Sex Education Too Critical To Ignore
Public Forum Letter
Updated: 10/30/2009 07:10:50 PM MDT
We live in a state that prizes education. We even added driver education to keep our children safe. Yet, in one area we are steadfast in keeping our children ignorant, illiterate and under control: sex.
Here in Utah, we apparently think that our children’s friends who are as confused as they are, their parents who are almost as ignorant as they are, television, movies, the Web, newspapers, magazines and predators, plus Sen. Chris Buttars and the Legislature, are the most appropriate instructors of sex education for our children. But the stakes are too high. By just saying “No” to sex education, we render our children helpless, unprepared and unarmed in a struggle against disease, unwanted pregnancy, predators and death.
When taught by professionals, sex education is more than plumbing, more than repression. It is a reasoned, age-appropriate, sequenced open forum of ideas that allows for challenge and choice. Our children will be stronger and safer for it. First, we must face our own fears, so we will set our children free to know why and when they say “No.”
Suzanne McKenna
Salt Lake City