Unqualified Christian Speakers Talk Sex at Public School

[lilwriter85]

The Friendly Atheist had this up. The video of the presentation is attached in the article.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... that-went/

May 30, 2013 By Hemant Mehta Leave a Comment

Let’s run through a short list of items a quality sex education lecture for teenagers shouldn’t include:

Having students spit into a cup and then telling the class that drinking that cup is the equivalent of having sex with eight partners.

Arguing that condoms break… so they’re not helpful at all.

Telling ladies that they’re emotional after sex, so they’ll become attached to whomever they have sex with.

Tell students that STIs will make them sterile… without adding that that might happen only if left untreated.

State that medical textbooks say life begins at conception… when they don’t say that at all.

Saying “There’s a new STD that they’re saying is going to be the new AIDS” without elaborating further… so no sex for anyone!

Telling the students that you know two women who have had abortions and they both ended up with a perforated uterus because of the tools used during their procedures… so no abortions for anyone!

Those were among the things Joi Wasill, the founder of Decisions, Choices and Options (a group with “strong Christian, Republican and anti-abortion ties”), and Beth Cox, who is on the board of directors for the group, said to a group of students at Hillsboro High School in Nashville, Tennessee earlier this month.

Joi Wasill (left) and Beth Cox

Thankfully, one of the students recorded the talk. Excerpts are below; the entire talk is at the bottom of the piece:

(In case the video isn’t working, click here.)

According to Heidi Hall at The Tennessean, Wasill also urged students who are pregnant to go to the Hope Clinic for Women, a Christian ministry, if they were pregnant and unsure what to do.

Dr. Mary Romano, someone who actually knows what she’s talking about, couldn’t believe this was being taught to students:

The presentation isn’t helpful, said Dr. Mary Romano, assistant professor in Vanderbilt’s Division of Adolescent Medicine. Its biggest problem is that it uses scare tactics. That never works with teens, whose developing brains too rarely allow reason to outweigh pleasure or believe anything bad will happen to them, she said.

…

“What you want to do is have the teen walk away with knowledge and skills. Teach me skills to negotiate that situation. If I’m going to have sex, who do I go to for information?” Romano said.

By the way, neither Wasill nor Cox have any certified training in sex education. Somehow, they still managed to get on the list of “approved presenters in Metro Nashville’s public schools.” Unbelievable.

Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress notes:

Tennessee students aren’t receiving those skills in their health classes. The state’s sex ed classes aren’t required to be medically accurate, and there’s nothing preventing public schools from hosting the type of conservative presentation that took place at Hillsboro High School this month.

So far, no one has been punished for this travesty. One school board member just figured the students would know fact from fiction (he didn’t, however, say it was wrong for the fiction to be presented to the students in the first place):

“Fortunately, I believe the Hillsboro High School kids are smart enough to separate fact from fiction and that some of the opinions and scare tactics used in the presentation they will know are incorrect,” he wrote, but he would need to know more to comment further.

Well, the full presentation is below, so Hayes and everyone else can judge for themselves:

[lilwriter85]

I'm not trying to sound like a transphobe, but does anyone else think Beth Cox looks mannish or kind of like a drag queen?

[SpeakNow]

There's already a thread about this:

viewtopic.php?t=17628