Sex Education

Young women pack out Vauxhall’s pubs on a sunny summer evening. They chat over Diet Cokes, pilsners and passion-fruit-flavoured vapes. Many smoke rollies, some do ket and cocaine. Eyes rarely widen at the mention of such things; bring up the Pill, however, and you elicit a flurry of disdain and lively debate.

A dozen state or county agencies have parted ways with tens of thousands of dollars in federal grants meant to help monitor teenagers' sexual behaviors and try to lower rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Heather Alberda watched as her elected representatives on the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners sought to dismantle what remained of her life’s work.

As the sex educator for the county’s health department, Alberda, 46, developed programs to lower teen pregnancy and curb the spread of sexually transmitted infections. She spoke about sex and sexuality with a directness that was rare in her conservative county and sometimes got her into trouble.

Republicans in staunchly conservative states are championing some atypical legislation this session — promoting sex education, government welfare and more birth control.

The proposals are part of what some governors and lawmakers have referred to as a “new pro-life agenda” for the post-Roe era — one that is increasingly breaking with their party’s socially conservative approach to maternal and reproductive health in favor of one more commonly pushed by Democrats.

Book bannings in U.S. schools have spread in recent years, with some parents complaining about texts that they believe prematurely introduce children and minors to explanations about sex, sexuality, and gender roles.

Now, in one interaction that created a buzz on social media this week, a video shared on Twitter showed a parent excoriating her local school district for allegedly trying to teach children about anal sex and masturbation, among other topics.

On the menu today: Republicans in Texas and Ohio consider following in Florida’s footsteps on keeping controversial sexual topics out of children’s classrooms and what Elon Musk might do now that he’s Twitter’s largest shareholder.

Conservative States Consider Copying Florida

Nearly seven years ago, Melanie Graft’s 4-year-old daughter was in the children’s section of her local North Texas library when she picked up a book about an LGBTQ pride parade. Within the colorful pages of the book, “This Day in June,” children and adults celebrate with rainbow flags and signs promoting equality and love over hate. Adults embrace and kiss one another.

A Chicago Public Schools training program tells teachers that sex is a “socially constructed” phenomenon and instructs them to hide students’ gender pronouns from their parents, Fox News reported.

Chicago Public Schools told teachers that “gender and sex” are social constructs that have been “created and enforced” by society and threatened retaliatory measures if they didn’t use students’ preferred pronouns during a required teacher training program, Fox News reported.

Academics rushed to defend a former teacher at an elite New York City school who taught “pornography literacy” to high schoolers and showed first graders a cartoon about masturbation.

Justine Ang Fonte taught sex education at Dalton School in Manhattan for nine years, The New York Times reported, developing K-12 curriculums for students and speaking and offering workshops at other New York City schools.