Religious group teaches unusual sex-ed lessons in Maryland PUBLIC schools

[glatt]

A non-profit religious based pregnancy counseling center in Maryland was invited into Maryland PUBLIC schools to teach sex education. As part of their presentation, they encouraged teenagers to abstain from sex to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases. To demonstrate how diseases are spread, the speaker from the Rockville Pregnancy Center asked students to share gum that had already been chewed, passing it from student to student. The speaker also offered squares of chocolate to students, but told them one of the squares was actually a laxative. In both exercises, no students were forced to eat/chew the candy, but many did. These presentations were done at multiple public schools.

It's outrageous that a religious group was brought into a public school in the first place. I don't know what the schools were thinking. With their religious slant, it's not surprising that the group was pushing abstinence. I've got no problem teaching teens that having unprotected sex can lead to diseases. I strongly encourage that. But the teaching methods are really kind of crazy. Hundreds of kids participated across the county, and nobody knows for sure how many actually shared the chewing gum but it was a lot of them.

The most amazing thing to me though is that even when the students were told some of the chocolate was really a laxative, they ate it anyway. And even though they knew it was the height of cold and flu season, they still swapped the gum between scores of students. Teens clearly don't make good decisions. Apparently neither do school officials.

The story.

Edit: Be sure not to miss the link on the Rockville Pregnancy Center's website. "Take a test to see if you're going to Heaven!"