirits? One study of 930 adult women linked childhood incest and other sexual abuse with a higher than average inci­dence of a host of adult problems: beatings or rapes by their husbands, anorexia, alcoholism, drug addition, prostitution, imprisonment, mental illness, and suicide. We also know that children who are sexually abused suffer fear and mistrust, develop feelings of worthless­ness, often become precocious in their sexual behavior, sometimes (especially in the case of boys) sexually abuse younger children, and are vulnerable (especially in the case of girls) to later sexual exploitation.

All these changes in the total sexual environment and in children’s formative ex­periences within it must be understood if we wish to take the measure of the challenge con­fronting schools.

Most surveys of schools through the mid-1980s showed that about three of four teens received some kind of formal sex education. Did it do any good? Stanford’s Larry Cuban states: “Schools started to offer sex education courses in the 1930s. Decade after decade since then, statistics have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of such courses in reducing sexual activity, unwanted pregnancy, and venereal disease among teenagers.” A national study designed by the Centers for Disease Control evaluated 14 separate sex education programs. The study found that “none of the sexuality courses had a measurable impact on whether or not the participants had experienced sexual intercourse…or the number of times partici­pants had sexual intercourse.”

Why didn’t sex education reduce teenage sexual activity? Until recently — and this comes as a surprise to many parents — the purpose of sex education has not been to get teenagers to refrain from sexual intercourse. It has not been to help students arrive at the moral judgment that sex outside a committed love relationship is wrong because it violates caring — caring about oneself, one’s partner, the child that might result, and society as a whole.

Most sex education, operating with a rela­tivistic notion of morality, skirted the hard moral questions and encouraged, students to “make your own decision” and be “re­sponsible.” But “responsible” all too often translated only as, “If you do it, don’t get pregnant or catch a disease.” As one high school senior put it: “No one says not to do it, so by default they’re condoning it.”

AIDS changed the status of abstinence. Here was a sexually transmitted disease that would kill you. As the title of one new sex education curriculum announced, Suddenly Sex Has Become Very Dangerous. Teachers now felt they could stand up in front of a class of adolescents and say without embarrassment, “Don’t have sex if you don’t want to get AIDS.”

A 1989 survey found that 86 percent of sex education teachers say they now teach their students that abstinence is the best way to prevent pregnancy and avoid sexually transmitted disease. Most of these teachers al­so say they try to help their students avoid intercourse by providing instruction in how to resist peer pressure and how to say no to a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Why does a pro-abstinence approach to sex education make good sense from the stand­point of both moral education and public policy?

1. Abstinence is the only 100 percent ef­fective way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.
2. Abstinence is also the best protection against the emotional hurts — feelings of loss, guilt, betrayal, and being used — that very often follow sex outside a committed relation­ship.
3. Abstinence is consistent with a long-­term goal of character development: self-con­trol. Teen sexual activity is often part of a larger pattern of self-indulgence that can carry over into adulthood. Marital infidelity now occurs in one of every two marriages. If ado­lescents do not learn to say no to premarital sexual opportunities, what habits of self-control will they have to draw on when faced with extramarital temptations?
4. A pro-abstinence approach recognizes that sex is powerful. Sex can create the illusion of intimacy with a person you don’t really know. Sexual attraction can inspire and uplift and be part of a beautiful love; but uncon­trolled it can lead to broken hearts, exploita­tion, promiscuity, rape, prostitution, pornogra­phy, and sexual abuse of children.
5. Helping teens avoid premature sex also supports families in their values and hopes for their children. True, many parents fail to teach their children sexual morality, and many oth­ers do harm by exposing their children to un­wholesome sexual influences. But two-thirds of all Americans 18 and older now say that schools should “urge teenagers not to have sexual intercourse.”
6. Finally, an unambiguous commitment to the value of abstinence for teenagers gives sex education the clear ethical viewpoint needed to engage, and positively influence, students’ sexual moral values. Adolescents tell researchers that it’s their internally held values that keep them away from sexual involvement. Even peer pressure is not as powerful as these internalized beliefs and values.

The best of the new sex education programs teach abstinence in the context of an approach that supports the student’s total growth as a valuing, confident, capable per­son. Here are some examples of the new sex education and the results it has been able to achieve:

· Project Respect, with federal grant support, has developed a pro-abstinence curric­ulum that as of 1989 was being used in six Midwestern states. Project director Kathleen Sullivan rejects the theory that “hormones are destiny” when it comes to sex. “Nobody’s ever died from not having sex,” she says; “it’s the one appetite that’s not necessary to fulfill.” Before participating in the Project Respect program, 38 percent of the students agreed with the statement “It’s important for me not to have sex before I get married”; after the program, 56 percent agreed.

· Some of the most impressive results come from an imaginative program carried out in the San Marcos, California, school system. San Marcos faced a serious teen pregnancy problem: 147 high school girls known to be pregnant in the 1984-1985 school year. The school opted for a positive, multifaceted ap­proach emphasizing goal-oriented behavior and helping young people develop the necessary self-confidence to abstain from sex. Says then principal Joe DeDiminicantanio: “A quick knee-jerk reaction to our teen pregnancy problem would have been to haul all the girls into the gym and all the boys into another gym and show them some movies and tell them where to buy prophylactics. But what we really wanted to do is influence attitudes and change behaviors….”

The component of the San Marcos pro­gram that focused explicitly on sexuality used a popular pro-abstinence curriculum known as Teen-Aid, which offers these messages to young people:

1. The only real, safe sex is having sex only with your marriage partner who is having sex only with you.
2. Abstinence offers freedom from guilt, doubt, and worry; sexually transmitted disease; pregnancy; the trauma of abortion; loss of reputation; and pressure to marry early.
3. Abstinence offers freedom to become more creative in sharing feelings; develop skills and abilities; develop healthy self-appreciation; achieve financial stability be­fore having a family; and develop greater trust in marriage.
4. After having been sexually active, it is possible to regain the advantages of absti­nence. Decide to change; forgive yourself and others; change old habits; and develop ways of sharing that do not include sexual activity.

These ideas are developed through discus­sions and videos such as Why Wait? (a class­room simulation leading students to discover for themselves the advantages of avoiding premarital sexual activity); Window to the Womb (ultrasound footage of fetal development, graphically demonstrating to students that their sexuality has the power to create new human life); and AIDS — Learn and Live (on how AIDS is transmitted and the reasons why monogamy and premarital abstinence are the best methods of prevention). After implementing the Teen-Aid curriculum and the other parts of its program, San Marcos experi­enced a dramatic drop in student pregnancies: from 147 known pregnancies in 1984-1985 to 20 in 1986-1987.

· SEX RESPECT is a sex education cur­riculum developed under a grant from the federal Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs. The program is now used by scores of schools across the country. Its goal is to en­courage students to choose chastity as a posi­tive lifestyle, one that gives them “the free­dom to grow up without the pressures of sex.” SEX RESPECT uses humorous slogans to get its point across: “Pet your dog, not your date”; “Control your urgin’, be a virgin”; and “Sex is good, sex is great, save it for your permanent mate.” Activities in the SEX RESPECT curriculum include:

1. What’s My Line? Thinking up and role-playing quick comebacks to standard one-liners (e.g., “We’ll only do it this one time,” “I’ll stop whenever you say.”)
2. Brainstorming: Making a list of “fun, in­teresting things to do on a date that do not lead to sexual activity.”
3. Discussing “sex-cess stories” such as: “My high school and college dating years were the best years of my life. I learned that no to sex meant yes to fun. My reputation as a virgin got out fast. I had more dates, better grades, and good, quality friendships. Guys knew they didn’t have to perform for me, so we could concen­trate on getting to know each other and having a great time. I believe that virginity is the key to successful dating.”

Overall results are hopeful: A formal eval­uation of SEX RESPECT by the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Services reports “positive and encouraging changes in attitudes toward sexual behavior, including the ability to control sexual desire.” For example: At Wilson High School in Appleton, Wisconsin, before taking the SEX RESPECT course, only 32 percent of students agreed with the statement “Sexual feelings are always controllable.” After the course, 68 percent agreed. Before the course, only 37 percent agreed that “There are a lot of benefits to waiting until marriage to have sexual intercourse.” After SEX RESPECT, 63 percent agreed. A girl who was openly skeptical at the start wrote: “Outwardly I said, ‘Forget it!’ But inside I was listening. I never had a class explaining how sex can cause prob­lems and how this can affect your whole life.”

There are also pamphlets that present the chastity message in a concise and appealing way: How to Say No Without Losing His/Her Love and Secondary Virginity: A New Beginning; Love Waits; and No Is a Love Word. All of these materials are nonsectarian in content.

As part of Virginia’s new sex education mandate, state regulations require that schools present marriage as the proper context for sexual intercourse and include the fact that intercourse outside of marriage violates Virgin­ia law. A Virginia woman objected to this re­quirement because, she said, it doesn’t match reality: “By the time students reach the eighth grade, many will be brought face-to-face with a conflict: Despite what the curriculum says [about sex belonging in marriage], not all sin­gle parents or unmarried adults are celibate.”

One response to this concern is to point out that historically it’s been the job of schools to hold up ideals to young people — to point the way to a better life and world. Another relevant point is that in other areas of values education, especially health education, schools try to persuade students not to do things — smoke cigarettes, use drugs, abuse alcohol — that many of their parents may be doing. In all of these areas, teachers can say, “You may see many adults doing things that are different from what we’re saying is best for your health and happiness. Our business here is to chal­lenge you to think hard about what is best for your life, now and in the future.”

To try to avoid the sex-and-marriage ques­tion, some sex education programs talk simply about “postponing sexual involvement.” That’s a step in the right direction, but it begs an important question: Postpone until when? Says one teenage mother: “I thought I did great because I waited two years to have sex with my boyfriend — until we were 17. Then we had sex, and a little while later we broke up. The next guy I went out with, I had sex on the third date and got pregnant.”

The lack of clear guidance in talking only about “postponing” sex points to the wisdom of programs that promote not only teenage abstinence but also the benefits of saving sex for marriage. If schools really want to help students develop well-defined values that will guide their sexual decisions, they should offer them a clear goal that answers the question, “What am I waiting for?” A sex education cur­riculum can offer students this vision:

Sex is most fulfilling when it’s part of something bigger — a con­tinuing, loving relationship between two human beings. Down through history, societies all over the world have said the same thing: Marriage is the relationship in which sex should occur. Marriage is the most serious, total, and public commitment between two people that any human society has been able to devise. It’s within that committed relationship that sex is most likely to be loving, the dangers of disease and hurt are minimized, and a family is available for raising a child if pregnancy should result from the sexual union.

Here is what one guest speaker said to a class of high school juniors:

When you’re married, sexual union is part of the total commitment you’ve made to each other. Your sexual intimacy expresses your complete commitment, your complete giving of self. When you aren’t married, sexual intercourse is different. Not being committed to each other changes the meaning of the sex act. Then it’s not part of the complete giving of your­self; you’re holding back. Even if you’re engaged, you can always get disengaged. You’re keeping your options open. Totally giving love means this: You join your bodies when you join your lives. Really join them. From this viewpoint, sex before marriage is wrong because is separates sexual love from the committed love relationship that it’s meant to express.

Recent studies in both this country and Europe have shown that couples who do not live together before getting married are at least 50 percent more likely to remain married than those who do live together.

Can schools credibly teach students that they ought to abstain from sex if they simul­taneously instruct students in condom use as a way to reduce the risks of sexual activity? The case for trying to do both goes like this: “Many kids are going to have sex no matter what we do to promote abstinence. Given that reality, we have a responsibility to teach them to use contraceptives as protection against pregnancy and disease.” At first hearing, this argument may sound sensible and realistic. But there are very serious ethical and educational problems with this approach:

1. How far should the school go in teach­ing about condoms? Should teachers, as some do, pass around various kinds of contracep­tives so students “become comfortable” with them? Should the curriculum include, as is sometimes the case, explicit instructions on when and how to put on a condom, demon­stration of proper condom use with a model, and discussion of the pros and cons of differ­ent lubricants? Should the curriculum provide, as is also sometimes the case, instruction in effective lubrication for anal as well vaginal intercourse? Clearly, large numbers of parents — not to mention teachers — would have problems with a no-limits approach to teaching about condom use. But once you accept the premise that how-to condom instruction is a good thing, how do you logically argue that it ought to go only so far?

2. The mixed-message problem. Schools may claim to encourage abstinence at the same time that they teach students how to use condoms, but trying to do both inevitably sends a mixed message: “Don’t have sex” and “Here’s how to do it fairly safely.” The school further undermines the credibility of its advocacy of abstinence if it distributes con­doms to students through school-based clinics, school counselors, and the like. As long as the school is either teaching how to use condoms or passing them out, its recommendation of abstinence loses all moral force. The school is then back in the position of seeming to be neutral about the morality of teenage sex itself — a value-neutrality that has demonstrably failed in the past to curb teen sexual activity, pregnancy, or sexually transmitted disease.

3. Teaching students how to use condoms and distributing them creates a false sense of security about the protection they provide against pregnancy and AIDS. What are teen­agers, already prone to think “It won’t happen to me,” likely to conclude if the school — in spite of the announced risks — explains how to use condoms and offers them on request? Many students will conclude that the risks are tolerable.

The risks, of course, are not tolerable. That’s why the New York State Board of Re­gents, when it mandated AIDS education in 1987, characterized “the use of condoms as extremely high-risk behavior. The view that condoms should or can be used as a way to reduce the transmission of AIDS should not be supported.” Schools must not convey the idea that “protected sex” is a responsible “second option.”

It follows that only one kind of condom instruction is educationally justifiable: that which teaches students all the reasons why condoms do not make sex safe. Condoms have a 10 percent failure rate in preventing preg­nancy, and the protection they provide against AIDS transmission may well be considerably lower. That’s because the AIDS virus is much smaller than the sperm; it can infect either partner, and it can infect a victim any day each month (whereas a woman can become pregnant only a small number of days each month). In a study conducted by the Universi­ty of Miami Medical School, 17 percent of wives of AIDS-infected husbands contracted AIDS themselves within 18 months, despite their husbands’ use of condoms. And a government report warns that condoms have higher-than-average failure rates among homo­sexuals (one reason being that condoms are more likely to tear and fail in anal intercourse than in vaginal intercourse).

4. Contraceptives do nothing to make sex emotionally safe. If we care about children, we will help them understand all the emotional hurts (discussed below) that can come from premature, uncommitted sex. Condoms provide no protection whatsoever against these emotional consequences.

5. By appearing to sanction ‘protected’ sex, the school fails in its responsibility to support parents. The public opinion polls show that parents want the schools to teach their children not to have sexual intercourse during this period of their lives. When the school in any way undermines that value, it violates a basic public trust. Moreover, if the school distributes condoms to students without their parents’ knowledge and consent, the be­trayal of trust is even more profound. It also violates at least the spirit of public health law, which recognizes the right of parents to be involved in decisions affecting the health, safety, and welfare of their minor children.

6. The school cannot, in the pursuit of other aims, set aside its educational obligation to teach good values and character. Teenage pregnancy and AIDS are serious social problems, to be sure, but schools must never engage in bad education in an effort to amelio­rate social problems. The school is first and foremost an educational institution; as such its first duty must always be to teach children the truth and good values. The truth is that sexual activity by unmarried teenagers is harmful to them and harmful to society. The morally right value is for young people to avoid such activi­ty. Schools must not even appear to approve of something which is clearly wrong for stu­dents to do. No school would consider passing out clean needles as a means of reducing AIDS transmission among intravenous drug users. Schools must have the same clarity about their mission in sex education.

The most important goal of sex education is to help young people learn to act as they should — with control over their desires, re­spect for self, respect for others, and a view to the future — in their sexual lives as in all other areas of their lives. If they learn to resist the temptations of premature sex just as they say no to drugs and other self-damaging activi­ties, we will make progress against teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. And our children will have developed the kind of values and character that will someday serve them well as marriage partners, parents of their own children, and citizens of society.

A big part of making the ethical case for abstinence is helping young people understand the serious psychological consequences of sex outside a committed love relationship. How do you make the emotional dangers real to teen­agers?

Regret. As a psychologist, Dick Purnell, hears over and over about the guilt and emptiness and regret people experience after uncommitted sex: “People come to me, and in the privacy of my office they pour out their hearts and talk about the emotional scars that fill their lives. What they say usually goes something like this: ‘At first it was very, very exciting. Then I started to feel bad about myself. Then I started to feel bad about the person I was with. We started to argue and fight a lot. Then we broke up, and now we’re enemies.'”

Adolescent girls need to know the sharp regret that so many young girls feel after getting sexually involved. Says a high school junior: “I get upset when I see my friends losing their virginity to some guy they’ve just met. Later, after the guy’s dumped them, they come to me and say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done it.'” Says a ninth-grade girl who slept with eight boys in junior high, “I’m young, but I feel old.”

George Eager, author of Love, Dating, and Sex (one of the best-written books for teens on this subject), offers this advice to boys: “When the breakup comes, it’s usually a lot tougher on the girls than on the guys. It’s not some­thing you want on your conscience — that you caused someone else to have deep emotional problems.” At a high school assembly, Eager says, a well-known speaker was asked, “What do you most regret about your high school days?” Instantly he replied, “that I single-handedly destroyed a girl.”

Regret over uncommitted sexual relation­ships can last for years. I recently received a letter from a 33-year-old woman, now a psy­chiatrist, who told about the lessons she learned the hard way. After high school, she says, she spent a year abroad as an exchange student.

I was a virgin when I left, but I felt I was protected. I had gotten an IUD so I could make my own decisions if and when I wanted. I had steeled myself against commitment. I was never go­ing to marry or have children; I was going to have a career. During that year abroad, from 17 1/2 to 18 1/2, I was very promiscuous. But the fact is, it cost me to be separated from my­self. The longest-standing and deepest wound I gave myself was heartfelt. That sick, used feeling of having given a precious part of myself — my soul — to so many and for nothing, still aches. I never imagined I’d pay so dearly and for so long.

When you share your body with someone, Purnell points out, you’re giving part of your­self. When that someone leaves your life, something of you goes with him or her. You’ll never get it back.

Disruption of marital intimacy. Kevin Leman, a clinical psychologist, describes the “sexual flashbacks” that trouble a number of the married women he has counseled. When they make love with their husbands, they suffer — sometimes 10 to 15 years into the marriage — involuntary mental images of premarital sex with other partners. Men are also vulnerable to these disruptive flashbacks. Says one young husband:

I would do anything, anything to forget the sexual experiences I had before I met my wife. When we start having intercourse, the pictures of the past and the other women go through my head, and it’s killing any intimacy. I’m to the point where I don’t want to have sex because I can’t stand those memories. The truth is, I’ve been married to this wonderful woman for eight years and I have never been “alone” in the bedroom with her.

Stunting effects on a teenager’s develop­ment as a person. Girls, especially, risk hurting their development through absorption in a sexual relationship. Says psychiatrist Sam­uel Kaufman: “A girl who enters into a serious relationship with a boy very early in life may find out later that her individuality was thwarted. She became part of him and failed to develop her own interests, her sense of independent identity.”

Reo Christenson of Miami University, Ohio, identifies still other emotional hazards of teenage sex: the frequently unsatisfying nature of initial sexual experience, especially for girls; the guilt feelings many teens will experience; the anguish of parents if pregnancy occurs or if sexual activity becomes known; the termina­tion of normal adolescent activities and the premature arrival of adult cares and burdens if pregnancy occurs; and the probable aban­donment of the mother by the teenage father.

One of the most important tasks of sex education is to help young people gain a central ethical insight: Love is wanting what’s best for the other person, now and in the future. You can hardly claim to love someone if you’re gambling with that person’s health, welfare, and present and future happiness. Teens need to know that if someone pushes for sex by saying, “If you loved me, you would,” they can truthfully reply: “If you loved me, you wouldn’t ask.”

Christenson raises still another sensitive issue: the role of religion in sex education. He points out that many parents dissent from public school sex education because they be­lieve that crucial ethical and religious princi­ples will be excluded from consideration. How could a religious perspective be included, he asks, in a way that is consistent with the Constitution?

Christenson’s proposal: Structure students’ inquiry into the issue of sex so that religious questions are raised right along with other relevant questions. For example, when ex­ploring moral considerations, students would investigate questions such as: What does then Christian or Jewish or Muslim faith say about premarital sex? What do these traditions say about the morality of abortion?

Inquiry into such matters, Christenson ob­serves, would be well within the Constitution. Teachers would not presume to tell students whether their religious beliefs are valid or not, but would encourage students to bring what­ever religious beliefs they may have into the discussion. “That in turn,” Christenson points out, “would oblige parents, pastors, priests, and rabbis to make sure that students’ reli­gious heritage in this area was clarified, so that students could accurately take it into ac­count while formulating their views.”

Two recent findings support the wisdom of helping teens bring their religious traditions to bear on questions of sexuality. One is that teens who say they “attend religious services frequently” report a rate of sexual activity that is significantly lower (18 percent among 12- to 17-year-olds) than the rate for those who say they “seldom or never” attend religious services (38 percent sexually active). Another poll, however, found that a surprisingly high percentage (43 percent) of 17-year-olds in evangelical Protestant families had had sexual intercourse. Three-quarters of these sexually active teens said they got “little or no informa­tion about sex from their church.” Schools could help by encouraging students to investi­gate their faith’s teachings about sex.

Sensitivity to religious beliefs is also im­portant when the school deals with an issue such as masturbation. I have spoken with sex educators who think schools should teach children that masturbation is healthy and nor­mal and a safe alternative to intercourse. But that ignores the view that sex was obviously meant to be relational, an expression of love between two persons. While it is generally recognized that masturbation is common child­hood behavior, many parents nevertheless want gently to encourage their children to try to resist that temptation. Teachers are obliged to respect that parental value and should encourage children who ask about masturbation to talk to their parents.

On April 22, 1988, The New York Times ran a story titled “Sex Education Manual Prompts Moral Outrage.” The manual, produced with a federal grant by a New Hampshire family planning clinic, contained the following state­ment: “Gay and lesbian adolescents are per­fectly normal, and their sexual attraction to members of the same sex is healthy.” Critics of the manual objected to homosexuality’s being presented to students as “healthy” and “nor­mal.” The author of the manual defended it by stating that his purpose was to “help teachers give support to homosexual teenagers in the classroom…and to respond to disparaging re­marks against homosexual teenagers. We say that homophobia is the problem.”

To decide what to say about homophobia, it’s necessary first to clarify language. “Homo­phobia” has been has been used to mean at least three different things. One meaning is “irrational fear of homosexuals,” such as the belief that one can get AIDS through casual, nonsexual contact with gay persons. That is an unfounded, irrational fear which schools should correct with accurate information.

“Homophobia” is also used to mean hatred of or unjust and uncharitable treatment of homosexual persons. Such acts, ranging from verbal harassment to murder, are on the rise and must be condemned for the same reason that hatred and mistreatment of any group must be condemned: They violate jus­tice, human dignity, and respect for life.

But “homophobia” is also used in a third way: to mean that a person who disapproves of homosexual behavior is “prejudiced” in the same way that a person with racist or sexist attitudes is prejudiced. However, whether homosexuality is right and normal, “just an­other lifestyle,” is a matter of moral and/or religious judgment (as opposed to “prejudice”) about which honorable persons can and do disagree.

Some persons, for example, believe that a homosexual lifestyle is ultimately self-dam­aging behavior. Others object on religious grounds: Homosexual sex violates what they view as God’s imperative that sex be reserved for a man and a woman united in marriage.

One can require all citizens, regardless of their private views of homosexuality, to respect the civil and human rights of homosexual persons. However — and this point is lost in much of the current debate — one cannot in fairness accuse someone of being a bigot be­cause that person, in good conscience, makes the judgment that homosexual activity is not healthy or right behavior. The ethical obliga­tion to treat every person justly does not mean that one must approve all of a person’s behav­ior, sexual or otherwise.

Schools are, I believe, within the bounds of truth, sensitivity to pluralism, and sound moral education if they make it clear that homosexual behavior is highly controversial in our society, with some people regarding it as normal and others viewing it as contrary to what is right or normal. Sex educators must respect the fact that there is not public support for the position that schools should “tell students that homosexuality is just an alternate sexual activity”; that position was endorsed by only 24 percent of American adults in a na­tional poll for Time magazine.

Research shows that when parents talk openly with their children about sex, children’s sexual attitudes and values are more likely to reflect their parents’. If schools wish to maxi­mize their chance of affecting young people’s sexual values, they must recruit the help of parents. To do this, schools can, for example:

· Let parents know that many schoolchildren are showing evidence — in their sexually precocious conversations, attitudes, and behavior — of premature and unhealthy exposure to sexual stimuli. Cite examples of cases where pornography has been harmful to children. Give parents support for saying no to television shows and movies that include explicit sexual material or that take a favorable attitude toward sex outside of uncommitted relationships.
· Let parents know what studies show: Young people who have positive attitudes toward themselves are less likely to get sexually involved. That means helping children to build a positive self-image.

Both parents and schools must pay attention to who is teaching children about sex. The pro-abstinence programs recommend­ed earlier all stress the importance of the ideals and convictions of the teacher as role model. Unfortunately, many sex educators still teaching were formed in a very permissive era and do not possess strong personal convictions about the desirability of teenage abstinence, much less saving sex for marriage. Obviously the values of such sex educators do not reflect those of the majority of adults who say they want schools to teach teenagers that they should not have sexual intercourse. Schools clearly have a responsibility to their communi­ties — as well as to the moral growth and well-being of young people — to select sex educators who do not approve of sexual in­volvement by their students.

In the stormy waters of sex education, schools can and must keep this clearly in mind: The school’s goal is not just to reduce teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted dis­ease, important as that is. The school’s goal is also to help teens avoid all the hurts to self and others that come from premature, uncommitted sexual activity; to help students develop the self-control that will serve them well throughout their lives; to foster the ideal of sex as part of the marriage commitment; and to help students develop an ethical un­derstanding of the relationship between sex and love.