Friday, January 21, 2000
Sex-ed compromise pleases no one
Vote on new strategy could come today
BY SPENCER HUNT
Enquirer Columbus Bureau
COLUMBUS — Lawmakers looking for the best way to spend nearly $1 million in federal sex-education money have come up with a compromise no one likes.
That was the only consensus reached by a bitterly divided audience of about 180 people who attended a special committee hearing in Columbus Thursday. The focus of the hearing was a $974,490 sex-education grant that was so controversial the Legislature passed laws last year to keep it from being spent.
The money would have been doled out by the Ohio Department of Education to fund HIV- and AIDS-preven tion programs in public schools and community centers. But at the urging of conservative groups, lawmakers froze the funds when they learned the programs stressed the use of contraceptives as much as abstinence as ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.
The lawmakers' solution to the dilemma was a resolution that would not allow any dis cussion of contraceptives in sex-ed classes funded by the federal money. But a parade of angry witnesses protested the idea.
“Abstinence is the No. 1 thing we talk about, but we also teach prevention,” said Quanita Munday, a sex-education instructor with the American Red Cross in Cincinnati.
Ms. Munday said offering teens information about contraceptives is important because many teens ignore absti nence-only messages. “It has to be done,” she said.
Although the lawmakers' proposal appears to hand conservatives a victory, members of moral and religious-based family organizations argued the state should simply send the money back.
“This is tainted money,” said Jane Hoffman, a Cincinnati board member of the Ohio Family Alliance. “We should have nothing to do with it.”
Ms. Hoffman and Dr. David Miller, a Middletown urologist, said the money is the carrot federal health regulators are using to get schools to adopt a sex-education curriculum that encourages teens to use contraceptives and that condones premarital sex.
“This is not about educating our children in the issue of HIV and AIDs,” Dr. Miller said. “Send a message that you will not accept funds from the (Centers for Disease Control) that have strings attached.”
The gathered lawmakers, who make up the Education committees of the House and Senate, could vote on the compromise today. Whether the resolution will pass or fail was unclear.
Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. C.J. Prentiss, D-Cleveland, questioned why sex-ed instructors paid with this money should not be allowed to discuss contraceptives.
“I'm trying to figure out how this teaches prevention when you have 40 kids in a class, 20 of them are having sex, and all they hear about is abstinence,” Ms. Prentiss said.
Republican lawmakers appeared divided. While some appeared to support the compromise resolution, conservative lawmakers appeared to favor not spending the money at all.
State Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, questioned whether the state Department of Education should be trusted to spend the money, even though it has promised to make sure all funded programs would stress only abstinence.
“The credibility factor is important,” Mr. Jordan said. “The question is whether the Department of Education was in any way trying to be misleading.”
Mr. Jordan was the main sponsor of the bill that froze the program last year.
State Rep. Randall Gardner, R-Bowling Green, said the Department of Education could and should be trusted to do what it says.
“I don't see the purpose in going back through this again,” Mr. Gardner said.
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