Support the Healthy Teens Act in Florida! by Special Guest Blogger, Shelby Knox

by Shelby Knox

Click here to take action now.

When I was a sophomore in Lubbock, Texas, we were herded into the auditorium to listen to a particularly bizarre version of abstinence-only-until-marriage propaganda. 

The presenter pulled a girl up onstage, produced a dirty, dingy toothbrush from his pocket and asked if she’d brush her teeth with it. When she invariably said no, he’d pull out another toothbrush, this one in its original box, and repeat the question. When she said she’d use that one, he brandished the rejected brush above his head and announced to the audience, “If you have sex before marriage, you are the dirty toothbrush.”

My peers and I knew these weren’t the messages we needed. Our friends were getting pregnant and becoming infected with sexually transmitted infections and the school refused to trust us with the information we needed to protect ourselves and make good decisions.

So, we organized to convince the school board to throw out the toothbrush guy and implement real, age-appropriate, medically accurate comprehensive sex education to include information about abstinence as well as condoms, contraception, healthy relationships, and parent-teen communication.

The documentary film made on our efforts, The Education of Shelby Knox, has been used to raise awareness about failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs across the country and I’ve had the amazing opportunity to travel nationwide to swap experiences with other young people fighting for better sex education in their schools.

Recently, I traveled to Florida and met the talented and committed teens of The Source, a peer education theater troupe that performs skits about safer sex and responsible decision-making in Florida high schools. I learned from these youth advocates about the dire state of sex education in the Sunshine State.

Florida receives more money for abstinence-only-until-marriage than any other state but Texas, raking in 64 million dollars since 2002 for programs that contain factual inaccuracies about condoms and contraceptives, generalizations about sexuality that are based on biases about gender and sexual orientation, and religious messaging that probably violates the Constitution.

As a return on the investment, Florida has the sixth highest rate of teen pregnancy and the third highest rate of new AIDS diagnoses in the country. Although 23 governors, Republicans and Democrats, have refused abstinence-only funds on the grounds they fail to protect young people, Florida stubbornly refuses to take its proverbial head out of the sand.

The Healthy Teens Act, recently introduced in the legislature, would require Florida schools that already teach about STI’s and pregnancy to teach medically accurate and comprehensive sex education. The dividends on actually educating teens about sex could be huge. The dividends on actually educating teens about sex could be huge, including saving some of the $9.1 billion the United States spends on the effects of teen pregnancy every year.

When I started, I didn’t know if anyone would ever listen to me. Now I know the most powerful advocates are the young people who live every single day with the consequences of ignorance paired with public health policy.

Youth are speaking out all across the nation and you too can make a difference– tell your legislators to support the Healthy Teens Act and ask Governor Crist to refuse federal funds for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. After all, we’re not asking for a bailout – we’re asking for information that could save our lives.

Click here to take action now, urging committee chairs to give the Healthy Teens Act a fair hearing.