My name is Miles Wiley. I am a college student at Centralia College and President of the Students for Life group on my campus. I was able to be at the recent hearing about ESSB 5395, a comprehensive sex ed bill, at the Washington State Capital. I am adamantly against ESSB 5395 for many reasons.
This bill forces school districts to adopt one of the state’s curricula. The RRR curriculum is the only one that is available for the public to read, and it has been approved by OSPI. In the curriculum, it focuses on showing inappropriate and even pornographic images to children as young as kindergarten. Is that okay? Certainly not! With the already sexualized culture we live in, we do not need to have Washington State’s youth desensitized to risky sexual acts when they are not even thinking about those things at their age.
Two middle school girls, who were not able to testify in the hearing, spoke at the press conference after the hearing. They stated that even if a parent opts their child out of the sex ed class, they cannot opt out of the conversations that the other children will be having at recess and other breaks. They even posed the question: What if a boy asks a girl to turn to a page in their schoolbook that shows an explicit sexual image? Is that sexual harassment? Of course, it is. However, how can a teacher, who is teaching out of this book, punish that student? This bill is sexualizing the school environment. Instead of solving the issue of sexual harassment and sexual assault, this is feeding the flames.
This is just the tip of the iceberg; this curriculum also encourages teachers to help direct young girls to get abortions. This legislation would force teachers to tell young girls that abortions are a ‘good and safe option.’ Not only is this harmful to the students who are being taught these lies, but it also violates the rights of teachers. Abortion is something that is harmful to women, both psychologically and physically. The youth of Washington state deserve better than to be taught to do things that will cause them harm.
Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry are the companies behind these graphic sex ed curricula. Trusting them to oversee sex ed is like trusting the tobacco industry to teach anti-smoking seminars. We don’t need abortion salespeople to have direct access to young children, teaching them to be promiscuous, disrespectful to their bodies and to the bodies of others, and that abortion is “good & normal.”
This bill has already made it past both the house and the senate. It must be stopped.
— Guest post by Miles Wiley, Centralia College Students for Life.
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