Epidemic levels of sexually transmitted disease. Fear that the family structure was disintegrating. Worries that American culture was becoming unhinged. A matter of national security. These concerns prompted the government to launch sex education on hundred years ago.
But “sex education” has had many iterations since that time, and many of the original concerns of sex ed proponents are the very issues being debated in the media and on college campuses across the country. Today, the normalization of nonmarital sex is concurrently present in cultural norms, on the university campus, and in modern sex education classes.
Is it any surprise, then, that colleges are now forced to wrestle with what constitutes sexual consent and young men and women are reaping the “rewards” of the myth of sexual “freedom?” This talk will address how sexual pluralism is producing a growing censorship in the sex ed debate in order to equip students to think clearly about sex and relationships in the midst of cultural chaos surrounding issues of sexuality.
Valerie Huber is the President and CEO of the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA), a Washington D.C. based professional association in support of abstinence education as the optimal strategy for teen sexual health. Valerie previously served as the Title V Abstinence Education Coordinator for the state of Ohio where she provided oversight and grant awards to community abstinence programs serving over 100,000 students per year as part of the Ohio Department of Health. She is a frequent spokesperson for teen sexual health in various media venues and has been interviewed hundreds of times by prominent print, radio, and television outlets. She is an expert on the history of sex education as well as the public policy decision-making that has influenced how sex education is taught in communities across the nation.
