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For over a decade, battles have, raged between conservative Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM) sexuality education advocates and liberal Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) advocates. While these battles have focused on the inclusion of health information about contraception and whether or not a curriculum must advocate, abstinence as the best and only method to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, these debates have often ignored other important values about sex. In this article, Sharon Lamb reviews the recent history of these sexuality education battles, criticizes both AOUM and CSE curricula, and discusses how, in CSE's accommodation to AOUM objections, ethical dimensions of sex education may have been neglected in favor of evidence-based practice. She then suggests ways in which the current curricula could teach ethical reasoning and make sex education a form of citizenship education, focusing on justice, equity, and caring for the, other person as well as the self.
Nineteen years after abstinence education was endorsed and promoted by President Clinton, and after eight years during which the Bush administration supported and grew an Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM) programmatic approach to sexuality education, it is interesting to consider the changes that await adolescents' sexuality education given the promise of an Obama presidency that aims to "restore science to its rightful place" (Obama, 2009). In his May 2009 budget, President Obama called for an end of funding for AOUM programs that did not have evidence to support their effectiveness. In addition, he said the government will no longer fund programs that ignore or denigrate the effectiveness of contraceptives and safe-sex behaviors. He also recommended increasing funding for comprehensive teen pregnancy prevention programs (Guttmacher Institute, 2009). And the most recent version of the health-care bill eliminates all funding for AOUM programming. While this change may not end the battle between AOUM and CSE advocates, it certainly is a harbinger for more progressive reform in the practice of sex education.
Over the past twenty years, an approach used by CSE advocates to combat the growth of AOUM curricula has been to bring science to bear on the AOUM agenda, and we hear in Obama's recommendation for evidence-based programs that he and his administration have been listening to these arguments. CSE advocates have not only provided science-based...