Reading: a list of goals generated a few years ago by parents at an orientation class for parents of youth taking our About Your Sexuality class. The parents wanted the About Your Sexuality program to nurture and develop among the youth participants:
The segment of Gumbel's October 8th show focused on controversy swirling around AYS at the Unitarian Universalist church in Concord, Massachusetts. Last year, two high school girls and their parents felt shocked and betrayed by the explicit nature of some of the visuals that are a small part of AYS. In particular, they were shocked by filmstrips that show couples making love and individuals masturbating. As in most if not all UU churches that offer AYS, an orientation session was offered for parents prior to the beginning of the class. Among other things, the orientation gives parents the opportunity to learn about the nature of the explicit visuals and the reasoning behind their use. The girls' parents apparently had not attended the orientation for parents, and the permission slip they signed before the class began was not specific about the explicit nature of the visuals.
Upset by their daughters' reports about the filmstrips, the parents of the two girls asked those running the program if they could view the filmstrips. The initial response was no: those running the program were reluctant to have parents view the filmstrips without knowing anything about the larger context of AYS. Eventually, however, the parents were given access to the filmstrips. Viewing the filmstrips did not make them feel any better. They went to the media with their concerns.
While the local media was not interested in the story, it must have seemed like the perfect, titillating subject for Bryant Gumbel's brand new show. Gumbel's segment had the appearance of fairness: parents and youth pleased with AYS were interviewed, as were the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association and a prominent UU minister of religious education. But I found Gumbel's piece to be typical of his show's genre: closer to A Current Affair than the Jim Lehrer Newshour or even Sixty Minutes. Teasers about the filmstrips enticed the audience to watch. Gumbel began the segment by cautioning that "some of what's ahead is very explicit"--a sure way to keep the audience glued to their lazy boys and couches and rocking chairs. Provocative glimpses of the AYS filmstrips were flashed throughout the story. The two offended girls were presented as younger than their years, in "no hurry to grow up," as not yet sexual. In a bizarre twist, the reporter interviewed one of the girls on her bed. By all but ignoring the opportunity each parent had to participate in the pre-AYS orientation, viewers get the picture that the church secretly showed the youth the explicit visuals. A supposedly unbiased expert, whose field is child abuse, viewed the filmstrips and declares them to be inappropriate, unnecessary, disturbing and even harmful. The UUA President was labeled as "the man who promotes (AYS) nationally," as if he's little more than a pornography salesman. To cap it off, the segment ended with a question viewers can answer on-line: "Is it EVER okay to show graphic sexual images in sex ed. courses?" At the end of the show, the results of the on-line voting were mistakenly inverted by CBS: they report that three-fourths answered "no." Their web site the next day said that really three-fourths answered "yes." The mistake was never acknowledged on air. This was not responsible, illuminating journalism.
Bryant Gumbel's show was not the first time AYS has been the focus of public controversy. The New York Times and the Washington Post both did feature reports on AYS when it debuted in 1971, as did Newsweek and Time Magazine. Radio and TV talk shows as well as professional journals discussed the curriculum. A few lawsuits were filed against the curriculum in the hopes of declaring AYS obscene--one in New York and one in Wisconsin. Neither lawsuit got very far as the courts ruled that the AYS materials were educational and not obscene.[1]
My angle on AYS may be unique among adults in this congregation: as a teenager I took About Your Sexuality. In fact, I liked it so well I took it twice! Both of my experiences with AYS were excellent. I most appreciated the opportunity AYS offered for honest discussion with peers. The first time I took it, we often continued our discussions informally after class, without the adult teachers present. The teachers and the curriculum did such a good job creating an atmosphere of trust and honesty that we were able to carry on the conversations in a safe and good way. I have a vivid memory of one such conversation: sitting around a table talking about the changes our bodies were undergoing in adolescence. For example, the girls talked about having periods, the boys about wet dreams. These conversations were a remarkable opportunity for each of us to gain a deeper understanding of sexuality and the experiences of not only ourselves and our own gender but of the opposite gender as well. We moved beyond nervous jokes and lockerroom talk to real, sensitive listening to others' experiences. What I learned from the content of those conversations as well as the sympathetic and gentle tone of them has been a great blessing.
The filmstrips themselves were entirely unmemorable--and my unscientific poll of other adults who took AYS as youths reveals that my lack of memory about the filmstrips is typical. I should point out that the controversial film strips Bryant Gumbel focused on probably take all of ten minutes out of the course's twenty hours. Yes, that's right. The explicit filmstrips consume about 1/120th of the course. They are simply not the centerpiece of AYS. If anything, the filmstrips are even more unmemorable today: any youth with access to cable TV or the internet can see similarly explicit images any night of the week, or even flashed luridly on news magazines like Public Eye.
Though I don't remember the specifics of the visuals, I know that they did help make sense out of sex for me. I recall being totally baffled by the medical diagrams presented in my public school human development classes. I didn't have a clue how sex actually works, and could only use my imagination and the information I picked up from equally ignorant friends to make sense of it. With the AYS visuals, I had a sort of "A ha!" experience: So that's how it works! One of the parents interviewed on the Gumbel show criticized the AYS filmstrips for leaving nothing to the imagination. My reply to that is "Precisely." The whole point of AYS is to give our youth accurate information so they don't have to use their imaginations or information gleaned from lockerroom jokes to make sense of sex.
Did AYS (film strips and all) enable me to develop easily and perfectly into a sexual adult? No. Did AYS prevent me from making mistakes in my sexual life? No. I don't think any sexuality curriculum can promise perfection. But AYS did give my sexuality the solid foundation of a sound and comprehensive understanding. I don't think we can overestimate the importance of such a foundation. Even more importantly, AYS along with my parents' education, gave me the ethical tools with which to think about particular expressions of my sexuality. Though I may not have always made the best choices, my education in sexuality at home and church helped me think critically about the consequences and impact on myself and others of sexual choices I made. What's more, my ethical and religious education gave me a strong, coherent set of values on which to base my sexual choices.
Stepping back from AYS for a few minutes, I want to ask a couple of general questions. The first question is: should our religious community teach about sexuality. To this I answer a resounding yes. What better place to supplement the sexuality education a child or youth receives at home? (We should be clear--what we can provide in a religious community is only a supplement to education in the home.) A religious community is the perfect place for grounding a youth's understanding of sexuality in a system of values and ethics. Today our youth need this more than ever. As I pointed in out in my sermon series a couple years ago on sexuality, we live in an incredibly confusing time: at the same time we continue to discourage honest talk about sex, we are bombarded with images of sexuality and eroticism. The authors of the sociological study Sex in America write:
Answering yes to this first question leads to a second question: What should we teach our youth about sexuality? Cutting to the essence, I would say that a human sexuality curriculum in a religious community like ours should teach five things.
First, we should provide comprehensive and accurate information about sex and sexuality. A badly incomplete or inaccurate understanding of sexuality does not do anyone any good. One cannot possibly reach consistent responsible and ethical decisions if one's understanding of sexuality is built on ignorance, lockerroom conversations and Hollywood images.
Second, we should teach our youth about the inherent beauty of our physical bodies and our sexuality. Our bodies are beautiful, sacred temples. Our sexuality, when expressed responsibly and ethically, is beautiful and spiritual. To illustrate the sacrality of our bodies and sexuality, many liberal Christian thinkers today talk about the body and sexuality as a gift from God. Regardless of whether we agree with their theology, I believe the sentiment is right on. Our bodies and our sexuality are gifts from God. Rather than being ashamed of our bodies and sexuality, they are something to celebrate and give thanks for. And notice that the only qualification I have made about the beauty of sexuality is that it is beautiful if expressed responsibly and ethically--whether in heterosexual or same sex relationships.
The third thing we should teach our youth about sexuality is to take responsibility for the sexual choices they make. They need to understand the consequences for them and others of their sexual choices. They need to know clearly how the female of our species gets pregnant, and the multitude of steps that can be taken to eliminate or reduce the chances of pregnancy. They need to know about the relative effectiveness and safety of such steps, beginning with the fact that not having sexual intercourse with someone of the opposite sex is the safest and most effective way to avoid pregnancy. They need to know about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases: how they work, how they are spread, and ways to avoid or decrease the possibility of contracting and spreading them. Again, they need to know the relative effectiveness of different ways of avoiding or decreasing the possibility of spreading sexually transmitted diseases, beginning with the fact that choosing not to have an intimate, sexual relationship with another person is the most effective way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. Furthermore, I think we need to lift up for our youth as well as adults that celibacy is not only a safe and responsible sexual choice to make, but one that is laden with spirituality and even eroticism. I believe we need to move beyond lip service praising abstinence--an inherently negative concept--to honoring and promoting the spirituality of celibacy.
The fourth thing we should teach our youth about sexuality is how to go about making ethical choices. An ethical sexual choice brings the most good and the least harm to oneself, to others, indeed to the whole interdependent web of all life. I believe that ethical sexual choices are consensual, non-exploitative, and enhance the genuine love and intimacy, honesty and fidelity that two individuals feel for each other.
Finally, I think we should teach our youth in such a way as to promote open, honest communication among peers and adults regarding sexuality. Nothing could be more helpful to youth in discerning ethical and responsible ways to give expression to their sexuality.
I believe the presence of these five aspects--accurate and comprehensive information, the goodness and beauty of sexuality, the need for responsible decisions about one's sexual activity, the importance of ethical sexual choices, and the value of honest and open communication about sexuality--will provide our youth with the tools they need for making responsible, ethical choices.
This leads to a final question: Does "About Your Sexuality" effectively teach these five things? In general, my answer is yes. AYS begins with the mission of providing accurate and comprehensive information. With a supplement that fills in relatively new information about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, it performs this mission exceedingly well. Although not grounded in a spiritual approach to the beauty of sexuality, AYS does present sexuality as beautiful, positive and enriching. AYS stresses the importance of making responsible sexual choices, though the complete absence of contraceptives in the visuals of couples making love undermines this. Grounded in UU values, AYS has as its explicit goal the building of values among the youth participants. And finally, as my experience illustrated, AYS is exceedingly successful at promoting open and honest communication about sexuality. It invites and honors every question every youth brings to the conversation.
But what about the explicit visuals the Gumbel show dwelled on? I have mixed feelings about them. I favor the use of explicit visuals because they help give our youth complete information. Furthermore, since most of our youth are confronted with a wide array of other explicit images, it makes sense to give them at least this one opportunity in a safe place to discuss them. But the particular AYS images of couples making love strike me as being the wrong ones--primarily because of the total lack of safe sex awareness in the visuals. These pictures of irresponsibility can be much louder than all of the curriculum's words about responsibility.
I believe that each set of AYS teachers should decide whether to use the visuals. Whatever they decide about the visuals, I think it should be mandatory for parents of all participating youth to attend the orientation session. Then they are giving informed consent when they sign the permission form. Parents have the right and the responsibility to know what is being taught. Furthermore, parents should have the right to choose for their children to opt out of the film strips if they are shown.
About Your Sexuality is not perfect, but on the whole I think it continues to be an excellent vehicle for teaching our youth about sex. In spite of the controversy, I hope our Fellowship will keep using it--at least until the new sexuality curriculum developed jointly by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ becomes available in August of 1999. As a person who once took AYS, I am thankful for those who created it and for all those who over the past twenty-six years have taught it. I am particularly thankful for my teachers at the church of my youth, and to all those who have dedicated their time and energy to teaching it here. You have done your work well.