Ohio Parents Demand Schools Drop Inappropriate Sex-Ed Booklet
by Mary Rettig
March 13, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The director of an Ohio pro-family group says people taking action in their schools really can make a difference. Theresa Fleming, who heads up the political action committee Moms for Ohio, points to one local victory for an example.
This past November, Fleming recalls, students in Cuyahoga County brought home a disturbing book from the United Way called Youth Pages. The booklet contained sex education as well as information on how to obtain free contraceptives and contact information for abortion clinics, she notes, and they were handed out to students as young as 11 years of age.
The last thing conscientious mother and fathers need is schools handing out literature "telling our children that they don't need our consent for birth control [and that] here's a place you can go to get it," Fleming asserts. "Now, for us, we're definitely working, as many parents are who love their kids, on teaching our kids certain values," she says, "and part of those values is abstaining from sex until marriage."
The parents' advocate feels Youth Pages undermines those values by pointing young people toward organizations that provide free birth control and abortions or that promote "alternate lifestyles," including homosexuality.
One website to which the sex education booklet referred belonged to "a lesbian and gay community center, and ... that also is completely inappropriate," Fleming insists. "Parents have different views on that; but, at a minimum, I don't understand why any school would give kids access to a website with that type of information on it -- especially 11-year-olds."
Unfortunately, the Moms for Ohio director contends, as information materials like Youth Pages direct children to contraception and abortion providers and make casual reference to premarital and homosexual sex, one message young people are getting is that "there's nothing wrong with those choices." That is why many mothers in her school district contacted the superintendent of schools to complain, she says.
School officials responded promptly to the Cuyahoga County parents' complaint. Fleming says the superintendent let the mothers know that the distribution of Youth Pages to their youngsters would cease and that the booklet would no longer be given to any student in the district.
Moms for Ohio is also pursuing the matter at the legislative level, Fleming adds. She says her group is working with state lawmakers to give parents the opportunity to opt out of the distribution of any materials that might conflict with their values.
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
