Coalition for Responsible Sex Ed

We are a coalition of educational, religious, health, social service, and advocacy organizations, as well as concerned individuals that promotes lifelong healthy sexuality by advocating for policies on responsible sexuality education and access to confidential health care services.

Read our key values.
General information in PDF format.

Federal Update – Obama Releases Fiscal Year 2010 Budget

On May 7, 2009, President Obama released his budget recommendations for Fiscal Year 2010. In his budget, Obama zeroes out funding for failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs and allocates over $170 million for evidence based and promising programs.

National advocates continue to work with Congress and the President to ensure that final bill language funds evidence based sex education programs. Stay tuned to learn more about what you can do to ensure Congress follows Obama’s lead toward funding evidence based sex ed policy. Stay connected. Sign up to receive action alerts at www.coalitionforsexed.org/join.htm.

To learn more, visit www.siecus.org. You can also view relevant text from the President's budget and the budget appendix (see pages 490-491).

Responsible Sex Ed Heard in State House Education Policy and Oversight Committee

Supported by the Coalition for Responsible Sex Ed, HF906 received an informational hearing on Thursday April 2. An audio recording of the hearing is available at www.house.mn. Advance to time point 54:10 to hear testimony.

HF 906 Responsible Family Life and Sexuality Education seeks to create standards for sex education for Minnesota public school students in grades 7-12. Key Components include:

Age-appropriate, medically accurate education that includes an abstinence-first approach, while also including information about contraception and disease prevention
Includes parents in the development of standards on the district level
Allows parents the choice of exempting their children from participation in all or part of a sex ed program

REAL Act Introduced

The Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act, authored by Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA) and Senator Frank Lautenberg (NJ), was introduced March 17th, 2009. The REAL Act would establish the first ever grant program for responsible sex ed. Under the bill, sex education programs would be age-appropriate, medically accurate and provide information about both contraception and abstinence. For more information, visit www.siecus.org.

Federal Policy Update

In the next few weeks, the President will submit his first budget to Congress, and it must eliminate funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

As President Obama begins work on his Fiscal Year 2010 budget, your voice is urgently needed to ask him to spend No More Money on abstinence-only-until marriage programs. Tell President Obama that his first budget is an opportunity to take an important step toward ending these harmful and ineffective programs. The federal government has allocated more than $1.3 billion for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs and it must stop. It is unacceptable that each year 176 million of taxpayer dollars are wasted on these ineffective and dangerous programs.

Tell President Obama: "No More Money for Ineffective Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs."

TAKE ACTION Today…Click here to email President Obama.

Minnesota Parents Support Responsible Sex Education

Results from a survey of parents from across the state indicates overwhelming support for medically accurate and comprehensive sex education - which includes reproductive health and pregnancy prevention topics - in school. The survey was conducted by the Healthy Youth Development-Prevention Research Center in collaboration with the Center for Adolescent Nursing, University of Minnesota. See KARE-11's news coverage about the report here.