Health Education Groups: Discuss LGBT Issues In School
January 12, 2012 4:13 pm ET by Carlos Maza
American School Health Association, the National Education Association Health Information Network, Advocates for Youth, the Society of State Leaders of Health and Physical Education, and the Future of Sex Education Initiative.
According to a press release posted on Advocates for Youth’s website, the focus on LGBT and identity issues is targeted at combatting the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and reducing harassment and bullying in school:
[T]here is also a pressing need to address harassment, bullying and relationship violence in our schools, which have a significant impact on a student’s emotional and physical well being as well as their academic success. The National Sexuality Education Standards set the groundwork for the minimum of what sexuality education should look like in America’s public schools.
Unfortunately, the guidelines are likely to be ignored or attacked by anti-LGBT groups, many of which have spent years perpetuating the myth that LGBT-inclusive education and anti-bullying programs recruit kids into the “gay lifestyle.”
The guidelines are also likely to come under fire from Fox News, which routinely jumps at every opportunity to promote the “gay indoctrination” bogeyman.
When conservatives fight to keep LGBT issues out of schools and classrooms, they’re not just depriving students of valuable information about the real world – they’re putting vulnerable children and teenagers at risk.