I remember being in sex ed, and being told that people sometimes feel attracted to people of the same sex. At first, I was pleased. Finally, they were going to say something about the LGBTQA+ community. But, to my great disdain, they proceeded to say, ‘but this doesn’t mean you’re gay! Oh, many young people go through these phases, but soon grow out of them.’ After this I noticed the amount of hetero-normativity in health class. From phrases like, ‘you girls will someday end up with a husband,’ and ‘if you know any boys, you might start feeling attraction to them. Don’t worry, all girls go through this! It’s the start of your sexuality!’ And I didn’t even do sex ed in Texas. The funniest thing about all this was that they literally called sex ed ‘sexuality road,’ which was absolute balmy because they didn’t even give a definition for heterosexuality; they just assumed everyone was straight.

What I’m actually talking about today, is why we need to start teaching LGBTQA+ in school’s sex ed curriculum. For those of you that don’t know, LGBTQA+ is the acronym used for the non-straight community. It stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, asexual, plus, if you were wondering.

The first point I’d like to get across is that of the safety of those in the queer community. Now, this fact sounds false, but young woman that are sexually attracted to other women have higher chances of STDs and pregnancy then heterosexual women. This is due to the fact that there is this misconception that two women can’t give each other sexually transmitted diseases, and that some women that are attracted to women are also attracted to men and for a number of reasons, don’t have protected sex. Gay men are at much higher risks of getting STDs, especially aids. Gay and bisexual men account for 73% of new HIV infections in men aged 13 to 24. If we could teach kids about how to protect themselves from all sexually transmitted diseases, homo and hetero, we would cut down the amount of STDs in youth.

Secondly, discrimination. LGBTQA+ kids are five times more likely to be emotionally and physically harassed in schools by peers and the school itself. 86% of queer individuals report bullying because of sexual orientation and gender identity. 27% of all kids say they have been bullied at school. That means the vast majority of kids being harassed in schools are LGBTQA+. By teaching LGBTQA+ in schoolings sex ed programs, we would set an example for kids that being queer should be accepted, which would help end the bullying and harassment of non-straight children.

Some religious parents feel as if their rights would be breached with the introduction of LGBTQA+ sex ed. Oh, how their privilege hurts me. There is in fact a reason we have this thing called the separation of the church and state. We don’t govern with religion. Some parents argue that they don’t want their kid’s political views to be influenced by this. Let me remind you that LGBTQA+ lives are not political views. Being homophobic isn’t a political view; it’s a bigoted view. Whether or not you ‘agree’ with homosexuality doesn’t dictate what we teach in schools. Man, I don’t particularly agree with making kids do physical education, let me just stop it entirely! Literally, you could use the ‘it doesn’t align with my views’ argument for anything, but it doesn’t mean you can dictate what education should offer for students.

Overall, I realize that some of this may have came off as idealistic. No, bullying and harassment towards queer youth in schools won’t stop because we start teaching kids about sexual orientation and gender identity. No, LGBTQA+ will continue to contract STDs through unprotected sex. And parents will keep their homophobic tendencies. But shouldn’t school try their best to educate all children? Isn’t it a school’s job to create the safest learning environment they can? Let’s try to protect all of our youth by educating them on LGBTQA+ so we won’t make the mistakes of the last generation.