Sex Education

Surgeon General David Satcher's recent report on sex is a straightforward, clear and compelling call for a "mature ... dialogue on issues of sexuality, sexual health and responsible sexual behavior." It's really too bad that the Bush White House isn't grown up enough to join in the conversation. A close reading of the report brings into focus a crisis so pervasive that embarrassment, ignorance and politics should wither in the face of the need for direct action.

When U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher released a long-awaited report last Thursday urging American communities to offer complete, scientifically based sex education in schools as a way to reduce unwanted pregnancies, rapes and sexually transmitted diseases, at least one veteran sex educator lost a bet.

The White House sought to distance President Bush on Friday from Surgeon General David Satcher after the Clinton administration appointee issued a report encouraging communities to offer a broad range of sex education in their schools. The president's spokesman Ari Fleischer took issue with the substance of the report. And, asked whether Bush has confidence in Satcher, Fleischer declined an opportunity to voice support for the surgeon general. "That's not a question I'm addressing," he said.

Taking on a sensitive issue, Surgeon General David Satcher issued a report Thursday urging Americans to respect diversity in sexual values and calling on parents, schools and community leaders to engage in honest, mature discussions about sexual issues. The ranging report says communities must provide lifelong sex education, encouraging sexual abstinence as well as birth control.

When it came to teaching sex education to the kids, my dad followed the example set by most dads of his generation: He passed the job to Mom. So one night, with Dad safely upstairs, my little brother and I--both in elementary school--found ourselves on the living room couch on either side of a very nervous mother. Jimmy and I gave each other the eye. This was going to be majorly embarrassing, wasn't it?

Few subjects roil adults like the collision of kids and sex, and it seems our kids are just as divided. Listen to Jonathan Knepper and Mahshid Rezapour, two young leaders on the emotionally charged issue of indiscriminate teen pregnancy. For Jonathan, the solution lies in abstinence. "It's hard, but it's worth it," says the junior at La Canada High School. "You can have tons of sex, but it's going to catch up with you." For Mahshid, the solution lies in sex education.

A 15-year-old girl tells her mother that while she and a friend were at a party, the friend, also 15, went into a bedroom with a 19-year-old man and had sexual intercourse for the first time. The West Los Angeles mother's natural impulse was to alert the girl's parents--good intentions that were instantly dashed by a threat. The daughter warned that if her mother told the girl's parents, she would never confide in her again.

Last month, a sophomore at a Baltimore County, Md., private school secretly videotaped himself having sex with a 15-year-old girl and then played it for his junior lacrosse teammates. A day later, a varsity player borrowed the tape and showed it to his teammates. Once it was discovered, school administrators canceled the lacrosse team's season, expelled the sophomore and suspended about 30 students who had watched.

It used to be that embarrassed adolescents would rather eat Brussels sprouts, clean their room or do most anything rather than take sex education class--especially when a stodgy health teacher their parents' age was doing the talking. But a new program out of Northridge Hospital Medical Center called GUYS--Gentlemen Understanding Youth and Sex--has middle school kids packing classrooms across the San Fernando Valley to learn about sex and its consequences.

Deborah Roffman has been teaching human sexuality since the early 1970s, when many of us thought sex was a right, not a lesson plan. But we are parents now, panicking. We fear that sex education will be interpreted by our children as permission to engage, and sex is much more dangerous than it was in the 1970s, when the pill was the antidote to our one fear. Roffman has written a new book titled "Sex and Sensibility: The Thinking Parent's Guide to Talking Sense About Sex."