Right now in Massachusetts, our youth are experiencing a dangerous health crisis.  In the last decade, MA's chlamydia rates have almost doubled and our rates of gonorrhea and syphilis have both tripled.  Although they represent only a quarter of people having sex, young people ages 15 to 24 reported roughly two-thirds of chlamydia cases and almost half of gonorrhea cases in Massachusetts in 2015.  And the science is clear: the best way to prevent STIs (as well as unplanned pregnancies and other sexual health risks) among young people is to provide them with comprehensive sex education. Per a massive meta-analysis of over 6,500 studies on the effectiveness of school health courses assembled over two decades, comprehensive sexual health education is the only proven way to reduce youth risks. It led to significant improvements in every outcome researchers measured, from pregnancy to STI rates to frequency of sexual activity to age of initiating sexual intercourse - as opposed to abstinence-based education, which science has repeatedly indicated has no measurable positive impact.

Nevertheless, MA lawmakers have refused to act on the Healthy Youth Act for over a decade. Without guidelines, our schools are left using a sex ed framework that dates from 1999 - a year when 48% of Americans said homosexuality should be discouraged! And right now, most of our schools are failing to teach even that. Per a 2018 survey of school health teachers and principals, only half of MA schools even self-reported that they taught all 11 topics recommended by the CDC in a required health course. Those topics range from media literacy to skills for sustaining healthy relationships to how to influence peers to avoid risky behaviors. As a result, MA was ranked behind over a third of the other states surveyed, below a long list of states such as West Virginia, North Carolina, and Illinois.

But while our legislature refuses to implement the science-based solution of comprehensive sex ed for MA youth, the STI crises affecting our youth are hitting LGBTQ+ students hardest.  At present, LGBTQ students are far less likely than their peers to report finding sex ed at their school useful - and far more likely to experience adverse sexual health outcomes, such as STIs, intimate partner violence, and sexual assault.  Nationwide, the CDC has found that LGBTQ youth are more likely to engage in sexual risk behaviors such as early sexual contact, having sex without a condom, and consuming alcohol or drugs before sex, and state-level data indicates that many of these same trends hold true in MA.  When 82% of LGBTQ+ students in our state report that their schools' health classes did not cover the tools and information that they need to stay safe and healthy as LGBTQ+ people, we have to face the reality that we are simply failing these teens.  At best, most LGBTQ+ youth can expect health classes that teach them irrelevant information about the health risks or body parts involved in sex and overlook forms of protection they deserve to know about.  At worst, these students are often taught misleading, stigmatizing information about LGBTQ+ topics that can negatively impact both their mental and sexual health.