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(This article first appeared in the February 8, 1993 issue of Christianity Today.)

"Sex is supposed to be about fun, pleasure, family, and babies—not about disease and death."

Pat Socia, a sex-education consultant from Texas captured the attention of 400 students and their parents at Downers Grove North High School in suburban Chicago. During the next hour and a half, she gives a compelling and disturbing presentation of how perilous it can be a teenager in the age of STDs (sexually transmitted diseases), AIDS, and drugs. Hers is also an inspiring presentation, whose core message—no sex until marriage—many consider a lifesaver.

Others, however, are alarmed: They feel the abstinence message of Socia and others like her is, at best, naive and, at worst, the intrusion of a political and religious agenda that must be silenced in our public schools.

The volatile debate taking place in public schools throughout the country is nothing less than a battle over core values. Is sex before marriage healthy or immoral? One view, the religious and moral, is rooted in the belief in a Higher Authority who has revealed what is right and wrong. The other view, a naturalistic and humanistic one, is rooted in belief that with so many different beliefs, no one has the right to say what is right and wrong. What is at stake is the way to stem the casualties of the AIDS epidemic. Except abortion, there is no greater flashpoint for this worldview clash than the sex-education debate.

Emotions run strong, and the battles can be fierce. Planned Parenthood, for example, is suing the school board of Jacksonville, Florida, for their use of the junior-high "Me, My World, My Future," abstinence-only curriculum developed by Teen-Aid. According to an internal memo, Planned Parenthood hopes that "a successful challenge will give Planned Parenthood a powerful tool with which to fight the senior high school version of this curriculum as well as the other major 'contender' Sex Respect." One of their main objections is that they feel these curricula reflect a moralistic and religious point of view that is inappropriate for a public school setting.

Two years ago, when the New York City Board of Education voted to distribute condoms in the city's schools, pandemonium broke loose in a packed gallery of the measure's opponents and supporters. The pro-condom-distribution people cheered loudly and created an in-your-face gauntlet through, which the opposition, many of whom were Christians, had to walk to exit the room. "We were barraged by epithets and cries of 'Religious bigots!' " said one attendee, the Reverend Mr. Michel Faulkner.

Yet, a year later, the same board ruled that abstinence had to be the primary method of prevention to be taught in the schools. This time the announcement in the same gallery was received with some "Praise the Lords." Lawsuits against the ruling are pending.

In the Midwest, the tide shifts continually. A complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against the use of Sex Respect materials, an abstinence-only curriculum, in some Wisconsin public schools has had a chilling effect on districts considering the curriculum. The Illinois legislature, on the other hand, has mandated that abstinence be taught as the expected norm and continues to renew Sex Respect's yearly $200,000 grant for curriculum development.

Five years ago an abstinence-only approach was almost nonexistent in schools. Today a passionate campaign to promote abstinence-only curricula is being waged by a national informal network of thousands of parents, teachers, professional lobbyists, and politicians, many of whom are Christians. They are significantly influencing the sex-education debate.

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March (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46