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How Sex Education Fails Queer And Trans Kids

The Establishment
The Establishment
Published in
8 min readMar 15, 2016

By Jerusha Gray

For the first time since the late 1990s, the 2017 budget will contain no funding for abstinence-only education, which holds that abstaining from sex is the only way to avoid STDs or pregnancy. Many states have already been refusing federal funds for these programs, due to the overwhelming number of studies showing that abstinence-only education does not improve HIV rates, STD incidence, or teen pregnancy, and in many cases increases all of these risks. Moving to comprehensive sex education, which addresses subjects like proper use of condoms and choosing a birth control option, is demonstrably better both for students’ emotional well-being and for their health outcomes.

I’m glad that Obama is defunding abstinence-based programs, and suggesting that those funds go toward programs that advocate a more comprehensive approach to sexual education. But it’s not enough. Even “comprehensive” sex education fails to specifically address the needs of some of our nation’s most vulnerable students: LGBTQ youth aged 13–17. We owe it to them — and all youth — to devise a truly comprehensive sex education that is as far beyond our current approach as our current approach is beyond abstinence programs.

High-school-age LGBTQ youth experience higher rates of attempted and completed suicide, violence victimization, and…

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The Establishment
The Establishment

Published in The Establishment

The archives of culture + politics site, The Establishment. Media funded and founded by women — Nikki Gloudeman, Kelley Calkins and Katie Tandy with Ijeoma Oluo, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jessica Sutherland. The conversation is much more interesting when everyone has a voice.

The Establishment
The Establishment

Written by The Establishment

The conversation is much more interesting when everyone has a voice. Media funded & run by women; new content daily.