Your Church Teaches What?

A sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, VA), June 28, 2009, by Marianne Vakiener, a life-long UU and long-time Religious Education teacher.

Have you played The Game of Life? Remember the little cars and the pink and blue pegs representing girls and boys? When my son, David, was about five or six, I overheard him playing Life with my husband. In the game, you first choose whether to attend college or go straight to a career. Shortly after that, you come to a church with a sign that says, “Stop! Get married.”

“David, do you want to marry a woman or a man?”

“Dad, I have to marry a woman!”

“No, David, it’s your choice. You can marry a man or a woman.”

“Dad! I have to marry a woman!”

“No, really, David. It is up to you. You can decide to marry a man or a woman.”

“Dad! I know that in real life I can marry a man or a woman, but in this game, the rule says I have to marry a woman.”

How did the two of us come to raise this child?

In 1970, the Unitarian Universalist Association published a revolutionary comprehensive sexuality curriculum called “About Your Sexuality”, or AYS for short for junior high school students. This program was developed largely as a response to the perceived lack of information about human sexuality for this age group.

My parents wanted my brothers and me to take the class, so my father and a friend from our Unitarian church attended the teacher training. Although my brother and I were both in high school, and thus older than the intended age group, we were both enrolled in AYS the very first time it was taught. The teachers were my father and Sally Nelson, a family friend to this day.

At the time, I was embarrassed that my father was teaching the class. I remember one class we talked about contraceptives. Dad and Mrs. Nelson had a box of contraceptives to show us. But for some reason, there were no condoms in the box. My father said, “Sorry we don’t have a condom to show you but you all know what a condom looks like, right?”

Uh, right. What was I supposed to say? “Sure, I’ve seen a condom before, Dad” or “No, I’ve never seen a condom, peers.” Not my favorite moment in AYS.

At the time I was taking AYS, I don’t know that I fully grasped how ground-breaking it was. I remember my parents talking about news coverage of AYS, and something about maybe getting arrested. None of it was clear to me.

What was so ground-breaking about AYS? Probably two things—the presentation of homosexuality as normal, and the filmstrips.

First, homosexuality. AYS was made up of individual units, each covering a topic such as Sexual Anatomy or Pregnancy and Birth. The unit on lovemaking was titled “Lovemaking: Homosexual, Bisexual and Heterosexual”. Did you get that? Lovemaking was lovemaking, regardless of the two human beings involved. That was revolutionary. There was another unit titled “Sexual Minorities in Society” that covered gays, lesbians, bisexuals, cross-dressers, transsexuals, drag queens and kings, and transgender people. Can you imagine, even today, a curriculum in general use that separates sexual orientation and gender expression from sexual activity? AYS was way ahead of its time in the respect it insisted upon for all persons.

And, ah, yes, the filmstrips. Try to remember your adolescence and the questions you had about sex, the mechanics. Seriously, did you wonder exactly how two people’s bodies fit together? What if those two people were both women? Or both men? Just how did they do “it”? Even more, what was “it”? Did you look for books or magazines that offered a glimpse? Or maybe movies? Depending upon when you were an adolescent, you might have had little or nothing to answer your questions.

AYS sought to answer those questions directly and clearly. The most controversial components of the curriculum were the masturbation and lovemaking filmstrips. Real individuals and couples were photographed. The lovemaking series showed two heterosexual couples (one black, one white), one gay male couple and one lesbian couple. Nothing was left out. All possible questions were addressed by the filmstrips, and the teachers would answer anything the kids asked.

Fifteen years later, I was married and a member of the local UU church. The Minister of Religious Education asked my husband and me to consider being trained to teach AYS. My husband also grew up UU and had taken AYS at a UU summer camp.

It sounded like fun. We said yes.

And it was fun! The training was a full weekend. The trainers were skilled and the training was intense. We learned a lot about the intended age group, about teaching sexuality, and about the curriculum. During the weekend, it became apparent that one of the participants had personal baggage that would make her an inappropriate AYS teacher. I was pleased to learn that the trainers were aware of the problem and would follow up with the RE professional at the congregation.

Why was teaching AYS fun? Well, there was a selfish reason. Paul and I had no children yet, so we got to practice talking about sexuality with other people’s kids. That made it a lot easier when ours came along.

But the value of AYS was so much more than that. It was a privilege and a responsibility that we took seriously.

Over the years, Paul and I taught AYS five times. Some of those former eighth graders are in their 30s now with children of their own. Yes, I feel old.

In the 1990s, the UUA joined with the United Church of Christ to develop a replacement for AYS. It is called Our Whole Lives, or OWL for short. OWL has curricula for kindergarten and first graders, fourth through sixth graders, 7^th through 9^th graders, 10^th through 12^th graders, and adults. The other major difference between AYS and OWL is the inclusion of a religious component called “Sexuality and Our Faith”. Each OWL lesson is explicitly related to the UU principles.

Here is a quote I found online from another OWL teacher:

I teach k-1, 6 and 8th grade OWL. I sometimes forget how great the program is until I realize how little non-UU kids know about their bodies and sexuality. One OWL facilitator told us that if we taught people to swim the way we teach them about sexuality, we would never let them out of the locker room, only let them hear the splashing and occasionally see someone walk into the locker room wet. THEN we would throw them into the 12-foot-end and yell -- SWIM!!!

Our Whole Lives helps participants make informed and responsible decisions about their sexual health and behavior. It equips participants with accurate, age-appropriate information in six subject areas: human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, sexual health, and society and culture. Grounded in a holistic view of sexuality, Our Whole Lives provides not only facts about anatomy and human development, but helps participants to clarify their values, build interpersonal skills, and understand the spiritual, emotional, and social aspects of sexuality.

Our Whole Lives uses approaches that work. The curricula are based on the Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education produced by the National Guidelines Task Force, a group of leading health, education, and sexuality professionals assembled by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).

Our Whole Lives covers topics and skills that both parents and students want to have available but schools are less likely to cover. The Kaiser Family Foundation has an interesting report on this subject called "Sex Education in America: A View from Inside the Nation's Classrooms." New national surveys are challenging the convention that Americans are reluctant to have sexual health issues taught in school, the surveys show that most parents, along with educators and students themselves, would expand sex education courses and curriculum.

The Our Whole Lives Values are:

• Self Worth

• Sexual Health

• Responsibility

• Justice and Inclusivity

OWL does not use photos of real people. When I first heard that, I was disappointed, believing that something valuable was lost.

Then I took the OWL training for 7^th through 9^th graders. What OWL offers instead of filmstrips is so much, much better. OWL has slides of drawings. Why is that better than real people in photos? Because the people in the photos were are young, able-bodied and conventionally attractive. The people in the drawings include elderly people, people who use wheelchairs, women who’ve had mastectomies, overweight people, people who are not beautiful, and people of all ethnicities. Wow. Our Whole Lives includes people in their whole lives.

This church year, I taught OWL for 8^th graders in our RE program. Our last class was two weeks ago. I asked the kids what they’d like to say about OWL:

Sarah said: “Sometimes it’s easier to ask questions in OWL than it is anywhere else.”

Melody said: “OWL helped me to understand and respect my spiritual and physical self.”

Of course, there were some funny comments, too. Paul said: “We played Capture the Flag with a life-size rubber penis. If that doesn’t sound delicious, I don’t know what does.”

(During an overnight, we did a lesson on contraceptives. We had a lifesize model of an erect penis to use for putting condoms on. After the lesson, the kids decided to play Capture the Flag.)

How does OWL benefit our teens? I have my son’s permission to share this story. When David was 16 and a high school sophomore, he was dating a 17 year old girl who was a junior. They had known each other for many years through church. One day David asked me whether he could ride the school bus home with his girlfriend to her mother’s house. He said that her mother would not be home when they arrived, but would get there within an hour. Our family’s rule at that age was to not allow David and his girlfriend to be in the house without an adult present, so I told David that I wasn’t comfortable with his plan. He offered that he and his girlfriend were willing to sit on the front steps until her mother got home. That seemed reasonable to me so I gave permission. Then David asked, “Mom, I’m just wondering what you are worried about if we’re in the house alone because if it’s sex, we’ve already talked about that and agreed that neither one of us wants to do anything that could cause pregnancy or transmit disease.”

Okay, I was speechless. He was right that I was worried about sex, maybe not quite the way he thought I was. My concern was about finding themselves in an uncomfortable position. But, David’s statement surprised me.

“Uh, oh. Wow. When did you have that conversation?”

“About a week after we started going out.”

“Oh, and who initiated the conversation?”

“I did. I thought that was the right thing to do. We’ve both taken OWL, you know.”

I did know. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was, I admit, proud of my son and his ability to respect himself, his girlfriend, his values and to bring up a subject I believe many teens, let alone adults, find awkward.

David is 20 now. He recently told me that he has the same conversation with anyone he dates.

OWL and SIECUS recognize that parents are the first and primary sexuality educators. How can we help the next generation of parents become comfortable with that role? OWL now, good sexuality educators later!

In closing, here is an excerpt from an article titled Sex Education Helps Save the World, from the UU World, 2005

The author, Dr. Cynthia Kuhn, is a professor of pharmacology and cancer biology at Duke University, and co-author of Buzzed: The Straight Facts about the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy. She teaches the middle school Our Whole Lives human sexuality course at the Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Durham, North Carolina, where she is a member. (August, 2005)

“This year one of my OWL students brought to class a book the public school had passed out. One of its “top ten reasons” why teens have sex was participation in sex-education classes. Another section stated that condoms do not halt the spread of HIV/AIDS or even effectively prevent pregnancy! In fact, as I had just been teaching my medical students, condoms are 99 percent effective in preventing pregnancy and significantly decrease the transmission of HIV when they are used properly, according to well-designed, peer-reviewed research studies. A colleague and I tried to get the local newspaper to address these falsehoods being taught in our schools but failed to spark any interest. We live in frightening times when scientific truth is suppressed in our public schools and forums.

“UU parents should certainly feel proud that their kids, by participating in OWL, are the smartest kids on the block about these issues. But our responsibility doesn’t stop at our church doors. Those of us with the expertise need to advocate for all kids, especially the ones who get only the little book about the ten reasons that teens have sex. We need to show up at school board meetings and talk to teachers, principals, and superintendents about curriculum, armed with facts.

“In our religious-education program we have a slogan: “Nothing less than saving the world.” I believe that is exactly what we do with OWL. Our children can grow up to enjoy healthy relationships, have a sexual life without contracting disease, and bear their children when they are adults and not children themselves. Teaching our kids about safe, mutually respectful sexual behavior in the context of our value system, I believe, is indeed nothing less than saving the world. “

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