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Rights. Respect. Responsibility.®—The Keep it REAL Campaign Toolkit [PDF]
Rights. Respect. Responsibility.®—The Keep It Real Campaign
What Is the Keep it REAL Campaign?
The Keep it REAL Campaign is a direct organizing effort, led by Advocates for Youth’s Youth Activist Network. The long-term goal of the Campaign is to ensure that Congress passes the Responsible Education about Life (REAL) Act. The Campaign’s more immediate goal is to obtain 25 additional U.S. senators as co-sponsors of the REAL Act. If passed, the REAL Act would allocate federal funding for honest, accurate, sex education in America’s schools.
Why Is Advocates’ Youth Activist Network Launching the Keep it REAL Campaign?
Young people have the right to accurate sexual health information that can protect their health and save their lives. Access to accurate, complete sexual health information is a human right. In fact, the Society for Adolescent Medicine has recently released a position statement asserting that abstinence-only and abstinence-only-until-marriage programs are ethically and morally unsound in that they censor vital health information that youth need. The REAL Act would allocate federal funds to allow states to implement comprehensive approaches to sex education in the schools, approaches that honor youth’s fundamental human right to accurate sexual health information.
What Is the Responsible Education about Life Act?
The Responsible Education about Life [REAL] Act, once known as the Family Life Education Act, would provide federal money to support responsible sex education in schools—education that would be science-based, medically accurate, and age appropriate and that would educate both about abstinence and also contraception. Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced the REAL Act in Congress (H.R. 1653 and S. 972 ) in March 2007.
The REAL Act would fund sex education programs that:
- Are age-appropriate and medically accurate;
- Do not teach or promote religion;
- Teach that abstinence is the only certain way to avoid pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections (STIs);
- Stress the value of abstinence while not ignoring young people who have had or are having sex;
- Provide accurate information about the health benefits and side effects of all contraceptives and barrier methods as a means to prevent pregnancy;
- Provide information about the health benefits of condoms and other barrier methods as a means to reduce the risk of STIs, including HIV;
- Encourage family discussions about sex and sexuality;
- Teach skills for making responsible decisions about sex, including how to avoid unwanted verbal, physical, and sexual advances and how not to make unwanted verbal, physical, and sexual advances; and
- Teach that alcohol and drug use can affect one’s ability to make responsible decisions.
What Type of Sex Education Does the Federal Government Currently Support?
From 1996 through federal fiscal year 2005, Congress committed over $1.1 billion dollars (in both federal and state matching funds) to abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. At the same time, Congress earmarked zero dollars for comprehensive sex education. Three separate federal funding streams support abstinence-only-until-marriage programs:
- 1996 Welfare Reform Act (Title V of the Social Security Act)
- Adolescent Family Life Programs (AFLA); and
- Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE).
Programs receiving federal funds through these three avenues are prohibited from discussing the health benefits of contraceptives and condoms. Research shows that abstinence-only programs are ineffective in helping young people delay sex or reduce their risk for unwanted pregnancy and STIs, including HIV. Further a recent Congressional study indicates that up to 80 percent of abstinence-only programs contain factually inaccurate information. Congress continues to fund abstinence-only-until-marriage programs despite research that shows that programs that teach about both abstinence and also contraception are far more effective.
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