The Illinois General Assembly has passed a sexual education bill that advocates say will positively impact LGBTQ youth.
HB 2675, a comprehensive sex education bill that mandates medically accurate teaching in grades six through twelve, cleared the Senate March 22. The bill already passed the House on March 17. It now heads to the governor's desk.
While the bill is not LGBT-specific, advocates say it will benefit LGBTQ young people.
"This area of medical accuracy, I think, is very important for LGBTQ youth," said Brigid Leahy, director of government relations for Planned Parenthood Illinois.
The bill mandates that schools offering sex education include information on contraception and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases in addition to information on abstinence. The bill allows parents to opt their children out of the curriculum without consequence to the student.
Under old rule, schools could offer abstinence-only sex education. Now, schools that teach sex education will be required to offer information about contraception in addition. The bill does not require schools to offer sex education or to adopt a specific curriculum. Rather, schools that do will have to teach both about abstinence and contraception.
According to Leahy, several Illinois schools had been previously been under the impression that they were prohibited from offering comprehensive sex education because it had not been written into law. The new rule will change that perception, she said.
For LGBT youth, especially, abstinence-only programs have presented a problem, said Leahy.
"The programs tend to have a lot of biases in them about men and women," Leahy said, adding that those programs often assume that youth will grow up to have monogamous heterosexual marriages.
Now, she said, schools will be more likely to offer safer sex information that is useful for both heterosexual and LGBTQ youth.
The new law will force school districts using outdated textbooks and other teaching materials to offer current medically accurate information on HIV and STD prevention, among other things.
The AIDS Foundation of Chicago, which also pushed for the bill's passage, applauded Wednesday's Senate vote in a statement.
"Young people need medically-accurate, age-appropriate sexual health education that stresses abstinence as well as contraception," said David Ernesto Munar, President/CEO of AFC. "The majority of cases of sexually transmitted infections are among youth, who are also at higher risk of unintended pregnancies. We're glad the Illinois Senate has sent a message to the people of Illinois that they can't stick their heads in the sand anymore."
The bill was sponsored by Rep. Camille Lilly and Sen. Heather Steans.
"The message that only abstinence is 100 percent effective is not inconsistent with telling young people that there are ways they can minimize their risk if they become sexually active, as half of all high school students do," said Steans in a statement.
