Support for Sex Education Is Bipartisan

Source: cottonbro/pexels

Earlier this year, my colleague Manuel Galvan and I launched a podcast called A Bit More Complicated. We have conversations about important topics and issues and try to bring scientific evidence into these discussions. I’m really excited about the podcast, and I encourage readers to go check it out.

In a recent episode, we talked about sex education with Kristen Mark. We wanted to talk with Kristen now, given some recent political controversies involving how we teach about sex and gender in K-12 schools. On the pod, we talked about what sex education actually entails, the lack of consistency in sex ed across the U.S., other methods to teach young people about sex outside of the classroom, and crosscultural differences in attitudes toward sex. Kristen lived up to her strong reputation as a science communicator as she shared an evidence-based perspective with us.

After reflecting on the issue a bit more, I thought about ways we may have overstated the political divide on sex education. As I wrote in some of my first pieces for this blog, most American liberals and conservatives agree about most issues, but we perceive large disagreement. This is a problem. “False polarization” can actually reinforce group-based divisions and inhibit compromise. We should be careful to avoid this.

The evidence shows that support for sex education is bipartisan. As Kristen noted during our chat, over nine out of ten parents in America want sex education in K-12 schools, and they want it to include topics like contraception, STDs, anatomy, and sexual orientation.

It surprised me a bit to see that there wasn’t much disagreement about what topics should be covered. For instance, most Republican and Democratic parents said that abstinence should be included in sex ed, but also that comprehensive sex ed is much more popular among parents than abstinence-only sex ed.

I was also surprised that support from Republican parents for sex ed is even strong in the deep South, in red states like Louisiana and North Carolina, and even from those who are strongly religious. Here’s a revealing quote from Reverend Darcy Roake and the Louisiana Public Health Institute

As people of faith it is our responsibility to help all people recognize their sacred lives as healthy and whole. A large part of that responsibility is providing accurate information, particularly to young people, about their bodies and reproductive lives so they can make decisions that are informed, responsible and respectful of themselves and others.

Giving a young person accurate information and helping them navigate choices and responsibilities in a complicated world lets them know that they too are sacred and worthy.

I hope that readers won’t come away with the impression that opposition to sex education is endemic to American conservatives because that isn’t true. If you look at the data, it’s only a small minority of reactionary religious activists and politicians who represent the most vocal opposition. In some cases, they're motivated by outright bigotry toward sexual and gender minorities. But I also see a lot of consternation about sex education coming from liberals who ordinarily have egalitarian viewpoints and believe strongly in promoting diversity.

They hold a different belief that kids and teenagers are innocent, impressionable, and vulnerable, and thus, any sexual experience would be harmful or damaging in some way. I think this is a misguided viewpoint, and that may be the underlying motivating factor for parents in both political parties to support the teaching of abstinence in their kids’ schools. I’m putting my cards on the table here: I don’t think abstinence should be taught at all. I think it is a perversion.

But so far, it appears that attitudes toward sex ed are similar across the political spectrum. That’s not to say that Republicans and Democrats are identical. Polling data show that 75 percent of Democrats think that safe-sex education (i.e., teaching students how to use condoms) is more effective than abstinence-focused education in reducing adverse outcomes like STIs or unwanted pregnancies. Those numbers are lower for Republicans–only about 55 percent agree. Still, most Republicans and Democrats have viewpoints on this topic that are consistent with the evidence.

We see a fairly large and meaningful political divide concerning whether or not sexual orientation and gender diversity should be taught to kids in 3rd grade or younger, though. Sixty percent of Republicans support banning this type of sex-ed content in grades K-3, which is what an infamous piece of legislation in Florida (recently signed into law) essentially does.

Sex Essential Reads

The Psychology of Sexual Novelty

Want Accurate Sex Information? Beware Some Social Media

There is also some support for such bans among Democrats (35 percent) and Independents (45 percent), but still, there’s clearly a large divide in public opinion regarding younger children.

There’s also a divide regarding who should be doing the teaching. Republicans are much less comfortable with teachers who are gay sharing their same-sex relationships with their students. YouGov did an experiment in which it asked parents, “Do you think it’s appropriate for a teacher to have a picture of themselves with their spouse on their desk in the classroom, or to tell their students that they recently got married?”

If it’s a heterosexual couple, over 50 percent of Republicans say that’s appropriate—but if it’s a gay or lesbian couple, that number drops to 24 percent for the photo on the desk, and only 12 percent of Republicans say it’s appropriate for a teacher to share same-sex wedding announcement. That’s pretty strong hypocrisy.

But Democrats are hypocritical, too, even if they’re much more accepting of sexual and gender diversity. Over 75 percent of Democrats said it’s appropriate for a heterosexual teacher to share a wedding announcement with their students, but that number drops to 55 percent for a same-sex marriage announcement. So even though those numbers are much higher than for Republicans, there’s still clearly anti-LGBTQ bigotry coming from Democrats.

What’s strange, though, is that most parents in both parties are comfortable with their kids having LGBTQ teachers. Even Republican parents don’t seem to care if their kids’ math teacher is gay, likely because the classroom discussions will generally focus on topics like algebra.

And most parents also want their kids to learn about sexual orientation in sex-ed class. The main concern seems to be somewhat narrowly focused on having teachers who are themselves gender diverse or non-heterosexual talking to students about their own romantic or sexual experiences (this is where the whole “groomer” idea stems from) or having sex-ed classes with kids who are in 3rd grade or younger. And this concern is being driven more by Republicans than by Democrats.

I think the concern about teachers “grooming” students is unfounded, absurd, and inconsistent with the scientific evidence. In addition, I’m wary of perpetuating a false polarization effect: If people believe that there are major divisions and that everything is politicized, that’s associated with greater animosity. And we don’t want that. I sense both that support for sex education is bipartisan and that liberals are far from fully enlightened about sex and gender. But we should firmly nudge conservatives to rethink misguided ideas about “grooming” in schools.