Running head: PAPER 5 1

Kristy Heckel
HD 361
Paper 5
Dr. Rogers
31 October 2017
PAPER 5 2

When it comes to states regarding why there is a need for education on sex for many

different types of cultures, it can help when having to deal with these types of communities in the

long run and it is good to be all inclusive. Having states promoting heteronormativity as an issue

for school safety and for those belonging to LGBTQ+ communities and other non-

heteronormative youth. Schools should be teaching curriculum and policies that articulate

LGBTQ+ identities and sexualities that are deviant or pathological that can exclude them from

the discussion entirely. It can make those students feel like they are excluded which can make

them feel explicitly pathologized in the classroom. Those types of policies and curriculum can

demonstrate that states aren’t thinking about how the students will be affected especially since

many of them will become bullied. There are many states including Alabama, Arizona,

Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah that has their sexual education presented about

homosexuality in a negative manner. For Alabama, the state code (Section 16-40A-2) requires

an emphasis in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a

life style that’s acceptable to the public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under

the state laws. (McNeill, 2013) Alabama not only articulates lesbian, gay and bi-sexual

sexualities as unacceptable but it also has a reference to anti sodomy laws which are still

happening in South Carolina. In Arizona the state codes prohibit schools from promoting

homosexuality in the sexual education curriculum. They say that no district can include in its

curriculum anything that promotes a homosexual lifestyle, portrays homosexuality as a positive

alternative lifestyle and that suggests that many methods of sex that are safe for a homosexual

lifestyle. Louisiana prohibits use of any sexually explicit materials depicting male or

homosexual activity. Mississippi has a mandate that schools teach a mutually faithful,

monogamous relationship with the context of marriage that is only appropriate for the setting for
PAPER 5 3

sexual intercourse. Oklahoma requires students to provide an AIDS education and mandates that

its taught to students that are engaging in homosexual activity, promiscuous sexual activity,

intravenous drug use or any contact with the AIDS virus. These six states can be extreme in

their pathologizing of gay lesbian and bi-sexual sexualities, however, an additional 22 states do

require public schools to stress and cover abstinence if they do offer sexuality education. The

abstinence until marriage education is mandated by federal and state policies which is inherently

heteronormative, and it often ignores and denigrates the existence of gay, lesbian, transgender

and intersex youth. In 2011 there were only 7 states and Washington D.C. that were allowing

lesbian and gay couples to be married. (McNeill, 2011)

The Title V of the Social Security Act says that sexual education is described as a law

that is an educational program that has an exclusive purpose by teaching the social,

psychological and health gains that can be realized by abstaining from sexual activity. It can

teach abstinence from the sexual activity outside of marriage is the expected standard for all

school aged children to avoid out of wedlock pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and

others associated health problems. It can teach that mutual faithful monogamous relationships in

the context of marriage is expected for the standard of human sexuality and that sexual activity

outside of that can lead to harmful psychological and physical effects. It teaches them that

having children out of wedlock will have harmful consequences on the child, parents of the child

as well as society. It can teach young people to reject sexual advances that are caused by alcohol

and drug use that increases the vulnerability to sexual abuse.

Many states aren’t as reasonable as they are in California because they do provide sexual

education curriculum that is appropriate to provide the sexual education curriculum that is

appropriate for the use with people of all races, genders, sexual orientations, ethnic and cultural
PAPER 5 4

backgrounds as well as people with disabilities. The California Education Code prohibits the

discrimination based on disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion or sexual

orientation. (McNeill, 2011)

Many researchers have done surveys on how same sex behaviors for men but not very

many have been done on women since the researchers were mostly trying to figure out how to

stop the spread of HIV and AIDS and many other sexual transmitted diseases. For men the

research has been done for decades however for women it hasn’t been for that long, just like the

fact that women have very little rights as well. Many non-heterosexual young women have a

higher rate of unintended pregnancy than any of their heterosexual peers as well as sexually

transmitted diseases. However, many lesbian and bi-sexual young women are frequently having

sexual intercourse with men and it makes them at a higher risk of teenage pregnancy and some

sexual transmitted infections than many of their straight peers. The unintended pregnancy rates

in the US have fallen in recent decades but remain higher overall because of many women are at

a disadvantage. (Ela & Budnick, 2017)

The absence of harassment polies that are specific and non-discrimination policies and

inclusion programs that are present in an overly hostile environment for the social environment

that have all aspects of heterosexism in schools. School policies include policies that are

designed to protect students and faculty from discrimination that’s based on sexual orientation as

well as policies that are based on sexual orientation and policies that ban harassment or making

policies that can correlate for if harassment does occur. Many school programs include

curriculum that addresses sexual orientations as well as a presence of Gay-Straight Alliances

(GSA) or other groups that support LGBTQ+ students that combat heterosexism in schools.

Having the emergence of GSAs and many other programs initiate schools that have resulted in
PAPER 5 5

shifts toward more welcoming environments that are increasingly more welcoming in social

environments and had increased the willingness to the part of faculty and students to interrupt

their peers if they hear any homophobic jokes or slurs. For schools that reported to have

inclusive policies and teacher training programs were more likely to perceive their school

environment as safe, tolerant and respectful toward sexual minority individuals than schools

without those same resources. (Chesir-Teran & Hughes, 2009)

Preschool is when many children start to be sectioned into gender specific norms that

shouldn’t be occurring. Children should have the ability to decide what they want to play with

regardless of what it is, boys should be allowed to play with dolls and girls should be allowed to

play with trucks and they shouldn’t feel bad about it. Having those set roles within the

curriculum for schools should be very important at that stage in their education because it can

teach them to be inclusive as a child. Especially when many children know at a young age that

their bodies don’t match how they feel on the inside, they need to have the ability to be free

when they go to school and not have to worry about bullying especially at a very young age. I

believe that it starts with both the parents as well as the teachers that provide an inclusive

lifestyle, regardless of if the child comes from a family that has same sex parents or not. Many

teachers do have the ability to unknowingly add it into their lessons however it’s mainly so that

the children do the opposite thing by forcing children to play with toys that aim themselves into

playing with toys that are for their own sex. When children are forced into these roles it can

make the children not want to feel like they are being inclusive.
PAPER 5 6

Resources

Reiss, M. J. (1997). Teaching about Homosexuality and Heterosexuality. Journal of Moral

Education, 343-352.

Chesir-Teran, D., & Hughes, D. (2008). Heterosexism in High School and Victimization Among

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Questioning Students. Journal of Youth and Adolescence,

963-975.

Mcneill, T. (2013). Sex education and the promotion of heteronormativity. Sexualities, 826-846.

Gensen, H. M. (2017). Reproducing (and Disrupting) Heteronormativity: Gendered Sexual

Socialization in Preschool Classrooms. Sociology of Education, 255-272.