Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) introduced a new bill at the beginning of this month, called the Real Education for Healthy Youth Act -- the first piece of federal legislation that would recognize a young person’s right to sexual health information.

Other parts of the bill include grants for comprehensive sex education programs for teens and young adults in colleges, as well as requiring funded programs to be inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual youth, and address students who are and are not sexually active.

In California, the law already requires that if sex education is taught, it must be comprehensive -- meaning it must include information about abstinence and contraception. Although, teaching sex ed is not mandatory.

The topic of how to teach sex ed is in the air right now. The New York Times magazine recently published an article called, “Teaching Good Sex,” which tells the story of one English teacher who teaches positive sexuality, going beyond the do's and don'ts into the realm of pleasure. He calls sex a "force for good" even amongst teenagers.

Another September has rolled around, and school is back in session.  A new year however, does not necessarily mean new history textbooks- most of us can relate to using outdated materials and making due.  

This is NOT the case for sex education curriculum. For instance, students in Greensboro, North Carolina will learn about contraceptive strategies other than abstinence for the first time this year, according to an article in the News and Record.

There are two schools of thought in the United States about sex education: comprehensive and abstinence-only.  President Obama is giving states a large incentive to adopt a comprehensive sex education curriculum, that includes information about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and varied methods of contraception.  He included a program in his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (passed in March 2010) called the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP).  This program allows states to apply for a minimum of $250,000 to implement a comprehensive sex education program that addresses more than just abstinence as a form of contraception.  Applications for this funding were due two weeks ago.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, at least three of the following topics must be included in the state's curriculum:

a. Healthy relationships, such as positive self-esteem and relationship dynamics,
friendships, dating, romantic involvement, marriage, and family interactions.
b. Adolescent development, such as the development of healthy attitudes and values about
adolescent growth and development, body image, racial and ethnic diversity, and other
related subjects.
c. Financial literacy.
d. Parent-child communication.
e. Educational and career success, such as developing skills for employment preparation,
job seeking, independent living, financial self-sufficiency, and work-place productivity.
f. Healthy life skills, such as goal-setting, decision making, negotiation, communication and
interpersonal skills, and stress management.

(Updated on April 28, 2010)

(download mp3)

The following was broadcast on KUNM FM, Albuquerque as part of a series Youth Speak Out, a collaboration between Youth Radio, Youth Media Project in Santa Fe, KUNM’s Youth Radio in Albuquerque, and New Mexico's Youth Alliance, made possible by a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. For more information about Youth Speak Out go to www.youthradio.org/new-mexico.

by Bethany Trujillo

The first time I had sex, I got pregnant. I was fifteen years old and I didn’t have any feelings for the guy. We weren’t in a relationship and there were no emotional connections. I had sex with him because two weeks prior my best friend lost her virginity and I wanted to have the experience, too.  It took me two weeks to finally get a hold of the guy, and when he found out he didn’t take it very well.  He said that he didn’t want to be stuck with me for the rest of his life.

You can't imagine how hard it was to tell my mom that I was pregnant at the young age of fifteen. It shocked my mom because we had never discussed sex before.  But, it went better than I expected. She was mad, but understood. She told me that she would support me regardless of my decision.  She was afraid that I wouldn’t graduate high school or be as successful as I could be if I was raising a child.
Read more...

Jennifer Obakhume is a reporter for Youth Radio. She questions the limited models of womanhood available to young women today.

By the time I was in my late teenage years, the Barbies and baby dolls that were supposed to help young girls become women were long a thing of the past. But, the number of girls in high school who were following the model set by those dolls was growing day by day. I knew so many girls who, I think, got pregnant before their time. Having never had a boyfriend, I naturally couldn’t connect to their situations. Frankly, I would rather have something that is more likely to stick around for the long haul: my education.

Now that I’m getting ready to graduate from college and build towards my career, I don’t really have a realistic model of womanhood in front of me. It would be nice if I did. Instead, I’m working on my career with the idea that I’ll be on an equal playing field with my male colleagues and that I’ll have a medium to large-sized student loan debt that will have to be paid regardless of gender.

Despite the constant suggestions of my relatives to stay away from serious relationships that could result in a pregnancy, I notice that, lately, they've been bugging me more about kids. My family insists that every woman is born with a maternal instinct and that it’s my job to get with the program by my early 30s at the latest. That myth is far off base. I've talked to some older women about motherhood. While many of them are happy with the way their kids turned out, some of them said that they would have waited until later or not had children at all.

At least not everyone treats motherhood as a requirement for being a woman. Read more...

Talking about sex to teens is always hard because there are times when teens know more than what they should. But, is promoting abstinence to them realistic?

Apparently, to a Republican senator it is. Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah proposed a bill that would provide $50 million per year through 2014 for abstinence education programs. These funds are to be used specifically for abstinence programs and not on any other sex-ed subjects (like contraception).

Teens and abstinence, I’m not sure. I’m not saying teens can’t stop having sex, but growing up in time where sex is everywhere—TV, cartoons, school—it’s hard.

To help unpack this issue, Youth Radio spoke to Tatiana Colon, Director of Education & Youth Services of Family Violence Law Center (FVLC) in Oakland.

“Promoting or teaching abstinence to teens—like the ones we work with (urban kids)—are not effective.” She went on to say, “It’s not meeting teens where they are at.”

In my family, most information about sex was withheld until my late teenage years, when they suddenly deemed me old enough to hear about it. Now that the teenage years are permanently behind me, my family talks about sex around me left and right. One thing that hasn't changed is the wide-eyed look of confusion that pops up on my face whenever I hear their candid discussion of (what I think is too much) sexual information. Read more...

Ever seen a condom key chain?

Last summer, I went to an overnight program at UC Berkeley for high school seniors from all over the state. We stayed in the dorms and at night we went to each other’s room to talk and hang out. On the last night, eight girls came to my room and noticed my condom key chain.

“Wow, is that a condom?” one girl asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Does your school pass out these things?” another asked.

A question that's always hard to answer whether it's posed by a parent, teacher, or even fellow students is:  Are teens having sex?