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In Alabama, teachers are forced to lie to their students and say that being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is an “unacceptable lifestyle” and a “criminal offense.”
We have the chance to stop the spread of hate in the classroom right now. Sign the petition!
A new bill is sitting in front of Alabama lawmakers that would strike this inaccurate, hateful language from the law. But there are only a few weeks before the session ends. If they don\’t feel the pressure from the public and the media, we …
UPDATE: VICTORY! Last week, James and other activists in Texas met with their policy makers to protest the Zedler 1 anti-gay amendment, including delivering your signatures in person to Texas’ legislature. And on Thursday 4/4, the amendment was withdrawn. We got them off our backpacks and funding for the centers is safe. Great job!
This is a featured post from Texas Freedom Network Student Chapter President James Lee!
My name is James Lee and growing up in Rio Grande Valley Texas, I was taught that being gay was wrong. I …
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In Alabama, young people are working to make comprehensive sex education a reality in their state. The Youth Activist Council, a project of Advocates for Youth and Alabama Alliance for Healthy Youth, leads the work of a statewide youth activist network that advocates for comprehensive sexual health education. Here’s a picture of some of the council members on their way to tell their Senators and Representatives about the importance of good sex ed!
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Alabama’s Sex Education Law is pretty good… except for one part. The part is when it says that “homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state.” This is a minimum content law meaning that this is the absolute minimum that teachers must teach. Now, most people already know about this injustice in the Alabama law, but what can we do about it? This is why I am glad to be part of the …
It may not surprise you to hear that an Alabama state representative is pushing new anti-choice legislation. But what’s the reasoning this time? Well, don’t you know that the unborn fetus is the largest organ in a woman’s body?
Yeah, neither did I.
According to the Huffington Post, Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin is backing legislation for abortion clinic restriction for this very reason. According to McClurkin, the legislation is not meant to stop abortions (although there are now only five abortion clinics in the state of Alabama), but …
Information is harmless. Lifting the shroud of ignorance is, if anything, simply a transition to a more knowledgeable state. This transition, however, can be difficult and sometimes outright frightening for some.
One poignant example of this fear is the insistence for abstinence-only sexual education in Alabama high schools. The main difference between abstinence-only education and more comprehensive sexual education is the exclusion of important information on contraceptives and male/female condoms.
In the absence of this information, many abstinence-only programs attempt to fill the glaring gap in students’ education by …
One thing that I like most about advocating for comprehensive sex education is the reaction that I get from people when I ask them what their opinions are about it. The most candid reactions make for the best and honest responses in my opinion. I asked people if they wanted to take part in a video project for Alabama Alliance for Healthy Youth and once they agreed, I just pressed record and hit them with questions about sex education. To the people who did not know that the topic …
Even before becoming involved with the Alabama Alliance for Healthy Youth, I could recognize the glaring inadequacies of abstinence-only sexual health education. These programs’ failure to provide young people with the information necessary to make responsible decisions has caused STI and teen pregnancy rates to increase throughout the southeast. These statistics are obviously unacceptable, but some more subtle negative outcomes accompany these abstinence-only, heterosexual-centric sex ed programs that cannot be summed up in numbers.
For instance, the shame. By the age of 19, 7 in 10 teens have had …
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