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History of Abstinence Education in the United States and Utah’s Sex Education
Methods of Queer Linguistics and CDA: The Construction of Heteronormative Temporality
The Introductory PowerPoint: Heteronormative Parameters of Utah’s Sex Education Material
Junior High (JH) and High School (HS) Resource Guides: Heteronormativity vs. “Bad Sex”
History of Abstinence Education in the United States and Utah’s Sex Education
In studying Utah’s sex education materials, we have to understand the context in which they developed. In the 1970s, teenage pregnancy was a concern for American legislators because of the costs associated with birth and prenatal care, and the sense that our country was moving away from traditional values (SIECUS). Concerns over morality fueled the abstinence education movement beginning in 1981. The government established three streams of abstinence funding through the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA) in 1981, Title V of the Welfare Reform Act in 1996, and Community Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) in 2000. AFLA was also known as the “chastity law,” and only funded programs that were abstinence-only; it was sponsored in part by Senator Orrin Hatch (Republican-Utah). AFLA was in response to the funding that was being given to Planned Parenthood and the idea that this supported a national “contraceptive” mentality. But many health and education researchers have conducted studies which support comprehensive sex education, including a report from the office of Representative Henry Waxman in 2004 that documented the incorrect information on condom failure, abortion, mental and physical health, and sexually transmitted diseases that was disseminated in two-thirds of abstinence-only programs. Comprehensive sex education is a holistic approach that provides education to help young people develop positive attitudes and critical knowledge about sexual and reproductive health; the seven components of the comprehensive approach are gender, sexual and reproductive health and HIV, sexual rights and sexual citizenship, pleasure, violence, diversity and relationships (Guttmacher “A Definition”). Abstinence education tends to focus on heterosexual family structures and no sex before marriage. Between 1996-2006, abstinence education funding was especially robust, and over $2 billion has been spent on abstinence-only education to date, despite overwhelming evidence of its ineffectiveness (Boyer).
Critics of abstinence-only sex education contend that the curriculum often emphasizes heteronormativity, especially heterosexual marriage, marginalizing queer relationships (Wilkerson 101-102). Researchers have also presented strong evidence for the ineffectiveness of abstinence education in delaying sexual intercourse, preventing adolescent pregnancy and transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) (Stanger-Hall and Hall). In 2007, a 10-year study was released that showed strong evidence for the ineffectiveness of abstinence programs for preventing pregnancy and STIS in adolescents, yet the House of Representatives still moved to approve $27.5 million to fund CBAE that year. In 2010, Congress established the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, created with evidence-based strategies and a comprehensive sex education focus. In light of this research, President Barack Obama eliminated two streams of abstinence funding in 2010.
Almost four decades after the movement began, AFLA and CBAE were defunded in the Obama administration, and Obama eliminated all abstinence funding in the 2017 budget. Though we are seeing a circular shift toward conservative government attitudes towards sex and agency again, discourse has changed quite a bit because of the research against abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) education. Yet, from 2016-2020, President Donald Trump’s administration worked to return to abstinence-based education (Eisenstein). States have adopted AOUM curriculum, which changed to abstinence-plus, and in Utah, to abstinence-based materials. “Abstinence-plus” curriculum stresses abstinence but also teaches safe sex methods. Utah’s curriculum does not teach how to participate in safe sex, though the existence and effectiveness of contraception is discussed.
Utah’s sex education policies, in the materials I studied from 2016, reflected abstinence-only attitudes with state mandates that required emphasis on AOUM and fidelity after marriage, information on life skills and family communication, and information on HIV prevention through abstinence (USOE). Sex and HIV education were required to be included, with medically accurate and unbiased information, and parental notice and consent. They did not have to include information on contraception, sexual orientation, negative outcomes of teen sex, and condom use. The curriculum was not prohibited from promoting religion or required to be age appropriate. Historically and currently, Utah is still the only state that does not allow teachers to answer spontaneous questions that conflict with the law (Guttmacher “Sex and HIV”).
Though popular opinion and research exists behind comprehensive sex education, abstinence-based education is currently Utah’s approach for adolescents in junior high and high school. The mandates from 2016, which will be presented, are still quite similar to the ones in 2020. Updates on Utah sex education law since 2016 include the following: the prohibition of “advocacy for homosexuality” has been eliminated from state health curriculum requirements with the passing of bill SB 196 in 2017; the passing of bill HB 71 in 2019, which allows instructors to provide more information on contraception methods, with the understanding that they cannot advocate for these methods, continuing to stress abstinence first; the addition of “refusal skills” in situations of sexual advances, and instruction on the “harmful effects of pornography” (Utah Code). It is important to note that Utah’s Local Education Agencies, or local school boards, may choose not to adopt contraception education; even with recent legislative changes, the curriculum may remain mostly unchanged in classrooms.