And it’s about time.

The Washington Senate approved a measure Wednesday to end the requirement that the state Department of Health apply for abstinence-only sex education grants…. The measure allows the state to apply for sex education grants for programs that are medically and scientifically accurate, which can include programs advocating abstinence, prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and the prevention of unintended pregnancies.

The state Senate approved the same bill last year, but the state House killed it—because, um, last year’s Democratic super majority in the House supported sex education that wasn’t medically and scientifically accurate. Here’s hoping this year’s Democratic super majority backs medically accurate, scientifically sound, and comprehensive sex ed that includes information about abstinence. But abstinence-only sex education has to go.

14 replies on “Maybe This Year Washington State Will Get Out of the Business of Promoting Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Unplanned Pregnancies and Unprotected Anal Sex Among High School Students”

  6. The persistence of abstinence “education” is really an overwhelming proof – as if the world needed more proof – that politicians are, apparently in all but a tiny few exceptional cases, sniveling, self-absorbed cowards. They could deny the barking, slavering conservative minorities just this one small thing and make the world so much better a place, at almost no political cost, and they won’t do it because god forbid they seem even an iota less anti-sex than their future opponents.

    Fucking… fuck. Fuck! Maybe it’s coming to an end, though. Maybe. I hope so.

  8. But… but then… then people will have s.. s… se… SEX! HEALTHY sex! BEFORE marriage! And they will do so without catching diseases or having unwanted children as a result of ill preparation! Then, all my strict adherence to arbitrary chastity guidelines, at the expense of my mental and sexual health, will have been WASTED!

  9. It’s all because the majority of politicians are STILL old white men. They are not in tune with female sexual health, so they don’t care about giving much needed vaccines preventing HPV and such to girls before they become sexually active. They want women to die off or go back to being completely helpless and dependent on men. There is nothing worse to me than being dependent hopelessly on a man. Women are not property to be owned by their fathers and then sold to a man to become his wife. That’s no longer how this country works, and I’ll be damned if my sisters and I are going to let it regress because a bunch of fat old white dudes can’t take a woman with enough strength and self-confidence to stand up for herself and what she knows is right. Fat, old, white politicians – gays, women, and minorities aren’t going away. Change or get tossed out like an old, obsolete computer.

  10. Thank god. I went to advocate for that bill last year on reproductive justice lobby day. There were a few nutzos totally against it.

  11. @9, We vote for our senators and representatives. They take the place of us in speaking to the rest of the legislature. If enough of your politician’s constituents believe in something, your representation should represent that viewpoint. So it’s not that the politicians are old, white men. It’s that too many of their constituents are old, white people with old, white values.

  13. There is one improvement I’ve noticed in my son’s middle school sex-ed curriculum — remember that diagram of the female reproductive organs? Unlike the one I was given, the current one includes and even explains the clitoris. I never knew I had one until well into my twenties. So abstinence-only bullshit aside, there’s a little progress there.

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