Parents, members of the medical community, and other groups are suing a California school district because of its abstinence-only approach to sex education that makes no mention of condoms or other forms of contraception.
The American Academy of Pediatrics of California and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, along with parents in the Clovis Unified district, said in a suit last month that the district is failing to uphold a 2003 law that requires sexual-health education in public schools to be comprehensive, medically accurate, science-based, and bias-free.
The district’s textbook does not mention condoms, even in chapters about preventing sexually transmitted disease and unintended pregnancy.
Its curriculum materials compare a woman who is not a virgin to a dirty shoe, the ACLU said.
A 2011 report by the University of California, San Francisco, showed that although California’s public schools have expanded sexuality education to comply with the state law, many districts still fail to provide students with every aspect of instruction the law requires.
