Our Whole Lives for Young Adults is a new publication in the popular Our Whole Lives lifespan sexuality education series.
Sexuality and Our Faith provides a component based on religious values for each part of the Our Whole Lives curriculum.
Values-Based Sexuality Education: A Closer Look at Our Whole Lives
March 3, 2008
Although efforts to teach sexuality education in public schools began much earlier in the 20th century, the idea didn't garner much public support until the late 1960s. As with previous and ongoing struggles for better reproductive healthcare, Unitarian Universalists (UUs) were strong supporters of making secular, science-based education widely available. However, recognizing that it might be years or even decades before such information would find its way into public school curricula, parents and advocates called for a program that could be used in Unitarian Universalist congregations. In response, in 1970 the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) published About Your Sexuality (AYS), a ground-breaking program of education for human sexuality geared toward junior high school students. About Your Sexuality was widely used for twenty-five years.Knowing that changing times demand new approaches, in the mid-1990s the UUA partnered with the United Church of Christ to create a lifespan curriculum that would provide values-based sexuality education for all ages. Our Whole Lives (OWL), which replaced AYS, debuted in 1998. This new and improved program features age-appropriate, justice-centered components for every stage of life, from early childhood through adulthood. Now, with the Our Whole Lives curriculum in its tenth year of publication, the UUA has released a young adult component.
Based on feedback that young adults were not adequately served by the adult Our Whole Lives curriculum, the Association focused on creating a curriculum to provide young adults, ages 18-35, with sexuality education resources addressing the specific issues that they face. Reflecting on the project, co-author (Rev.) Michael Tino writes about how the team sought to meet the particular needs of a young adult audience:
" . . . We intentionally developed lessons that were sex-positive (without presuming a particular level of sexual experience), creative, and grounded in justice and inclusivity. We were able to weave into the curriculum activities that ask the participants to engage in high-level reasoning and abstraction, activities that ask questions grounded in queer theory about what is 'normal,' and explorations of sexuality and intimacy that go beyond what is available for high-school students."
Adding a young adult component to Our Whole Lives further recognizes that sexuality is an ongoing life experience that changes with age and circumstance. This new program is especially important because teens and young adults, while comprising only twenty-five percent of all sexually active people in the United States, account for half of the sexually transmitted infections (STIs) diagnosed each year [Guttmacher, 2006]. Notably, like the adult curriculum, the young adult component also allows congregations to provide vital and potentially life-saving education to individuals who did not experience Our Whole Lives as children or youth.
As with all other components in the series, Our Whole Lives for Young Adults also includes a companion curriculum called Sexuality and our Faith for use in Unitarian Universalist and United Church of Christ congregations. Each edition of Sexuality and our Faith relates the content of the secular Our Whole Lives curriculum to the religious values in our respective traditions. "Our Whole Lives is comprehensive sexuality education, which is about much more than just anatomy and health. It's about values, respect, emotions, and justice too. It's about the sacred aspects of sexuality, which is part of the miracle of life," says (Rev.) Sarah Gibb Millspaugh, Adult Programs Director for the UUA. "This is why we teach Our Whole Lives in church—because sexuality is sacred, and sexuality education is ministry."
Madelyn Campbell, a parent and Our Whole Lives instructor, puts the connection between Unitarian Universalism and sexuality education this way:
"Sex education, sexuality, and religion have been entwined since nearly the beginning of western civilization—in one way or another. For some people, this means teaching that just about everything is sinful, but that is simplistic, I think. I personally believe [sex education] is a religious issue, because, as we learn from both the Bible and "Harry Potter," the most important thing (and the most powerful magic) is love. To love one another we must respect one another, and to respect one another, we must respect ourselves. The heart of sex education, and of the OWL curriculum, is learning to respect each other and ourselves. Teaching teens to say "no" out of fear doesn't help them learn to use their most important sex organs—their brains—or teach them the importance of respect. Our first UU principle is that we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We need to teach people that it applies in every aspect of life."
Our Whole Lives values self worth, sexual health, responsibility, justice and inclusivity. It gives people of all ages a safe space to discuss their sexuality in a positive, age appropriate way. And, as Madelyn Campbell says, OWL encourages all of us to use our most important sex organs—our brains.
This is the fourth in a series of articles UUA.org will feature from January through March which lift up the critical reproductive health-related work of Unitarian Universalist individuals, congregations, and the Association.
For more information contact info @ uua.org.
Last updated on Friday, March 14, 2008.
