State Senator Sylvia Allen represents the 5,000 people of Snowflake, Arizona, and a new bill she's proposing is making waves in the area.
Allen's bill, up for discussion in the state Senate in Phoenix, would remove the word "homosexuality" from any and all sex education curriculums and materials—because high school was getting too easy for young gay kids.
In addition to pretending that only straight people live in Arizona, the bill would ban any form of sex education until after the age of 12, and sex education wouldn't be a requirement. It also reaffirms the current recommendations of Arizona sex education curriculum: abstinence.
Watch a robotic Alan pitch the bill to her constituents below.
Senator Sylvia Allen on SB1082: Sex Education; Schoolswww.youtube.com
Allen says in the video:
"This bill protects our young children from information that they are not emotionally, physically, or mentally ready to use...SB 1082 reaffirms the existing sex education statutes promoting abstinence, age appropriate, medically accurate, and ways to avoid peer pressure when it comes to sexual activity. SB 1082 supports our parents and protects our children."
Abstinence-only education is not only dogmatic, it's unrealistic. Instead of comprehensively teaching about sex and arming students with information, abstinence-only education often relies on instilling fear and heightens the pressure on students to be "pure" at one of the most formative and confusing times in their lives. This state-sponsored ignorance is far from bliss. As a result, areas where the norm is abstinence-only sex education tend to have higher teen pregnancy rates.
For queer people, it's even worse. Because same-sex intimacy is wrongly considered inherently more adult than heterosexual intimacy, zealots will often rail against the teaching of homosexual sex practices. As a result of laws like Allen's, queer people learn irrelevant information and are left to their own resources to learn the mechanics and dynamics of gay sex.
Not everyone is on board with Allen's bill.
The bill will be introduced on Tuesday, the 14 of next week.
See you next Tuesday.