Fresno Schools Fucked Up Sex Ed; Now They Have to Pay Up

FRESNO COUNTY, Calif.—Earlier this month, Fresno County Superior Court Judge Donald Black awarded attorney fees to the attorneys who represented the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Gay-Straight Alliance Network and three other plaintiffs in a lawsuit that challenged the way Fresno schools taught sex education—a lawsuit that was ultimately withdrawn after the schools, after ignoring state education law for more than a decade, finally got with the program. The named defendant was the Clovis Unified School District in Fresno County, which since the late 1990s had studiously ignored the recommendations of medical/research groups which had found that "abstinence-only" sex "education" was woefully inadequate to prepare students for facing important decisions about sex, and in fact outright violated changes to the state's education code enacted by the legislature in 2003 that mandated that sex education courses be both comprehensive and truthful. "According to the 'blackline' versions of the 2009 Policy and Regulation from 2009 which show the changes from the 2009 documents to the 2011 documents, the District retained a policy and curricula that: 1) did not refer to the Act, citing instead repealed Education Code sections; 2) required materials to 'stress' sexual abstinence 'as the only 100% effective pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease prevention method'; 3) discussed contraceptives only with respect to preventing disease, not contraception; did not require medically accurate information on the methods of prevention of pregnancy and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases; and 4) required parent to give affirmative assent to HIV/AIDS education (i.e., 'opt-in.)," Judge Black wrote in his original order granting the attorney fees. "Plaintiffs claim that the District approved and used a variety of 'egregiously inaccurate and biased videos,' including Sex still has a Price Tag and No Apologies: The Truth about Life, Love and Sex," Judge Black continued. "[I]n 2007 it engaged an outside agency, Teen Choices, Inc., to provide instruction in intermediate school using a curriculum that was 'replete with inaccurate, biased, and outdated information'; it approved another agency, the Pregnancy Care Center, to provide instruction despite the fact that its instructors did not have the required expertise in comprehensive sexual health education, and as it[s] representative later admitted its presentation did not meet the requirements of the Act; and it adopted textbooks that failed to mention condoms or other contraception." Parents had been complaining to the school district for years about the lies and inaccuracies in, and omissions from, the Clovis sex ed curriculum, and the district grudgingly changed its seventh grade sex ed curriculum shortly before the lawsuit was filed in 2014, and claimed that the ninth grade curriculum was about to changed. This prompted the plaintiffs to withdraw their suit shortly after it was filed, even while seeking attorney fees for essentially forcing the district's hand to make the changes. Judge Black agreed to award fees for the work the attorneys did with respect to the ninth grade curriculum, while denying fees for the seventh grade portion. "The parents objected to the fact that Clovis was using a textbook that emphasized that all adults should abstain from sexual activity until marriage, and that didn’t include any information about preventing pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections," noted journalist Tara Culp-Ressler on ThinkProgress.org. "They also took issue with the school district’s partnerships with outside groups—including a crisis pregnancy center that disseminates inaccurate information about the risks of abortion—to provide health instruction to students, despite the fact that those groups aren’t qualified to teach comprehensive sex ed. "Plaintiffs alleged that the district was showing students abstinence-focused videos that contained 'egregiously inaccurate and biased information,' like comparing a woman who has engaged in sex to a dirty shoe, and suggesting that men are physically unable to stop themselves once they become sexually aroused. One video, entitled Never Regret The Choice, suggested that homosexuality doesn't exist by encouraging students to adopt the mantra, 'One man, one woman, one life.'" Judge Black's decision is being hailed as "historic"—so of course conservatives had to weigh in on it. After all, can't have our kids learning too much about sex or they might actually Do It! "Liberals arrogantly think their 'science' is superior because their religious opponents base their sexual ethics on faith, not on reason. (In truth, advocating abstinence is based on both.)," lied L. Brent Bozell, founder of the ultraconservative Media Research Center. "These are the same radical 'scientists' who tell us a baby isn't technically a baby until it's left the hospital, and insist that gender should not be oppressively 'binary' or based on primitive methods of analysis, like looking at your genitals," he added, citing two more cornerstones of conservative sexual dogma. In the same article, Bozell finds time to bash sex ed in Norway, claiming "A female doctor named Line Jansrud demonstrates sex for Norwegian children aged 8 to 12. In one episode, she 'gives herself a hickie with a vacuum cleaner, narrates over a simulated masturbation demonstration, and reveals the science behind orgasm.' This came after she French-kissed a tomato." Then, speaking of Jansrud's demonstration of pushing a lubed-up dildo "in and out of an anatomically correct model of a woman's lower half while a porno groove[?] plays in the background," he opines. "This is child pornography in reverse—porn made for children to watch—and only a sick mind would support it." YEAH! Because after all, what kid is ever going to have to deal with a "woman's lower half," let alone a dildo? Sadly, Judge Black's decision only applies to the 40,000 students in the Clovis Unified School District, but as Culp-Ressler notes, "since his opinion represents the first-ever ruling on California’s decade-old sex education standards, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—whose legal counsel represented the plaintiffs in the suit—believes it sets an important precedent for the rest of the state." Let's hope so!