On Wednesday, Jenks High School, a public high school in Oklahoma, invited Christian sex educator Shelly Donahue to lecture about abstinence. One senior at the presentation immediately took to Facebook to share Donahue’s statements, which included not only irresponsible and inaccurate facts, but overt sexism toward young women, too.
According to senior Brooklyn Wilson, on top of being “the usual disappointment” of misleading tirades on abstinence, Donahue additionally used “shame, guilt, and embarrassment” directed at female students “to try and prevent sex.”
Wilson was referring to a part of Donahue’s speech in which the Christian speaker allegedly asked her audience of high school seniors, “Do you know why girls are so desperate and always text guys first? Two words: Daddy. Left.”
“Daddy leaving is a life changing and heartbreaking situation, but to stereotype and undermine girls by calling them ‘desperate’ for having the confidence to text a guy first is so out of line,” Wilson wrote.
“I demand an explanation, not just an apology, but a re-teaching of a positive, healthy, and secure way of having safe sex, that does not belittle other students family situations, which are already hard enough for them to deal with. It is heartbreaking the hate I was shown today by the adults who are supposed to be our leaders and protectors, and I cannot let it go unnoticed.”
Wilson raises the important point that “teaching … positive, healthy, and secure [ways] of having safe sex” hardly equates teaching the liberal agenda. It’s a mechanism through which STI’s, unwanted pregnancies, and — conservatives should take note — abortions are prevented. The latest research on teen pregnancy and sex habits correlates lower rates of unwanted pregnancies with wider access to contraception and sexual health education. Additionally, it’s no coincidence states with abstinence-only sex education have observed the highest rates of teenage pregnancy over the years.
It’s worth noting that Jenks High School, a public school that has no business using public funding to mislead young people and endanger their health, can’t even deny that it knew what Donahue’s lecture would entail. On her website, she clearly delineates what her “secular age-appropriate presentation” includes — demands that young people abstain from sex until marriage.
[Friendly Atheist] Featured image: Shelly Donahue (elevateyouth.org)
