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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”
Conclusion
The language ideology in these three abstinence-based education documents iconizes heteronormativity as the morally “good” identity, at the expense of marginalized social groups. Denaturalizing the language and bringing attention to the way heteronormativity is constructed in these documents helps us to parse the accepted notion of heteronormativity as natural and normal. The main binary of “future versus sex” erases identities that exist outside its margins, but because the emphasis is on the morally respectable nature of heteronormative timelines, the identities that exist within the category of “sex” are also marginalized. This binary model denigrates teen parents, queer people, adolescents, rape victims, pornography users and anyone engaging in premarital sex. Aside from this, the implication is that a successful future, a successful citizen, can only be built on a sexless present. To be sexless in the present means to delay and suppress desire.
Students are encouraged to use principle-centered decision-making or “universal principles” such as honesty, responsibility, and respect: “As it relates to sexuality, principle-centered decision making reflects a future orientation versus immediate gratification” (USOE HS 63). Premarital adolescent sex is therefore a direct contradiction to principles of respect, honesty, responsibility, caring, fairness, and integrity in this education system (USOE HS10). This discourse also suggests that "homosexuality" is a direct contradiction to these principles, and that homosexuality is an expression of irrepressible desire. This may be the ultimate concern that underlies the emphasis on heteronormative timelines. Desire must be controlled until it can be expressed in adult marriage; any indication that it exists in the present must be relegated to a deficient social identity. For advocates of abstinence-based education, without control of desire, definitions of universal principles would be overturned, and the heteronormative world would lose its moral code.
Queer rhetorical examinations of texts that further heteronormativity are necessary, particularly when these texts are under the normative guise of morality-infused practices, such as abstinence education. As Leap discusses, in agreement with Eve Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet, “If sexuality is a pervasive element in human experience, any form of social analysis—including linguistic inquiry—is immediately rendered defective if it overlooks the sexual dimensions of social practice” (662). Sexuality is an inescapable aspect of any rhetorical situation, but it is the pervasive and obvious omission of sexuality that underlies the sex education materials, which also permeates social practice. At the intersection of queer linguistics and critical discourse analysis, we have the necessary tools to recognize the invisible, subversive, and ubiquitous nature of heteronormative rhetoric, particularly how it operates through the exclusion of non-normative and marginalized identities.