A great op-ed piece was published in the Winston-Salem Journal today regarding the bills currently being considered in both the North Carolina Senate and House. The bills would change North Carolina’s mis-guided “abstinence until marriage” sex education to a more age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education giving kids, teens and youth the real world tools and information they need to stay safe in this dangerous new world of the 21st century.

Christine Jolly, Executive Director of AIDS Care Services in Winston-Salem, writes:

Concurrently, House Bill 879 and Senate Bill 1182 are being discussed in the N.C. General Assembly, the passage of which will bring significant information to our children to help them understand the methods to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, especially the incurable HIV/AIDS disease.

These two events create discussion and debate about HIV/AIDS in our community. After more than 25 years of trying to slow the spread of the disease, it is time to recommit ourselves to making HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and education a top priority.

The number of HIV infections is rising, and too few Americans are aware of the devastating impact the disease is having on women. Women accounted for 28 percent of all newly reported AIDS cases in Forsyth County in 2005, compared to 26 percent of newly reported AIDS cases nationwide. Of women infected with HIV in Forsyth County in 2005, an estimated 58 percent contracted the disease through heterosexual intercourse. In young women ages 13 to 24 years old, 92 percent of new HIV infections in North Carolina for 2005 can be attributed to heterosexual contact.

….

Senate Bill 1182, sponsored by Sen. Linda Garrou, will bring age-appropriate instruction to our children and our community. This instruction will provide students with help in making and implementing responsible decisions about sexuality. It will present information about HIV, its effects on the body, activities that present the highest risk of HIV infection, discussions of methods to minimize risks and common misconceptions about people living with HIV.

We at AIDS Care Service strongly support the implementation of routine screening to ensure that individuals are aware of their HIV status, as recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. We support the passage of the bill to modify the school education program as supported by the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Public Health Association and the Society of Adolescent Medicine by including thorough, evidenced-based, practical training in HIV.

While we support messages about abstinence, we see firsthand the devastation that HIV can bring into a life, a future and a family. In the words of one of our clients, a 44-year-old woman, “I wanted to have a husband and a family; instead, after unprotected sex with a boyfriend, I have HIV. Now, I live alone, in hope of a cure.”

I hope you’ll take the time to read her entire guest column.

EqualityNC, our state’s premier LGBT advocacy organization, is also supporting this legislation. So am I. It is true that many abstinence until marriage curricula contain dangerously false information, as well as misguiding teens and youth back into old gender stereotypes and so-called “traditional” gender roles. It is time for North Carolina to step up and provide our kids with useful, real-world information.

As a North Carolinian who is a graduate of our beloved K-12 education system, I can say with personal knowledge and experience that our sex education in high schools, or at least my high school, did not offer me the information I needed to keep me safe. Thank God I have remained safe, but I did not receive this information in high school – when I need it, right before going to college. As a gay youth, I should have been taught about health issues relating to me. Of course, I wasn’t.

If the Senate and the House pass it and the Governor signs it, North Carolina certainly won’t be alone in scrapping the miserably failed abstinence-only education. Just this week, Kansas scrapped theirs

After you read the column, you can head over to EqualityNC’s website to check out information on both the House version and Senate version of the bill.

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