The New Morality of Comprehensive Sexuality Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 169-208
Author(s):  
Kristy L. Slominski
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Sex Education ◽  
Sexuality Education ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Sexual Values ◽  
Comprehensive Sexuality Education ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
Life Education ◽  
Conservative Christians ◽  
National Council Of Churches

Out of family life education grew comprehensive sexuality education, which taught sexuality as a public health topic and included information on contraceptives and, eventually, sexual diversity. Interactions between the National Council of Churches and Mary Steichen Calderone, a Quaker and public health professional, led to the founding of SIECUS in 1964 as the leader of comprehensive sexuality education. Chapter 4 argues that the “new morality,” a liberal theological trend also known as situation ethics, shaped comprehensive sexuality education and incited the intense conservative Christian opposition known as the “sex education controversies.” The new morality, with its rejection of absolutist interpretations of right and wrong behavior, tipped sex education further toward progressive sexual values. Responding to the new morality of comprehensive sexuality education, conservative Christians protested that children would learn an “anything goes” curriculum that violated their beliefs in modesty and the exclusive place of sexuality within a monogamous, heterosexual marriage.

Abstinence-Only and the Struggle to Define Sex Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-240
Author(s):  
Kristy L. Slominski
Keyword(s):  
Sex Education ◽  
Sexual Behaviors ◽  
Sexuality Education ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
Comprehensive Sexuality Education ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
Conservative Christians ◽  
Abstinence Only

As Chapter 5 argues, conservative Christian abstinence-only advocates learned a great deal from the liberal Protestants and comprehensive sexuality education they rejected. This phase of sex education, often defined by the struggle between competing versions of sex education, began with the emergence of abstinence-only education in the 1980s. After years of opposing sex education, conservative Christians like Tim LaHaye developed their replacements. Supported by—and supporting—the newly developed Christian Right and the evangelical pro-family movement, these programs espoused chastity before marriage and omitted information on contraceptive benefits and the diversity of sexual behaviors and identities. It was no longer a question of whether sex education belonged in schools, but rather which type would be taught. Conservatives, too, had learned how to translate religious values into secular spaces in order to gain a bigger audience for their concerns and values.

scholarly journals But is it Comprehensive? Unpacking the ‘comprehensive’ in comprehensive sexuality education

2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (7) ◽  
pp. 747-762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Miedema ◽  
Marielle L J Le Mat ◽  
Frances Hague
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Sexuality Education ◽  
Comprehensive Sexuality Education ◽  
The Core ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
Core Components ◽  
Important Means ◽  
The Subject

Background: Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) is increasingly gaining traction within the international community. CSE is regarded as an important means of informing young people about their rights and sexual health, improving public health outcomes and contributing to sustainable development. Context and objective: Considerable variation exists in understandings regarding what makes sexuality education ‘comprehensive’. To gain greater clarity on what CSE is seen to be and entails, and how this form of sexuality education compares with other approaches, a review of existing programmatic and scholarly literatures was conducted. Design: This literature review analyses a range of CSE guidelines and academic sources engaging with the subject of CSE, and sexuality education more broadly. Method: Analysis of stated goals and means of CSE to identify core components of this form of education. Results: Four sets of core CSE components are identified, yet the analysis shows that the intended breadth of this type of sexuality education leaves considerable space for interpretation, with key concepts often remaining abstract. Furthermore, addressing the core elements of CSE and achieving its ‘emancipatory’ goals can work to exclude particular perspectives and subjectivities. Conclusion: The review draws attention to the politics of knowledge production at play in decisions concerning what is deemed ‘comprehensive’, for whom, when and where. It concludes that the notion of ‘comprehensive’ is a matter of degree, and that reaching consensus on a set of universal standards regarding what can be deemed as ‘comprehensive’ may neither be possible nor desirable. The analysis will be useful for those interested in more careful engagement with CSE and, specifically, in examining features that, in practice, may run counter to the original goals.

scholarly journals Sex Education in Brazil: A Proposal for Education and Research - Body, Gender and Sexuality in the Process of Self-Knowledge and the Construction of an Active Citizenship

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-179
Author(s):  
B. Ribeiro ◽  
◽  
P. Ribeiro ◽  
R. Bedin ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Continuing Education ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Sex Education ◽  
Sexuality Education ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
And Gender

Objective: Developing proposals of sex education in school. Brazil has vast and qualified bibliography resulting from research carried out by diligent researchers, mostly from research groups from universities in the country. Sex education is an important space for the realization of concrete proposals for actions that combats discrimination, prejudice and sexual violence, both symbolic as real, and that the insertion of issues of diversity and gender in teacher education in sex education will enable its success and its wide reach. Design and Method: The proposal that guides the development of this work turns to the continuing education of teachers and health professionals in sexuality education, with an emphasis on promoting a culture of recognition of sexual diversity, gender equality and adolescent sexuality as an integral part of the process of construction of an active citizenship, using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Results: The project inserted the issue of citizenship and human rights as one of the pillars of gender equality and of a full sex life with the least of possible distress, anxiety, guilt and misinformation. And we verified the efficiency of the use of the Information and Communication Technologies in teacher training. Conclusions: The use of Information and Communication Technologies in sex education can stimulate the development of technological thinking and the increasing of a new mentality of continuing education for teachers, not common in Brazil.

scholarly journals BEYOND THE RHETORIC: THE CASE FOR THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF COMPREHENSIVE SEXUALITY EDUCATION IN KENYAN SCHOOLS

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Kiswili
Keyword(s):  
Sex Education ◽  
Sexuality Education ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Development Discourse ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
Comprehensive Sexuality Education ◽  
Young Learners

Comprehensive Sexuality Education remains one of the most controversial topics in global development discourse. Organizations such as UNESCO, WHO and UNICEF have championed for the institutionalization of CSE in countries across the globe, citing the relative merits of this education on young people. Kenya, like a lot of other countries has faced formidable opposition in the institutionalization of CSE with much of the opposition being spearheaded by religious groups and advocacy groups that posit that CSE would have negative consequences on young learners. This review sought to document the milestones that have defined the institutionalization of CSE by the Kenyan government and to establish the legal policy regimes that have informed the process. It also sought to highlight the barriers that have impeded the process and lastly, it endeavored to suggest ways which these impediments can be overcome. This review was a culmination of systematic analysis of the available literature on sex education in Kenya. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0740/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Teaching Moral Sex

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristy L. Slominski
Keyword(s):  
Sex Education ◽  
Sexuality Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Education History ◽  
National Council ◽  
Public Sex ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
National Council Of Churches

Teaching Moral Sex is the first comprehensive study to focus on the role of religion in the history of public sex education in the United States. It examines religious contributions to national sex education organizations from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century, highlighting issues of public health, public education, family, and the role of the state. It details how public sex education was created through the collaboration of religious sex educators—primarily liberal Protestants, along with some Catholics and Reform Jews—with “men of science,” namely, physicians, biology professors, and social scientists. Slominski argues that the work of early religious sex educators laid foundations for both sides of contemporary controversies regarding comprehensive sexuality education and abstinence-only education. In other words, instead of casting religion as merely an opponent of sex education, this research shows how deeply embedded religion has been in sex education history and how this legacy has shaped terms of current debates. By focusing on religion, this book introduces a new cast of characters into sex education history, including Quaker and Unitarian social purity reformers, the Young Men’s Christian Association, military chaplains, the Federal Council of Churches, and the National Council of Churches. These religious sex educators made sex education more acceptable to the public and created the groundwork for recent debates through their strategic combination of progressive and restrictive approaches to sexuality. Their contributions helped to spread sex education and influenced major shifts within the movement, including the mid-century embrace of family life education.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Kristy L. Slominski
Keyword(s):  
Moral Education ◽  
Sex Education ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Sexuality Education ◽  
Venereal Disease ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Hygiene ◽  
Life Education ◽  
The Military ◽  
Abstinence Only

This chapter introduces the ways religion contributed to the major agendas that defined the five historical phases of sex education. The phases include (1) the formation of the early sex education movement out of purity and hygiene movements between 1876 and 1913; (2) the institutionalization of moral education as part of venereal disease prevention programs in schools, YMCAs (Young Men’s Christian Associations), and the military between 1913 and 1925; (3) the shift to family life education between 1925 and 1964; (4) the development of comprehensive sexuality education between 1964 and 1981; and (5) the growth of abstinence-only programs from 1981 to the present. These phases were dominated by organizations like the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) and the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). Religion was prominent in the motivations of the organizations’ founders, the participation of religious sex educators, cooperation with churches and synagogues, and discussions within publications and conferences.

scholarly journals Scaling up comprehensive sexuality education in Nigeria: from national policy to nationwide application

Sex Education ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Huaynoca ◽  
Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli ◽  
Nuhu Yaqub Jr. ◽  
Donna Marie Denno
Keyword(s):  
Sexuality Education ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Scaling Up ◽  
Comprehensive Sexuality Education

Inherited Crypts of the Wife/Mother: Ang Lee's Hulk Meets Zechariah 5:5–11 in Contemporary Apocalyptic Discourse

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 127-142
Author(s):  
Erin Runions
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Repetition Compulsion ◽  
Biblical Allusion ◽  
Letting Go ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
Conservative Christians ◽  
Christian Discourse ◽  
Lost Object

AbstractThis paper puts the political concerns expressed by secular apocalypse in Ang Lee's Hulk (2003) into conversation with the political concerns expressed by religious apocalypse in conservative Christian discourse. The film sets a revised version of the Akedah, in which the wife/mother is killed instead of the son, at the heart of its plot and of its critique of U.S. foreign policy. Set within Lee's apocalyptic analysis of repressed trauma, this quasi-biblical allusion points toward the repeating biblical tradition of the murdered wife/mother. One such repetition of this originary trauma can be found in what Diana Edelman has argued to be Yahweh's murder of his wife Asherah in Zechariah 5:5-11, a text which can be read in the same psychoanalytic terms that the film evokes. Both film and text represent the missed encounter of trauma and the entombment of the lost love object. In both film and text, the lost object, the mother, is entombed, encrypted and forgotten. But because this proto-apocalyptic text is one that conservative Christians take up in their defence of the war on Iraq as the precursor to the doomed Whore of Babylon, this text, uncannily, brings the film into contact with its religious apocalyptic roots. But where the biblical text is read in ways that only increase a violent repetition compulsion, the film models mourning and letting go as a way of working through the trauma. Thus, the film offers an alternate way of reading the biblical text in culture.

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