In a Nashville, Tennessee, high- school classroom, about a dozen students watched as a woman from an AIDS prevention group demonstrated how to apply a condom using only her mouth.
The scene in an elective class two years ago angered opponents of sex education, and so Tennessee in May adopted the nation’s first state law defining activities that legislators said lead to intercourse –mutual masturbation, fondling and oral and anal sex — and banning their “promotion” in public schools.
The law targets groups such as Planned Parenthood, which discusses those behaviors on its website and provides sex education in Tennessee schools. The National Abstinence Education Association says it’s encouraging lawmakers to adopt a similar restrictions to ensure that teenagers all across the U.S. keep their hands to themselves.
“We’ve never seen anything like this become law,” said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager for the New York-basedGuttmacher Institute, which describes its mission as advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights. “It’s so weird, it’s more of a spoof than anything else.”
The Tennessee law bans teachers and outside speakers from promoting or demonstrating “gateway” activities. The term is defined as activity that involves the groin, upper thighs, buttocks, breasts and genitalia. The concept is modeled after the idea that so-called gateway drugs — marijuana, for instance — can lead users to stronger intoxicants like heroin or cocaine.
Looking Outside
In Nashville, Planned Parenthood teaches about 1,000 students a year, said Lyndsey Godwin, education and training director for Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee. The group provides five hours of training that includes discussion of the risks of touching above the waist and oral sex, she said. Parents can keep their children out of the classes.
Planned Parenthood discusses “outercourse” as a form of abstinence and birth control, said David Fowler, president of the Franklin-based Family Action Council of Tennessee, which led the push for the law.
“Outercourse” is defined as “sex play” without vaginal intercourse on Planned Parenthood’s website. It includes all of the activities the law says now can’t be taught.
Because of the law, Godwin said schools probably will stop inviting Planned Parenthood counselors.
Schools often turn to outside groups for sex education, said Barry Chase, director of Planned Parenthood’s Memphis chapter.
“Teachers and administrators operate under a basic fear of how they may be perceived or reprimanded or attacked for providing information about sexuality, which is one of the reasons they bring in outsiders,” Chase said.
Mocked on Television
Armed with Glover’s story, the Family Action Council approached the Legislature. Republican Governor Bill Haslam signed the measure in May, and a week later comedian Stephen Colbertgot interested.
“Kissing and hugging are just the last stop before the train pulls into Groin Central Station,” he said on his television show, the Colbert Report.
The state hasn’t issued guidance on complying with the law because it expects nothing to change, as Tennessee has required abstinence-centered sex education for 30 years, said Kelli Gauthier, a spokeswoman for the state Education Department.
Godwin, the Planned Parenthood training director, said she heard a different story at a Nashville conference last week, where teachers and counselors said they were leery of offering any information about intimate matters.
“They said they were less willing to use outside groups and more uncomfortable with sex education and more scared to answer questions,” she said.
Bloomberg has the full article
