My pal Joanna over at Glamour has a priceless post up about the ever touchy subject of how to teach your kids about sex.   This election season it seems this issue is more important than ever, what w/one VP candidate with a preggers teen, negative campaign ads attacking Obama’s sex-ed policies and one party wanting to put a woman’s right to choose on the chopping the block.

Joanna writes,

“this weekend, my sister and I were laughing about how our parents told us about sex. Years ago, we had heard the gory truth about sex on the bus in kindergarten, and we came home that afternoon and promptly told our mom that it must not be true, right? What did she say? Taking it in stride, she told us that it was true, and that it might sound gross now because we were kids, but that grown-ups don’t mind it. Then she bought us the genius book Where Did I Come From, which I still vividly remember!”

Head on over to Joanna’s Smitten blog to get in on the conversation and be sure to takepart to read about sex education in America over at NPR.

*photo from Harvey S. Cohen’s flickr stream (creative commons)

Yasmin Gonzalez (left) and Amber Sewell (right), students at Okeechobee High
Photo courtesy of the Orlando Sentinel.

Good news for everyone, gay, straight, sexually active or not - A recent Florida federal court decision in an ACLU case ruled in favor of students who wanted to start a gay-straight alliance club at Okeechobee High School.

The judge decided that the federal Equal Access Act, which guarantees the right of students in public schools to form clubs had been violated and that the school’s excuse that they blocked the club due to the “abstinence only: funding they receive was no good.

The court also went on take make some great points about sex-education programs:

Read the rest of this entry »

Today in Wikincubate, the ever-expanding encyclopedia of ways to engage with socially-conscious issues:

Fuel efficiency multimedia

Sex education multimedia

Including this MAD TV satire of a 1977 sex education film (featuring Avril Lavigne):

Free Tibet multimedia

Foster care multimedia

Antisemitism multimedia

The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is now here to give you the very best of Katie, Nicole, Giulia, Gina and Kerry! If you worry about missing your favorite bloggers’ posts as they push their way down the page each and every week - Never Fear! Check out our most popular posts of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.

Katie:

Woody Guthrie: This Grammy Is Your Grammy / This Grammy Is My Grammy

Rambo Fights for Burma’s Freedom + 5 Steps You Can Take To Help Burma In 5 Minutes

* * *
Nicole:

“Yes We Can” Obama Music Video a Unique Celebrity Endorsement

Top 10 US Grant, Scholarship and Fellowship Awarding Foundations

* * *
Giulia:

Ba-Da-Bling Commercials Pulled in New York

“Safe Sex or No Sex” Shirts Get Teens Suspended

* * *
Gina:

10 Internet Videos Featuring Celebrities Advocating For A Cause

Close Up: An Introduction to Iranian Cinema and Cinematic Rainbows

* * *
Kerry:

Sheryl Crow’s Apocalyptic Peak-Oil Song

Solar Powered Soldiers Wear Uniforms with Built-In Batteries

Tori Shoemaker and Cheyenne Bird, two St. Louis-area 9th graders were  suspended from their Illinois junior high school for wearing condom-bedecked t-shirts proclaiming “Safe Sex Or No Sex” as a way of protesting their school’s abstinence-only education policy. Jezebel.com reports

Shoemaker, 15, told a local TV station, “We were supporting safe sex, it’s something we believe in and we shouldn’t get suspended. It’s freedom of speech.” The school superintendent, however, found the shirts “inappropriate” and “a distraction at school”. Shoemaker and Bird’s school, Lewis & Clark in Wood River, Illinois, teaches abstinence only to sixth and eighth graders, and Shoemaker thinks that safe-sex education is imperative for teens entering high school. “We’re more mature, we’re going up to the high school, and teenagers are going to do what they do,” Shoemaker explained to a reporter from KMOV TV.

Read the rest of this entry »