According to the Guttmacher Institute, as of March 1, 2018, the state of Minnesota requires sex education to be taught in public schools: However, it does not have to be medically accurate or age appropriate, and schools do not need to notify or request consent of parents, but parents are allowed to opt-out their children from the instruction.

The topic of sex education in public schools has been a highly debated issue for the past several decades. Whether from the liberal-leaning Planned Parenthood or the conservative-leaning Roman Catholic Church, debates on this issue have been ongoing, but the liberals have won out in the recent years.  

Sex education should not be taught in public schools under any circumstance, whether it be in health class, psychology, physiology, anatomy, or biology. Schools are places where children and young adults learn skills such as math, writing, and history, however, schools have been turned into state-run machines for brainwashing generations into thinking something is normal if it is taught in school. 

Parents are ostracized for standing their ground on the sex education debate. Dennis Prager, the founder of Prager University, said “One of the first things totalitarian movements seek to do is to break the child-parent bond. The child’s allegiance is shifted from parents to the state.” 

Prager continues that “even in democratic societies,” such as the United States, “the larger the state becomes, the more it usurps the parental role.” Examples of public schools allowing inappropriate material to infiltrate tax-funded public schools are evident all over the United States. 

Time Magazine reported that in 2014 in Fremont, California, five district high schools allowed the sex education book Your Health Today by McGraw Hill to be used in 9th grade curriculum. The book gives information on topics such as asking if a partner has an STD, legalizing prostitution, and sex games that involve restricted movement, and even shows diagrams.  

Asfia Ahmed, a parent highly opposed to the book being used in school, said, “It assumes the audience is already drinking alcohol, already doing drugs, already have multiple sexual partners.” 

President of the Fremont school board Lara Calvert-York stated, “I think denying that [sex] is part of our culture in 2014 is really not serving our kids well…let’s have a frank conversation…and let’s do it in classroom setting, with highly qualified, credentialed teachers, who know how to have those conversations.”

This is exactly where an overpowering state steps in to the responsibilities of the family, and initiates a divide between parent and child. No high school teacher is more qualified than a parent to teach a student about sex. There is a difference between teaching about anatomy and teaching how to use it. 

How is it that the First Amendment of our Constitution prevent states from forcing religion to be taught to children in schools, but it does not restrict forcing instruction to children on how to have sex? 

Sex education is a topic meant for parents to discuss, and with American society transforming sex education to include education of same-sex orientation, transgender health, and gender identity, the public schools should be the last place where students should learn how to have sex.

If Catholic schools cannot be publicly funded to teach about abstinence before marriage, our tax dollars should not be funding secular public where our children are taught how to have safe sex, learn about gay sex, and are given free condoms.