Sex Education of the Weird

A recent News of the Weird had two pieces of news related to sex education, but the weirdest was in this Thursday's New York Times.

First, abstinence-only sex education was the explanation for a teen's harassment of women:

Sheriff's deputies in Austin, Texas, arrested Anthony Gigliotti, 17, after complaints that the teen was annoying women by following them around in public and snapping photographs of their clothed body parts. Gigliotti told one deputy that he needed the photos because the sex education at his Lake Travis High School was inadequate. [KXAN-TV (Austin), 2-2-10]

On the other hand, condom education isn't necessarily safe either:

Clumsy: Teacher Karen Hollander filed a lawsuit in November against the New York City Department of Education after taking a fall on "slippery foreign substances," including condoms, on the floor at the High School of Art & Design. Since schools distribute condoms on campus, she said, the department is responsible when students open them and discard them during the lunch period, littering the floor. [New York Daily News, 11-21-09]

The weirdest of all, however, was in the New York Times. In response to a new comprehensive sex education law that requires contraception education to be included in any sex education course, the district attorney of a county in Wisconsin "warned that teachers face 'possible criminal liability' for teaching youths how to use contraceptives."

As the GAO found, some fraction of abstinence-only education just isn't true. While well-intentioned, this prosecutor's warning is no exception.