In Historic Move, HHS Encourages LGBT-Inclusive Sexual Education

In Historic Move, HHS Encourages LGBT-Inclusive Sexual Education

Last Friday, under the Affordable Care Act, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released two funding announcements regarding sexual education. For the first time, notes Ty Cobb at the Human Rights Campaign, the “language in the funding announcements for federal sexuality education dollars” urges states designing their sexual education programs to consider the needs of LGBT and questioning youth:


The funding announcement funnels $55 million to the new Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) — “which supports comprehensive, evidence-based efforts to prevent teen pregnancy and reduce sexually-transmitted infections” — and $50 million to abstinence-only programs. Since marriage equality is not recognized in most states, abstinence-only-until-marriage programs often exclude LGBT students and do not fully address their needs. However, HHS does require that both PREP and abstinence programs are “medically accurate,” which is a huge step in the right direction for LGBT-inclusive sex education.

Still, past attempts to embrace LGBT-inclusive sexual education have, unsurprisingly, attracted considerable conservative vitriol. When the Minnesota legislature considered comprehensive sexual health education appropriate for its straight and LGBT students in March, the state’s right-wing Minnesota Family Council was quick to testify that comprehensive sex education would advance “homosexual behavior, anal or oral sex, things like that.”

And in June, after pressure from parents, officials in Johnson County, KS reversed their decision to accept a $300,000 comprehensive sexual education grant involving Planned Parenthood. Last month, a broad K-12 health and nutrition education proposal in Helena, MT emphasizing tolerance, safe sex, and anti-bullying caused the right-wing to go apoplectic over the curriculum as a weapon to promote a homosexual agenda.

According to the council's "Sexuality Education and Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs in the States" report (say that seven times in a row), $190 million has been poured into real live sex education in the many months since Obama took office. Initiatives like the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), offered up by Democrat Sen. Max Baucus as part of the Obama healthcare package, fund education about sex that is complete, non-religious and, you know, based on facts. The great news is that it's not just the feds doing their part -- states, cities, and individual school districts are starting to forge ahead with more comprehensive sex ed as well.