Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnist
Guidelines on sex ed overdue

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The teachers led the girls into the auditorium, closed the door and put black construction paper over the windows.

That way the boys couldn't peer in at the movie we were about to see on becoming a woman. That was more than 30 years ago. But school districts are still shutting students out from learning all they need to know about their bodies.

Washington state is currently — finally! — crafting voluntary guidelines for a standard sex-education curriculum.

All it now requires is that grades five through 12 get an annual lesson about HIV/AIDS prevention. (Parents can opt their kids out).

Beyond that, sex ed is a district-to-district free-for-all. The information doesn't even have to be medically accurate.

The Monroe School District estimates that 75 percent of students are sexually active by the time they leave high school, but district health teachers say oral sex is a "non-discussed issue."

Pregnant? No multiple choice in Monroe. Kids are taught to keep the baby or put it up for adoption.

Some districts teach about contraception, but not until 12th grade. Others put blinders on by condemning sex outside of marriage. And still other districts aren't putting out at all, and going with an abstinence-only curriculum.

If the new guidelines go through, they will first stress that abstinence is the only 100 percent effective means of avoiding STDs and pregnancy.
 
But they will also teach about contraception and disease prevention.

Sounds great. So of course someone is against it, and in this case it's conservative legislators and Christian-based family organizations, waving the too-familiar flag of values.

I guess they don't see the value of state health reports.

Girls and young women ages 15 to 19 have the highest rate of chlamydia, and the second-highest rate of gonorrhea in the state.

They don't get those nasties from sitting in pews.

But it's not just here, and it's not just school. Sex and its repercussions are squirrelly issues everywhere.

In several states, women considering abortion are given government-issued brochures warning that the procedure could increase their risk of breast cancer — even though science says otherwise.

We can thank former President Bill Clinton for some of the confusion when he maintained that oral sex did not qualify as "sexual relations ... with that woman."

Don't laugh. Just know that if we don't teach our kids now, the world may teach them even harder lessons.

Consider Anthony E. Whitfield, who on Monday was convicted in Thurston County Superior Court of deliberately exposing 17 women to HIV. Officials believe that as many as 170 people could have been exposed to the virus because of him. Many of them couldn't be found to be tested.

They're still out there. And so will our kids be soon enough.

Why keep them in the dark?

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

She was raised by a realist.