A survey, reported on the Kaiser Family Foundation list serve, finds that eighty-nine percent of California parents, regardless of political or religious persuasion, support comprehensive sex education programs in school. That means teaching kids about all of the choices related to sexual activity ranging from contraception to abstinence. How about that?…let’s arm our children with good solid information and then guide them to make the best choices for themselves.

Even self-identifying evangelical Christians said they supported comprehensive sex education. The lowest support came from the “very conservative” subset of the population and even then 71% supported comprehensive programs.

The study’s lead author, Norman Constantine of the Public Health Institute’s Center for Research on Adolescent Health and Development said:

"We were astonished by how universal this support is for comprehensive sex education. We expected these high levels of support in liberal urban areas but did not anticipate the equally high levels of support in California's more conservative, rural settings -- especially among self-identified evangelical Christian parents."

He went on to say, "What this shows is that the vast majority of parents put the health and safety of their children above politics and ideology." How refreshing.

Here’s a link to the full report:  Report

The study's complete results will be published in the September issue of the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Pat Salber, MD