- 27 minutes ago
Grace Baldridge explores the intersections of Faith and Sex Education in America by examining the curriculums in Los Angeles, CA and Birmingham, AL.
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00:00I mean look at your sexuality it I mean I mean like literally I guess you could
00:05why did I not know that you're gonna say I'm okay let's talk about sex the birds
00:11and the bees the horizontal tango the four-legged foxtrot oh what you want to
00:16know about is sexual intercourse I mean you get it talking about sex has been
00:21awkward for as long as I can remember and probably you can remember and yet
00:28states all across America are swiftly passing legislation to regulate the
00:32results of getting it on the laws regarding sex education are decided on
00:37state and local levels with no federal regulation only 24 states require that
00:42sex education be taught in public schools just 13 states require that it be
00:48medically accurate six states still include no promo homo and don't say gay
00:53laws and just two states prevent the promotion of religion how is God
00:58present in our classrooms and eventually our bedrooms and at what cost
01:05Birmingham Alabama is a Bible Belt city in an abstinence forward state that does
01:10not mandate sex education I was curious to see what the conversation around sex
01:15looked like in Alabama and upon arrival I received a clear message the most
01:20restrictive abortion bill in the country just passed in Alabama abortion would be
01:25criminalized in Alabama this is the most restrictive ban on abortions in the
01:30nation last night the Alabama State Senate passed a bill effectively banning
01:37abortion at every stage of pregnancy as of now the governor kib who is a
01:42Republican has not issued a comment you can't not educate people on something
01:47not talk about something and then effectively punish them for the silence that you implemented
02:00no I mean I always feel crazy in this in this show it was overwhelming to me that a local
02:09government that was not mandating sex education was regulating the results of
02:14having sex I sat down with Dr. Samantha Hill at Children's of Alabama to try and
02:19make sense of it all so in the state right now what is sex ed what does that
02:25look like unfortunately one of the biggest drawbacks about the sexual
02:29education law here in Alabama is that it's not enforced our students here in
02:33the state of Alabama are not necessarily getting the same sexual education what
02:36are the risks and consequences if we just don't deal with sex education
02:41continuing the silence that we have around sex education just increases the
02:45stigma keeping it stigmatized only serves to further jeopardize that person's
02:50health as well as everybody they come in contact with Alabama ranks 11th in the
02:54country for highest teen pregnancy rates of the teens having sex in Alabama 80%
02:59have never been tested for HIV and more than 20% of newly diagnosed cases are
03:05found in heterosexuals the issue of sex education is not a conversation about
03:10gay or straight but about human rights the literature shows that once you
03:15instill and incorporate a comprehensive sexual education curriculum within your
03:22particular arena so schools the rates of STD's pregnancies decline I mean you
03:26could argue that you know they're a great way to avoid getting pregnant is gay
03:30sex so have they thought that's an interesting thought don't get me wrong
03:35we've made some great strides but for the wonderful country that we are I don't
03:39think we've gone far enough at improving our young people's health in this
03:44particular arena I had been warned that talking about sex in Alabama would be
03:48difficult but I had to give it the old college try right hi my name is grace I'm
03:53working on a documentary about sex education and I'm wondering yes okay so
04:05there is not a sex ed program at your school at all
04:09hi my name is grace and I'm working on a documentary about sex education hi my
04:14name is grace hi my name is grace my name is grace hi my name is grace oh my gosh
04:20hi this is grace hi this is grace too hello hello
04:26we don't have that here we don't have a sex education program we don't have one no no ma'am
04:32actually why don't you call back wednesday or thursday okay well today but today's thursday
04:40next next week oh okay okay cool um all right and is have a good day all right thank you
04:46bye
04:48it became abundantly clear that there was almost no one in the state of Alabama that wanted to
04:53talk to this old lesbian about sex who's next go figure in Alabama the law currently states that
05:02within the sex ed classroom an instructor must emphasize in a factual manner from a public health
05:08perspective that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that this
05:14conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state these laws are commonly referred to as
05:21no promo homo and don't say gay while the bill to remove this language nearly reached a house vote
05:28this year the legislature prioritized abortion bans in a state that has largely disregarded the
05:35conversation around sex and has overlooked or condemned some within it spaces like magic city
05:41acceptance center exists to provide lgbtq youth with the tools needed to protect themselves there
05:48is glitter in the wall when we opened five years ago we opened to serve lgbtq youth ages 13 to
05:5424 and
05:56recognizing that young people didn't have access to safer sex ed that was inclusive that they didn't
06:00have access to testing the idea was to have a space where young people could go and feel comfortable
06:05and have that access and be able to talk about themselves i love that the kitchen is the first thing
06:10kind of little mini kitchen very important i like the priorities um because we're a youth center and
06:14i'm a mom about their art i will steal their art from them when they leave it behind and decorate
06:18the
06:18fridge every time we welcome someone in usually this is about the point that they tell me that
06:26they're really nervous and that they've never been in a space like this before and i get to say
06:30this exact point every single person has given me the same speech because no one has ever been in an
06:36lgbtq youth space in birmingham because this is it so you're all having an experience that's the
06:41same for everyone and that it's new once a month magic city acceptance center hosts their unicorn pizza
06:48club which is a discussion forum that focuses on the diverse aspects of lgbtq sexual health and
06:54well-being i did have sex ed the problem is that i was not in a place with my own
06:59sexuality where when
07:01it was all about straight stuff i was just like oh not for me checked out in health class i
07:06was so
07:06confused about why boys had to wear boxers and girls wore panties that i couldn't even understand what
07:13was going on because i was just lost by the idea that i couldn't wear boxers they're so comfy this
07:20will
07:20be my first sex ed class it's never too late to have sex well i did get one sex ed
07:25class out of
07:25the whole 18 years of me going to school i was getting my education from other people who really
07:33didn't know what they were talking about or experience yeah and that yeah i paid the price with that so
07:40we
07:41are actually number 17 in the nation for the highest rates of newly diagnosed hiv infections so in this
07:48graphic birmingham has a higher rate of hiv infection than los angeles where we came from
07:56correct it is per capita admittedly as a gay woman i ignorantly assumed the conversations around hiv and
08:04unwanted pregnancies never related to people like me but that couldn't be further from the truth
08:09studies have found that lesbian and bisexual women are at equal or greater risk of unwanted
08:14pregnancies and terminations than their heterosexual counterparts by excluding the lgbtq community from
08:21the sex ed conversation all students are getting only a fraction of the story i am a southern queer
08:29mom this is taylor winfrey a southern queer mom all of those things wrap up into this like beautiful
08:37package of like what i express to the world and what i feel about myself can you uh tell us
08:44a little bit
08:44about the ideas presented to you in your sex education in alabama really the entirety of of
08:50my sex education here was abstinence only and fear based and so um it was like okay don't have sex
08:57if
08:58you have sex this is what's going to happen to you we're handed out these little business card sized
09:02things that we wrote our name on and it said dear jesus comma so we wrote our names we signed
09:08at the
09:08bottom it was a pact between ourselves and and god that we were going to remain pure for our wedding
09:13nights my virginity was not mine it was men's and you know my dad's jesus is my spouse but uh
09:21it wasn't
09:22mine at the age of 19 taylor found herself pregnant and questioning her options as well as her sexuality
09:30i was already having a hard time understanding how being gay fit into this like white picket fence
09:36narrative that i've been fed it let me off the hook for a while of dealing with my own sexual
09:42orientation
09:42well because i would imagine most people would just sort of have assumed that you were straight
09:45exactly yeah and a lot of it just had to do with this idea that is force fed to you
09:51that the only
09:53right way to be and the only right way to raise a child is with a husband i fought against
09:59that before
09:59i had emily this idea of like letting go of the narrative it took a good three years after she
10:06was born for me to get to a place where i was able to come out we hear this idea
10:12that if you just don't
10:14talk about the experience of a queer person and maybe if you're if your your kid is queer if you
10:19just don't talk about it then maybe it'll go away yeah and i i hope that we're getting to a
10:25point
10:25where we're like no we're still gonna be here i've made it a huge part of my parenting to to
10:31parent as
10:32gender neutral as possible my kid is nine and is very vocal about being gender fluid mama can i get
10:39on that she's on that you can ask her when we give kids these words and these ideas they really
10:47resonate
10:47with them because kids are very fluid in the way that they think in the way that they perceive the
10:53world people here are very quiet about sex education and yet when it comes to reproductive rights very
11:01loud very loud how how do you make sense of that none of it makes sense to me i sit
11:05i was at my
11:06kitchen table with a friend last night just like trying to figure out what it means for us right as
11:14people who can get pregnant
11:19so we just got word that governor k ivy has signed um the most restrictive um reproductive rights
11:30bill uh in the united states it is now the law of the land in alabama it feels very timely
11:35that all
11:36of this is going down um as we are here in birmingham trying to learn about reproductive health
11:43and sex ed i i don't understand how we're having this conversation and we're not having the other one
11:49it feels like you're treating a symptom you're not treating the problem
11:54and yet all across america abstinence is being prioritized in fact president trump has allotted
12:00millions of dollars to sexual risk avoidance programs which heavily emphasize abstinence
12:06i couldn't shake the feeling that i needed a greater understanding of what an abstinence forward
12:11education looked like and while it seemed i wasn't going to be able to have this conversation in alabama
12:17i found someone that was willing to make a house call thank you so much for coming
12:21heather roosh is a wife a mother and a life issue speaker you know when i say that abstinence
12:27saves these kids from the hurts of sex of casual sex i say that from experience
12:35much like taylor heather found herself pregnant at the age of 19. the birth of her daughter was the
12:40catalyst for the work she does today the cdc declared that we're in an epidemic with sexually
12:46transmitted infections in our country we're at an all-time high and only getting higher and we're
12:51dumping all of this money into prevention where's the prevention what's going what is nothing's
12:57working yeah i would love to see more abstinence forward it's sexual risk avoidance forward um
13:05curriculums out there in education out there the problem is you got to have somebody to teach them
13:09and that i think practically speaking is what we are running into everywhere across the country
13:15nobody wants to be the one teaching this i think it's confrontational the reason why it's not being
13:22taught i think it's hard to find people to teach it because of consequences in teaching it and also
13:27confrontation in teaching it and i think it's uncomfortable i am not opposed to abstinence being
13:32part of that discussion at all too often with with absence only it's sort of uh excluding
13:39students who might not subscribe to that would you be open to talking with people from the
13:44comprehensive side of things and seeing if you could find commonalities absolutely anybody teaching
13:50something that is this important you know should be teaching it for the benefit of the student it's
13:56just uncomfortable to talk about and we need we need to take that we need to get rid of that
14:00and
14:00realize that we're the adults and we have a moral obligation and responsibility to our children
14:06to mentor them to teach them well the lack of regulation and the stigma surrounding sex education
14:11has resulted in a stalemate that is harmful to the mental physical and emotional health of american
14:17students we need to be talking about sex education is a human right let me just come over here and
14:23show
14:23y'all real quick we can't deny american students the right to understand their bodies and the ways in which
14:29they can protect and accept themselves
14:32you