Let's talk about sex, baby: Everything wrong with the Bay Village Citizens for Transparency’s CSE ‘concerns’
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| The BVCT guide to sex ed |
The Bay Village Citizens for Transparency, our sleepy little ‘burb’s wannabe secret society, sure stirred up a hornets nest with its latest direct mailer. Though the postcard alleged both fiscal and critical race theory controversies, all the talk on social media centered on the group’s claim that it had discovered “sexually explicit materials in Rocket Family Summer Camp Resources” - and we all should be shocked and outraged.
Highlighted on the mailer by the Bay Village Citizens for Transparency (BVCT) were two books, “S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-KnowProgressive Sexuality Guide to Get you Through High School and College,” by Heather Corrina, and “What Makes a Baby,” written by Cory Silverburg and illustrated by Fiona Smyth. The BVCT’s website, which also features the books, goes further, flagging several more as inappropriate for the stated age range.
According to the BVCT, these books - the first shockingly pornographic and the second inappropriate for children of any age - were recommended to Bay students and families by an out-of-touch administration trying to push its comprehensive sex education (CSE) agenda on the district.
That’s how the BVCT frames the story.
It’s a story they desperately want you to believe, too.
If you do, then you are far less likely to turn a critical eye toward the prejudicial messaging aimed at the LGBTQ community, which the BVCT not-so-subtly conveys via the CSE section of its website.
A tactic as old as the politics behind it
The BVCT’s tactic is working. Social media conversation following the mailer’s arrival has focused almost exclusively on deconstructing the subject matter - Is it bad? Is it good? - and defining what “recommended” means contextually - Did the school system recommend the books? No? Is recommending a list of content that includes the books the same as recommending the books? Maybe? Could be?
The BVCT’s intended goal is the ignition of a hyperlocal culture war. As so many others have done throughout American history, they are using sex education as the catalyst.
“Attacks on cultural issues within America’s public schools follow a familiar pattern,” explains FiveThirtyEight.com’s Alex Samuels and Kaleigh Rogers. “First, they’re usually in response to a vague idea of what might happen” - like educators teaching students about gender roles, gender fluidity and transgender people.
Second, when there is a debate over teaching often taboo, complex social issues, Samuels and Rogers explain that right-wing opponents contend that elected school board members can exert an outsized amount of control over how the issue is addressed.
“Sex education in public schools has long been a target of Republicans,” the authors write. “Although once it became clear that sex education programs actually help reduce the risk of teen pregnancy and STIs anddelay the age when teens become sexually active, sex ed became more socially accepted.”
Political groups have had to change their strategy. Today, they focus far less on whether sex ed is taught in school, and much more on what educators are teaching in sex ed.
That something, contends the BVCT, is comprehensive sex education.
What’s wrong with CSE? (Pssst! The answer is ‘nothing’)
Forget about those troublesome books for a moment. Instead, take five minutes to visit the BVCT website’s Comprehensive Sex Education inBay Village section. Comprised of four pages covering four topics - District Communication, Read Pride Month, QPOC Flag and CSE General Knowledge - this section purports to provide examples of CSE in Bay Schools. Note that the last page, CSE General Knowledge, “is not related to Bay Village,” as the site explains. “Rather they [sic] are included to give the viewer general knowledge on CSE (Q&A, videos, and articles).”
Well, we can do that here, too, right?
CSE instruction focuses on providing students with the knowledge, attitudes, skills and values necessary to make appropriate and healthy choices in their sexual lives. The goal is to arm students with information so that they are less likely to contract sexually transmitted infections, including HIV and HPV, and less likely to face the challenges of an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. This comprehensive approach also helps educators attain the goal of lowered domestic and sexual violence rates, contributing to a healthier society, both physically and mentally.
At its base, CSE promotes abstinence as the safest sexual choice, then further instructs students about topics connected to future sexual activity, such as age of consent, safe sex, contraception, and, yes, abortion and adoption.
That all sounds incredibly controversial, right?
Well, of course it doesn’t. In many ways, it’s what you would hope the outcome of sex ed would be.
As with all things, however, there are legitimate concerns over the method. A comprehensive approach might encroach on certain religious beliefs, for example. And some parents worry that teaching students how to handle intimacy in the future will only encourage them to become sexually active in the present, even though data shows CSE reduces teen pregnancies, delays sexual activity and reduces the number of partners teens and young adults have when they do become active.
The BVCT doesn’t touch on any of those concerns, however. It is pretty clear the BVCT has one major beef with CSE.
LGBTQ inclusivity.
Good ol’ fashioned homophobia
The Arizona legislation, already passed by the Republican-controlled House and Senate and on its way to getting Republican Governor Doug Ducey signature, will also require schools to get parental sign-off before educators can teach anything about historical events involving sexual orientation, such as a discussion about the modern gay rights movement that sprang from the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City.
Thing of it is, Arizona parents have always had an opportunity to review curriculum and reading material and decide whether they want their students exposed to the material, making this legislation both redundant and even more ridiculous than it is.
“These standards are decided by experts who are educators. And there’s always the opportunity for parents to review curriculum,” explains Alison Macklin, a senior policy adviser at the progressive group SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change, in the NBC report. “It’s a subliminal way of trying to get anti-homosexual legislation put in, by saying you can’t speak or talk about it in schools. We would never make that type of legislation around other historical movements.”
Lee Chiffelle, a junior studying astrophysics at Arizona State University, told NBC she started promoting changes to sex ed policies as a high school student frustrated with the lack of factual, honest education. She said she got the most important lessons from her mom, but not all young people can rely on their parents.
“I was lucky, but a lot of my friends weren’t that lucky,” Chiffelle told the reporter. “A lot of parents seem to think that if you don’t talk about it, teenagers won’t have sex, which is definitely not true.
“We need this education to promote an inclusive environment, an accepting environment, because LGBTQ-plus teens, they have incredibly high rates of suicide," Chiffelle said. “But when they are placed in an environment that’s accepting to them and inclusive to them, those suicide rates drop drastically.”
Through that lens, one could speculate that the BVCT’s concerns about CSE have nothing to do with the CSE method and far more to do with its open and honest inclusion of the LGBTQ community, of which, the method rightfully assumes, includes the students learning through CSE.
Are Bay Schools teaching CSE? That’s all I wanna know
The BVCT introduces us to CSE by not introducing us to CSE. Instead, they tell us they have proof Bay is using the CSE method and, in its CSE website section, we “will find examples of Comprehensive Sexual Education in Bay Village.”
Before we go any further, though, is Bay Village teaching CSE?
“We don’t offer an actual course in sexual education or have a sex ed curriculum,” explains Bay Village Schools. “We do offer a high school health education course - it’s usually 10th graders who take this course - which is required by the State of Ohio, and it’s based on national health education standards. There are no Ohio learning standards for health.”
Well, drat. That all sounds pretty … mundane. And a lack of CSE in the schools really makes one wonder exactly what CSE examples the BVCT has uncovered.
About that district communication
Email communication from former Bay superintendent Jodie Hausmann to Bay students and parents carries a clue, says the BVCT. The email, titled “Letter regarding national protests” and dated June 5, 2020, includes this sexually charged phrase:
“(Bay schools will) delve deeper into societal bias issues like racism, gender bias, ageism and discrimination due to sexual orientation..." - Underscored emphasis: Bay Village Citizens for Transparency
I’m not sure how you make the leap from a district response to ongoing national protests over racial injustice to proof of the district’s intention to engage in comprehensive sex education merely because the terms “gender bias” and “sexual orientation” are included, but the BVCT somehow made that leap.
No explanation exists on the website as to how this phrase proves CSE in Bay Village schools. Maybe the BVCT will explain further. But don’t hold your breath.
Calling out those two terms in a communication clearly created to address unrelated events, however, only underscores the BVCT’s prejudicial bias toward LGBTQ issues.
The “Read Pride” section only reinforces that bias.
Concerns about Read Pride Month
Ho’boy, this page. Where do we start?
According to the BVCT, during a summer program titled Rocket Family Summer Camp, the administration recommended certain resources to students, including an off-site link to a collection of books celebrating Pride Month, as well as a podcast, “Outspoken - A podcast for LGBTQ families.”
The BVCT then examines books - more than 70 - on the Pride Month list. They single out two books: “SEX: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get you Through High School and College,” which it later deems pornographic in bold letters and exclamation points, and the picture book “What Makes a Baby,” because it is listed as appropriate for ages 3 and up.
There are others, too. Four books, ages 10 and up, that “address romantic homosexual relationships and traumatic events like the death of a sibling, needing a heart transplant, divorce, and a father with unmanaged bipolar disorder.”
“These books are not age-appropriate,” the BVCT declares - neverminding the fact that middle schoolers deal with these issues every day. Why would we want to present them with age-appropriate text and discussion? And what makes them inappropriate anyway? You’ll find no answer on the BVCT site.
The BVCT then says titles like “LGBTQ: The Survival Guide for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Teens” are disturbing and inappropriate. Just the titles! The BVCT asks “Why would a 13-year-old need a workbook to help them figure out what gender they are?” Apparently, none of its members knows the difference between sex and gender. (No emails necessary. I know how that argument goes.)
For books recommended to readers 14 and up, the BVCT merely says: “These books have to do with gender fluidity, being intersex, or how to be a good transgender ally.”
And that’s it! The full argument for CSE in Bay Schools via a list of books curated by a third-party vendor.
What’s missing here?
The BVCT hopes you’ll leave this page believing the administration is out of control. That it is not only recommending inappropriate material to students, but the administration also requires it. Maybe educators are even teaching it!
You’re getting worked up, aren’t you?
Don’t.
Just take a deep breath, lean into your critical thinking skills and ask a few questions, like “What’s missing here?”
Context, to begin with.
The BVCT doesn’t tell us anything about Rocket Family Summer Camp (RFSC). So you know, RFSC is a self-guided activity for Bay families - students and parents together - hosted on Rocket Restart, the school system’s portal for summer and back-to-school activities.RFSC offers a host of activities based on various themes, including :
- The very successful “One Village, One Book” project,
- A bedtime stories series, read by various Bay residents
- The Passion Project Challenge, a STEM innovation project
- A host of family summer learning resources
- Math camp
- Creative writing camp
- College bootcamp
Ignoring those components of RFSC, the BVCT chooses to narrow its criticism to one list of books in one subsection of one activity, titled “Growing Together.” “Growing Together” topics include environmental justice, sustainability, economic justice, and diversity and equity.
The goal of “Growing Together” is to encourage Bay families - emphasis on families, i.e. parents and students together - to read, listen, volunteer, enjoy local activities, and support local businesses. Volunteer programs include The Village Project, BayArts, The Village Bicycle Cooperative, The Cleveland Foodbank, and more. Links to local businesses include Java Bay, Arthur’s Shoe Tree, Gina’s Pizza, Chatty’s, Vivid Jewelers, and more.
Links under Diversity and Equity include a list of local women-owned businesses, a directory of Black-owned businesses, a list of books for Black History Month and Women’s History Month, a Global Folktales collection, exploring the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, an overview of Cleveland’s AsiaTown and more.
From all of that, the BVCT scrutinized one list of books - the Pride Month Collection.
In other words, someone from the Bay Village Citizens for Transparency was hunting and searching for any kind of example of anything remotely tied to the concept of sex education - difficult given that Bay does not have a sex ed curriculum. This unnamed researcher then chose to ignore the overwhelmingly positive aspects of the Rocket Family Summer Camp and instead cherry-pick language from the Pride Month list to stir up divisive community controversy.
Ignoring the obvious
Not only did the BVCT ignore the positive aspects of Rocket Family Summer Camp, the community values secret society decided to leave out “family” component of RFSC, too.
Why? Because family engagement is the virtual summer camp’s purpose. The event’s charter underscores its goal to bring family together and to allow individual families to decide what activities, events and reading material is best suited for the family’s children.
In other words, if anything, Bay Schools said, “Parents, here are resources. You decide what’s appropriate.”
A far cry from the BVCT’s accusation that Bay Schools has recommended sexually graphic material directly to students.
Myth, busted.
QPOC Flag In Virtual Counselor Offices redux
Can I take a moment to share my personal opinion about this section of the BVCT’s website? Yes? Good.
It’s really shitty.
Okay, back to the loose journalism.
The Bay Village Citizens for Transparency takes particular issue with the display of the QPOC Flag in virtual counseling offices for Normandy and Westerly elementary schools. QPOC stands for queer people of color.
The BVCT notes that the flag “is a sign of solidarity between the queer community and Black Lives Matter. Historically the raised fist has served as an emblem of solidarity and support as well as an expression of unity, strength, defiance, and resistance.” Their source? TriPride, which hosts Tri-Cities, Tenn.’s annual Pride Parade.
Good source. So why would the BVCT leave out some of TriPride’s description? Why not include how the flag represents:
- How the Black community and the Queer community are often woven together
- Marsha P. Johnson, the Black drag queen believed to be the person to first throw a brick during the Stonewall Inn Riot, the veritable Bunker Hill of the Queer Liberation Movement
Then the BVCT asks you to take particular interest in the flag’s raised fist symbol. It notes, from Wikipedia, that the raised fist “is a long-standing image of mixed meaning.” The site emphasizes how the raised fist is “also a common symbol of communism” and that “amongst communists and socialists, the raised right fist is called the red salute, whereas amongst African-American activists, especially in the U.S., it has been called the Black Power salute.”
The BVCT cherry-picks again (must be making a pie) from the Wikipedia entry, of course. They don’t mention that the raised fist is also a feminist symbol. They leave descriptions of Olympic medalists raising their fists in support of human rights. They leave out Nelson Mandela’s raised fist of freedom as he was released from Victor Verster Prison.
And they leave out this definition of the raised fist from psychologist Oliver James: “The appeal of the salute is that it allows the individual to indicate that they ‘intend to meet malevolent, massive institutional force with force of (their) own’, and that they are bound in struggle with others against common oppression.”
They also dismiss TriPride’s explanation for the fist, which it says is “an emblem of solidarity and support as well as an expression of unity, strength, defiance, and resistance.”
The BVCT fails to note the fist on the QPOC flag “includes various shades of brown and a white stripe to represent the various colors of the ‘human rainbow.’”
Instead, the BVCT subtly accuses Bay Village elementary school guidance counselors of malfeasance by displaying “socialist” and“communist” imagery, not to mention the BVCT’s Karen-like callout of Black Lives Matter and the Black Power salute.
Here’s a question though for members of the Bay Village Citizens for Transparency. Why include the QPOC flag under the CSE banner? How is it tied to CSE? And if it isn’t, then why include it? You don’t explain the decision on the website, so I’m wondering, what’s the implication?
No need to answer. I think I get the idea.
Just another prejudicial attack on the LGBTQ community
So why single out those books and that reading list? Why create an entire web page devoted to virtual displays of the QPOC flag without providing a reason why? Why share resources admittedly unconnected to Bay Schools?
The answer is simple.
The Bay Village Citizens for Transparency wants to equate homosexuality with deviant behavior and - in a very 1950s uneducated kind of way - suggests Bay Village educators are teaching students not only what homosexuality is - but how to be homosexual.
Yes, taking a cue from its mentor organization, the religiously based Ohio Value Voters, the Bay Village Citizens for Transparency is not-so-subtly peddling homophobia as a political issue.
It’s the same playbook evangelical conservatives have used since the 1980s. Core community values are just “family values” spit-shined and wrapped up in a pretty bow.
Why else get up in arms about a book that chooses to use the generic term “bodies” instead of “male” and “female”? Especially when the book description explains it was created because some people might prefer a more accurate depiction of pregnancy and birth for their child “without an assumption of gender or orientation”?
If the BVCT is adamant about a parent’s right to decide the sexual education their child receives, how does it square that against its declaration that some material is inappropriate for all children? Seems a little hypocritical, right?
Hypocrites in the minority
If history is any indicator, sex ed will continue to be a controversial topic for years to come. Understandable, given the breadth and depth of the topic, which expands further as we learn more about what’s normal - like gender fluidity - and learn to accept that normalcy.
One thing is clear, though. Both liberals and conservatives want sex ed for students. A Rutgers study, published in the journal Sex Education, surveyed close to 1,000 likely voters prior to the 2020 election who identified as Democrats or Republicans. They discovered a strong majority of those surveyed “support sex education within schools and the continued funding by the government for teenage pregnancy prevention programs that include information about both abstinence and contraception.”
"Sex education remains a vital component to reducing unintended teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases among young people as well as providing young people with the information and skills they need to build healthy relationships," said professor Leslie M. Kantor, chair of the department of urban-global public health at the Rutgers School of Public Health in an article published by the school.
Both liberals and conservatives support teaching students about puberty and sexually transmitted diseases in school sex education programs. And while Democrats more often supported the inclusion of healthy relationships, birth control, consent and sexual orientation in sex ed courses, Republicans did not shy away from also including those subjects. Strong support exists for including all of the topics, the report discovered.
Which makes you wonder where the BVCT falls on that spectrum
- and why. What do they really hope to gain?
If you want to learn more about comprehensive sexual education, look anywhere but on the BVCT’s website.
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