The complaints of hundreds of parents of middle schoolers in North Carolina’s Cumberland County have forced the school district to suspend a sex education program designed by Planned Parenthood.
“I don’t need somebody else teaching my kids, as they put it in there, ‘the myths and facts about your sexuality.’ That’s something the parents need to do,” parent Nick Quello said, reports WRAL. “I just don’t think that’s appropriate for a 12-year-old, whether it be a boy or a girl, to be teaching them that.”
Parents reportedly packed a meeting Monday evening to review Planned Parenthood’s Get Real sex ed program. Concerns about the curriculum included its focus on sexual preference and demonstrations of condom use and that the program is the product of scandal-ridden Planned Parenthood.
The nation’s largest abortion provider faces possible elimination of much of its taxpayer funds following years of scandals, including Medicaid fraud, allegations of child sex abuse cover-up, and, most recently, alleged profiteering from the sale of body parts of babies aborted in its clinics.
Get Real is a Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) program that assumes all young people will be sexually active. In addition to teaching children about contraception, the program focuses on LGBTQ issues and terminology. The program was developed by Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts (PPLM) and published by ETR.
In Grade 6, the Get Real curriculum says it introduces students to the “key Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) skills” they will supposedly need to be able to discuss sexual relationships and how to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.
According to the program’s table of contents, in Grade 7, students also discuss sexual identity and “examine the myths and facts about sexual orientation.” They also learn how to use a condom and review the use of hormonal contraception, including emergency contraception after sexual intercourse.
In Grade 8, one of the Get Real activities is a presentation by someone who is living with HIV, and students are asked to write a thank-you letter to the speaker.
In a press release in 2014, Planned Parenthood announced that Get Real “helps kids wait until they are older to have sex.”
“We are extremely proud the research shows our Get Real curriculum works,” said Jen Slonaker, vice president of education and training at PPLM. “Among students who received Get Real, 16% fewer boys and 15% fewer girls had sex compared to their peers who did not take Get Real.”
While Planned Parenthood touts the program has a focus on abstinence from sex and parental involvement, recently Monica Leal Cline, a former HIV health educator for a Planned Parenthood affiliate, revealed in a video exposé the organization’s officials instructed her, “Parents are a barrier to service. We don’t want parents involved.”
In the recently released video produced by And Then There Were None (ATTWN) – an organization that helps abortion workers leave their jobs – ex-abortion workers expose the abortion industry’s alleged quotas for abortions and birth control, as well as the minimal information that counts as an adoption referral, how parents are barriers to making the abortion clinic a financial success, and how young, vulnerable pregnant women are manipulated.
Planned Parenthood’s other endeavors have been inconsistent with their stated aims of parental involvement and helping children delay sexual involvement.
For example, in 2014 – the same year Planned Parenthood boasted about its Get Real sex education program – when asked if “promiscuity is a bad thing,” the organization responded, “There’s no standard definition of what it means.”
Planned Parenthood continued its explanation by defending promiscuous women:
Unfortunately some “promiscuous” women are judged in a negative way by society. But “promiscuous” men are more accepted in society, which is totally unfair.
Why do I keep putting “promiscuous” in quotes? Because there’s no standard definition of what it means. Some people might think that a person is promiscuous if he or she is involved with multiple sexual partners at the same time. Other people think a person is promiscuous if they have a certain number of partners over the course of a few years or longer. And for some people, promiscuity doesn’t necessarily mean having sex – to them, a person who goes on a lot of dates or makes out with a lot of people might be “promiscuous,” too.
So “promiscuity” is a word that can refer to a whole variety of different sexual behaviors. But in general, it’s a word that’s used to judge or shame people. And, again, it’s a term that’s most often directed at women.
Since the number of sexual partners you’ve had doesn’t say anything about your character, your morals, or your personality – or about anything at all really– there’s nothing bad or unhealthy about having a big number of sexual partners.
Pro-life organization Live Action also produced a video in 2014 that highlights Planned Parenthood’s normalization of Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism (BDSM) for young people:
Similarly, in 2015, Alliance Defending Freedom prepared a summary of Planned Parenthood’s history of failing to report child sexual abuse.
More recently, in April, Planned Parenthood released a video titled How to Tell Someone You Have an STD, in which the group minimizes the significance of sexually transmitted diseases:
“So you’ve got an STD,” the narrator begins in the video. “Guess what? So do lots of other people. Half of all people will get an STD at some point in their life. Seriously. Not kidding – half. It’s okay.”
The narrator then goes on to say that “sex lives aren’t over” because someone has an STD and encourages the young person with an STD to tell his “casual hookup” about his infection.
“Telling someone you have an STD might seem scary, but it’s important that you do,” the narrator says. “You can totally do this. It might be tempting to avoid a tough conversation with an ex or casual hookup.”
The video then switches to a scene in which a young man is texting his gay hookup partner about the fact he has chlamydia.
When the topic is herpes, the video depicts a lesbian hookup. One of them stops the sexual activity and tells her partner she has herpes and says, “It’s not a big deal.”
“Honestly, the worst part about having herpes is listening to everybody talk about it like it’s the plague,” she continues. “Most of us who actually have it know that it’s not that bad.”
Ryan Bomberger, president of the Radiance Foundation, a pro-life educational group, writes at Townhall that Planned Parenthood should not be invited into public schools:
Our nation is facing an STD epidemic. The 18 percent failure rate of condoms is alarming. Birth control pills, shots, implants, rings, and IUDs don’t prevent STDs at all. Abstinence is the only 100 percent effective way to avoid STDs, HIV, HPV and unintended pregnancy.
Should a business that profits from selling abortions, birth control and STD treatments be teaching our teens that there’s nothing wrong with promiscuity?
“PPFA (Planned Parenthood Federation of America) perpetuates the need for their ‘services,’” writes Bomberger. “They target our young, and public schools are more than willing to expose students to the medical malfeasance. Our teens deserve much better protection than this.”
Shirley Johnson, director of health services for Cumberland County Schools, attempted to reassure parents by noting sixth-graders must have parents’ permission to take the course, while the parents of seventh- and eighth-grade students can opt their children out of the program.
“They can opt out of any lesson, or they can opt out the program as a whole,” Johnson said, reports WRAL. “I don’t really have any real data to say how many opt out, but our numbers were relatively low.”
Quello, however, said he does not want the program taught at all.
“The school board needs to stay out of our homes,” he said. “That’s something that parents need to teach their kids.”
The Cumberland County Board of Education will reconsider Planned Parenthood’s Get Real program after hearing parents’ concerns.
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