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Sex-education bill ready for Perdue to sign

By James Romoser

JOURNAL RALEIGH BUREAU

Published: June 26, 2009

RALEIGH - Starting next year, seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders across North Carolina will be given more information about contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases.

They will also be told that they are expected to abstain from sex until marriage.

Those are the dual priorities of a bill that will retool the way that sex education is taught in the state's public schools. The bill got its final approval yesterday in the General Assembly and now heads to Gov. Bev Perdue, who is expected to sign it into law.

"Information is power," said Rep. Verla Insko, D-Orange. "I cannot think of one reason why we would want to deny information to our young people who are beginning to make some of the most important decisions in their lives."

But advocates for a major overhaul of the state's sex-education curriculum were only mildly pleased with the bill, which leaves in place a forceful emphasis on abstinence that some say is heavy-handed.

The bill requires that all school districts teach that abstinence until marriage is what's expected of all students, and that a "monogamous heterosexual relationship in the context of marriage" is the best way of life to avoid STDs.

In addition, the bill requires that all school districts provide supplemental instruction about contraceptives, including information about the effectiveness and safety of different types of contraceptives.

Students will be automatically enrolled in both portions of the sex-education curriculum, but the bill allows parents to withdraw their children from the supplemental portion.

After months of contentious debate and many revisions to the bill, the final version is seen as a compromise.

Retaining the core message of abstinence appeased some conservative Christians who lobbied hard on the bill. And the bill's Democratic sponsors were happy that the bill will, for the first time in North Carolina, require all schools to give students scientifically accurate information about STDs, all federally approved contraceptives, and other topics such as sexual assault, sexual abuse and risk reduction.

Currently in North Carolina, the scope of what students are told about sex varies from school district to school district.

Most districts teach some version of an "abstinence-only" curriculum. They vary in how much information, if any, they give students about contraceptives.

A few school districts, including the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, teach a more comprehensive curriculum. Abstinence is still emphasized as the expected standard, but as a matter of school-district policy, students are also given considerable information about STDs and contraceptives.

In districts that already teach a more comprehensive curriculum, the bill that was passed yesterday probably won't have much practical effect. It will, however, give them more freedom if they want to expand their sex-education instruction even further.

The bill's advocates said that's a good thing, but they would not say what sorts of other topics might be covered in an even broader sex-education curriculum.

Republicans worried that it would allow teachers to address topics that they said don't belong anywhere near the classroom. For instance, they pointed to examples of national sex-education curriculums that discuss alternative sex acts to intercourse.

The bill got its final approval yesterday when the N.C. House voted 60-55 to agree to changes made by the N.C. Senate.

State Rep. Susan Fisher, D-Buncombe and one of the original authors of the bill, said that the final version is not perfect, but that it's a sign of healthy progress.

"I will just say, as I have said to my teenagers from time to time, that I'm glad we had this talk," Fisher told fellow legislators on the floor of the House. "And if you ever need to talk to me anymore about this subject, I'm here."

■ James Romoser can be reached at 919-210-6794 or at jromoser@wsjournal.com.