The Scary Reality Of Sex Education In Alabama | State Of Grace | Refinery29 - video Dailymotion

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On this episode of State Of Grace, our host, Grace Baldridge travels to Alabama to uncover how sex education is being taught in the school systems there. She explores whether keeping God in the classroom is helping or hindering youths. Press play to see what Grace discovers here on State Of Grace!   ABOUT SERIES State Of Grace is a series that explores the intersection of human rights, sexuality, and faith. Host Grace Baldridge dives into controversial societal realities that Americans face everyday and how to navigate the modern world while remaining faithful.   ABOUT REFINERY29  Refinery29 is a modern woman's destination for how to live a stylish, well-rounded life. http://refinery29.com/  RELATED CONTENT The Life Threatening Dangers Of Gay Conversion Therapy https://youtube.com/watch?v=HL5ThApf0IA I Got 10 Hours Of Transgender Facial Surgery https://youtube.com/watch?v=6c-4A-gNqS0 I'm 30 & I Embalm Dead Bodies For A Living https://youtube.com/watch?v=ePQmd2phpDA  SUBSCRIBE TO REFINERY29 Subscribe to the Refinery29 channel: http://bit.ly/subscribe-to-r29  TALENT Follow Grace Baldridge on Instagram: https://instagram.com/gracebaldridge/ Follow Unbothered on Instagram: https://instagram.com/r29unbothered/ Follow OnHerTurf on Instagram: https://instagram.com/onherturf/ Follow Refinery29 on Instagram: https://instagram.com/refinery29/

Transcript

00:00I mean look at your sexuality it I mean I mean like literally I guess you could

00:05why did I not know that you're gonna say okay let's talk about sex the birds and

00:11the bees the horizontal tango the four-legged foxtrot oh what you want to

00:16know about is sexual intercourse I mean you get it talking about sex has been

00:21awkward for as long as I can remember and probably you can remember and yet

00:28states all across America are swiftly passing legislation to regulate the

00:32results of getting it on the laws regarding sex education are decided on

00:37state and local levels with no federal regulation only 24 states require that

00:42sex education be taught in public schools just 13 states require that it be

00:48medically accurate six states still include no promo homo and don't say gay

00:53laws and just two states prevent the promotion of religion how is God

00:58present in our classrooms and eventually our bedrooms and at what cost

01:05Birmingham Alabama is a Bible Belt city in an abstinence forward state that does

01:10not mandate sex education I was curious to see what the conversation around sex

01:15looked like in Alabama and upon arrival I received a clear message the most

01:20restrictive abortion bill in the country just passed in Alabama abortion would be

01:25criminalized in Alabama this is the most restrictive ban on abortions in the

01:30nation last night the Alabama State Senate passed a bill effectively banning

01:37abortion at every stage of pregnancy as of now the governor kib who is a

01:42Republican has not issued a comment you can't not educate people on something not

01:48not talk about something and then effectively punish them for the silence that you implemented

02:00no I mean I always feel crazy in this in this show it was overwhelming to me that a

02:09local government that was not mandating sex education was regulating the results of

02:14having sex I sat down with dr. Samantha Hill at Children's of Alabama to try and

02:19make sense of it all so in this state right now what is sex ed what does that

02:25look like unfortunately one of the biggest drawbacks about the sexual

02:29education law here in Alabama is that it's not enforced our students here in

02:33the state of Alabama are not necessarily getting the same sexual education what are

02:36the risks and consequences if we just don't deal with sex education continuing the

02:42silence that we have around sex education just increases the stigma keeping it

02:46stigmatized only serves to further jeopardize that person's health as well

02:50as everybody they come in contact with Alabama ranks 11th in the country for

02:55highest teen pregnancy rates of the teens having sex in Alabama 80% have never

03:00been tested for HIV and more than 20% of newly diagnosed cases are found in

03:05heterosexuals the issue of sex education is not a conversation about gay or

03:11straight but about human rights the literature shows that once you instill and

03:17incorporate a comprehensive sexual education curriculum within your

03:22particular arena so schools the rates of STD's pregnancies decline I mean you

03:26could argue that you know they're a great way to avoid getting pregnant is gay

03:30sex so interesting thoughts don't get me wrong we've made some great strides but

03:37for the wonderful country that we are I don't think we've gone far enough at

03:42improving our young people's health in this particular arena I had been warned

03:46that talking about sex in Alabama would be difficult but I had to give it the old

03:50college try right hi my name is grace I'm working on a documentary about sex

03:54education and I'm wondering yes okay so there is not a sex ed program at your school at all hi

04:10my

04:10name is grace and I'm working on a documentary about sex education hi my

04:14name is grace hi my name is grace my name is grace hi my name is grace oh my gosh

04:20hi this is grace too hello we don't have that here we don't have a sex education program we don't

04:30have one no no ma'am

04:32actually why don't you call back Wednesday or Thursday okay you won't what today but

04:38today's Thursday next next week oh okay okay cool um all right and is have a good day

04:45all right thank you bye it became abundantly clear that there was almost no one in the

04:51state of Alabama that wanted to talk to this old lesbian about sex who's next go figure

04:59in Alabama the law currently states that within the sex ed classroom an instructor must emphasize

05:05in a factual manner from a public health perspective that homosexuality is not a

05:11lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that this conduct is a criminal offense under

05:16the laws of the state these laws are commonly referred to as no promo homo and don't say gay

05:24while the bill to remove this language nearly reached a house vote this year the legislature

05:30prioritized abortion bans in a state that has largely disregarded the conversation around sex and

05:37has overlooked or condemned some within it spaces like Magic City Acceptance Center exists to provide

05:43LGBTQ youth with the tools needed to protect themselves there is glitter in the wall when we

05:50opened five years ago we opened to serve LGBTQ youth ages 13 to 24 and recognizing that young

05:56people didn't have access to safer sex ed that was inclusive that they didn't have access to testing

06:01the idea was to have a space where young people can go and feel comfortable and have that access and

06:06be

06:06able to talk about themselves I love that the kitchen is the first thing kind of little mini

06:10kitchen very important I like the priorities um because we're a youth center and I'm a mom

06:15about their art I will steal their art from them when they leave it behind and decorate the fridge

06:22every time we welcome someone in usually this is about the point that they tell me that they're

06:26really nervous and that they've never been in the space like this before and I get to say this exact

06:31point every single person has given me the same speech because no one has ever been in an

06:36LGBTQ youth space in Birmingham because this is it so you're all having an experience that's the

06:41same for everyone and that it's new once a month Magic City Acceptance Center hosts their unicorn pizza

06:48club which is a discussion forum that focuses on the diverse aspects of LGBTQ sexual health and

06:54well-being I did have sex ed the problem is that I was not in a place with my own

06:59sexuality where when

07:01it was all about straight stuff I was just like oh not for me checked out in health class I

07:06was so

07:06confused about why boys had to wear boxers and girls wore panties that I couldn't even understand what

07:13was going on because I was just lost by the idea that I couldn't wear boxers they're so comfy this

07:20will be my

07:20first sex ed class well I did get one sex ed class out of the whole 18 years of me

07:27going to school I was

07:29getting my education from other people who really didn't know what they were talking about or experience

07:36yeah and that I paid the price with that so we are actually number 17 in the nation for the

07:43highest rates

07:43of newly diagnosed HIV infections so in this graphic mm-hmm Birmingham has a higher rate of HIV infection

07:53than Los Angeles where we came from correct it is per capita admittedly as a gay woman I ignorantly

08:01assumed the conversations around HIV and unwanted pregnancies never related to people like me but

08:07that couldn't be further from the truth studies have found that lesbian and bisexual women are at equal

08:13or greater risk of unwanted pregnancies and terminations than their heterosexual counterparts

08:19by excluding the LGBTQ community from the sex ed conversation all students are getting only a

08:25fraction of the story I am a southern queer mom this is Taylor Winfrey a southern queer mom all of

08:34those

08:34things wrap up into this like beautiful package of like what I expressed to the world and what I feel

08:41about myself can you tell us a little bit about the ideas presented to you in your sex education in

08:48Alabama really the entirety of my sex education here was abstinence only and fear-based and so it was

08:56like okay don't have sex if you have sex this is what's gonna happen to you we're handed out these

09:01little business card sized things that we wrote our name on and it said dear Jesus comma so we wrote

09:07our

09:07names we signed at the bottom it was a pact between ourselves and and God that we were going to

09:12remain

09:12pure for our wedding nights my virginity was not mine it was men's and you know my dad's Jesus is

09:20my

09:20spouse but it wasn't mine at the age of 19 Taylor found herself pregnant and questioning her options as

09:28well as her sexuality I was already having a hard time understanding how being gay fit into this like

09:36white picket fence narrative that I've been fed it let me off the hook for a while of dealing with

09:41my

09:41own sexual orientation because I would imagine most people would just sort of have assumed that you

09:45were straight exactly yeah and a lot of it just had to do with this idea that is force fed

09:51to you that

09:52the only right way to be and the only right way to raise a child is with a husband I

09:58fought against

09:59that before I had Emily this idea of like letting go of the narrative it took a good three years

10:05after

10:05she was born for me to get to a place where I was able to come out we hear this

10:11idea that if you just

10:13don't talk about the experience of a queer person and maybe if you're if you're your kid is queer if

10:19you

10:19just don't talk about it then maybe it'll go away yeah and I hope that we're getting to a point

10:25where

10:25we're like no we're still gonna be here yeah I've made it a huge part of my parenting to to

10:31parent as

10:32gender-neutral as possible my kid is nine and is very vocal about being gender fluid

10:37mama can I get on that she's on that you can ask her when we give kids these words and

10:45these ideas they

10:46really resonate with them because kids are very fluid in the way that they think in the way that

10:52they perceive the world people here are very quiet about sex education and yet when it comes to

10:59reproductive rights very loud very loud how well how do you make sense of that none of it makes sense

11:04to me I sit I was at my kitchen table with a friend last night just like trying to figure

11:11out what it

11:12means for us right as people who can get pregnant so we just got word that governor Kay Ivey has

11:23signed

11:25the most restrictive reproductive rights bill in the United States it is now the law of the land in

11:33Alabama it feels very timely that all of this is going down as we are here in Birmingham trying to

11:41learn about reproductive health and sex ed I don't understand how we're having this conversation and

11:48we're not having the other one feels like you're treating a symptom you're not treating the problem

11:53and yet all across America abstinence is being prioritized in fact President Trump has allotted

12:00millions of dollars to sexual risk avoidance programs which heavily emphasize abstinence I couldn't shake the

12:07feeling that I needed a greater understanding of what an abstinence forward education looked like

12:12and while it seemed I wasn't going to be able to have this conversation in Alabama I found someone

12:18that was willing to make a house call thank you so much for coming Heather Roosh is a wife a

12:23mother and

12:24a life issue speaker you know when I say that abstinence saves these kids from the hurts of sex of

12:32casual

12:32sex I say that from experience much like Taylor Heather found herself pregnant at the age of 19

12:39the birth of her daughter was the catalyst for the work she does today the CDC declared that we're in

12:44an

12:44epidemic with sexually transmitted infections in our country we're at an all-time high and only getting

12:50higher and we're dumping all of this money into prevention and where is the prevention what's going

12:56what is nothing is working you know I would love to see more abstinence forward it's sexual risk

13:02avoidance forward curriculums out there in education out there the problem is you got to have somebody

13:08to teach him and that I think practically speaking is what we are running into everywhere across the

13:14country nobody wants to be the one teaching this I think it's confrontational the reason why it's not

13:21being taught I think it's hard to find people to teach it because of consequences in teaching it and

13:27also confrontation in teaching it and I think it's uncomfortable I am NOT opposed to abstinence being

13:32part of that discussion at all too often with with absence only it's sort of excluding students who

13:40might not subscribe to that would you be open to talking with people from the comprehensive side of

13:46things and seeing if you could find commonalities absolutely anybody teaching something that is this

13:51important you know should be teaching it for the benefit of the student it's just uncomfortable to

13:56talk about and we need we need to take that we need to get rid of that and realize that

14:00we're the

14:01adults and we have a moral obligation and responsibility to our children to mentor them to teach them well the

14:08lack of regulation and the stigma surrounding sex education has resulted in a stalemate that is harmful to

14:14the mental physical and emotional health of American students we need to be talking about sex education

14:21is a human right let me just come over here and show y'all real quick we can't deny American

14:26students

14:26the right to understand their bodies and the ways in which they can protect and accept themselves

14:32thank you so much for watching refinery 29 for more videos click here and to subscribe click here

The Scary Reality Of Sex Education In Alabama | State Of Grace | Refinery29

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