Moderators: Rev. Cynthia Breen, UUA Director of RE; and Patricia Frevert, UUA Director of Publishing
Panel: Judith Frediani, UUA Curriculum Director; Fred Garcia, Our Whole Lives teacher; Rev. Roberta Nelson, MRE; and Sarah Gibb, outreach coordinator for the Sexuality Education Task Force

How comfortable are you talking about sex? Participants at this workshop had the opportunity to practice. Experienced panelists and members of the audience took turns fielding difficult questions such as those placed in a question box at an Our Whole Lives session: "How do you know if you are gay?" and "Does sex hurt the first time?"

Our Whole Lives is a new curriculum for sexuality education, developed by the UUA and the UCC to replace the older curriculum: About Your Sexuality (AYS).

The impromptu panelists, including AYS graduates, deserved to win a million dollars for their well-balanced and thoughtful responses to questions about the appropriate level of sexuality education for K-1, whether sexuality should be taught at church, and the values underlying Our Whole Lives. For the underlying values, several panelists referred to the Religious Declaration on Sexual Morality, which can be found at www.religionproject.org.

One panelist told of a class of adolescents who, when offered the Our Whole Lives class at church, declared "We learned all this stuff at school". After a few sessions their response became "Why didn't someone tell us this before!"

Reported by Mike McNaughton; formatted for the web by Kasey Melski.