By Ashley M. Casey

Associate Editor

School is out for the summer, but Gina Tonello is still hitting the books — and the bricks — in her fight for comprehensive sex education.

Tonello, of Baldwinsville, the founder and director of Stop the Shaming, traveled to Washington, D.C., and Albany last month to speak to federal and state lawmakers about the need for medically accurate, nonjudgmental LGBTQ-inclusive sex ed. She was invited to Capitol Hill on June 10 by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), which also invited Stop the Shaming to be a founding member of the State Sex Education Policy Action Council (SEPAC).

“It was a great experience for me to be exposed to that personally and just to see what the Washington thing was like,” she said. “I’m just really grateful I got to do it.”

Tonello founded Stop the Shaming in 2017 when her daughter Alyssa Burmeister recorded a guest presentation by a faith-based crisis pregnancy center in her health class at Baker High School. Burmeister and Tonello said New Hope Family Services’ messaging — comparing a person who has had sex to a chewed-up stick of gum — shames and alienates young people. After Tonello brought her concerns to the Baldwinsville Central School District, the district ended its relationship with New Hope.

Since then, Tonello has made it her mission to promote inclusive, comprehensive sex ed in schools across Central New York and the nation.

Sex ed isn’t just an issue for middle- and high-schoolers. Kids need to learn how their bodies work and how to maintain healthy relationships from a young age, Tonello said.

“Of course we’re not teaching porn to kindergarteners and we’re not teaching sex to kindergartners. We’re teaching health: healthy bodies and healthy minds,” she said.

Comprehensive sex education begins with knowledge of the anatomy, setting boundaries and learning the language of consent.

“We’re teaching them, ‘This is mine, that is yours. If you want to give me a hug you have to ask me,’” Tonello said.

Learning about reproductive health should be as normal as learning about other aspects of health, Tonello said.

“Sometimes it involves just hygiene when you’re in elementary school,” she said. “There are plenty of kids who’ve never seen a toothbrush. They don’t know that you’re supposed to wash behind your ears and the back of your neck.”

The benefits of comprehensive sex ed are far-reaching, Tonello said.

“[It] has the power to stop poverty cycles. That’s preventing teen pregnancy because a pregnant teen is likely to drop out of school and is less likely to get the education they need and have more kids,” she said. “It’s a vicious cycle that comprehensive sex ed could impact in a positive way.”

While in Washington, Tonello and her fellow sex ed advocates also alerted lawmakers to the emergence of the “sexual risk avoidance” education campaign, which she said is “just another way of saying abstinence-only education.”

“They’re trying to rebrand themselves,” Tonello said of the abstinence-only movement.

Activism in Albany

On June 11, Tonello and Burmeister participated in the National Institute for Reproductive Health’s Repro Freedom Day of Action. Tonello has joined committees to help draft legislation requiring comprehensive sex ed.

The NIRH is one of the organizations that spearheaded the Reproductive Health Act, which the New York State Legislature passed and Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed in January. The RHA removes abortion laws from the state’s criminal code and allows for the termination of pregnancy past 24 weeks of gestation if a health care provider determines the mother’s health is in jeopardy or if the fetus is not viable.

After the RHA passed, the NIRH turned its attention to comprehensive sex ed. Tonello and her fellow advocates delivered their bill last month to state lawmakers. Assembly Bill A.6512 and Senate Bill S.4844 would require the Commissioner of the State Department of Education and the State Health Commissioner “to establish learning standards for comprehensive sexuality education for kindergarten through 12th grade; to provide model curricula, guidelines, and professional training and development resources to support implementation in schools across the state; and to track and evaluate the comprehensive sexuality education program.”

It’s not enough to convince state senators and assemblymembers of the bill’s merit. Tonello said it’s up to parents — “mad moms” like herself, she said — to voice their support for comprehensive sex ed.

“What we really need is to get parents rallied behind it and to say, ‘This is what my kids need’ and to be louder than the naysayers,” Tonello said. “Statistics show that most parents are for comprehensive sex ed and they think their kids are learning about comprehensive sex ed. Ta-da! They’re not — a lot of times they’re learning abstinence-only from crisis pregnancy centers.”

Crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs, are organizations that attempt to dissuade people from seeking abortions. Often, they are run by religious groups. They are not regulated like health clinics, but sometimes offer pregnancy tests and ultrasounds and set up shop next to real clinics.

“They are not held to any standards because they are not presenting themselves as medical facilities,” Tonello said of CPCs. “Not everyone who wears a white coat is a doctor. Make sure you’re in the right office.”

The NIRH is also advocating for a bill (S.6311/A.8212) that would commission an 18-month NYS Department of Health study of CPCs.

“It’s not an effort to close them down, but to regulate them and how they can market themselves,” Tonello said.

Last month, the state legislature also passed Erin’s Law, which would require public schools to “implement a prevention-oriented child sexual abuse program,” according to erinslaw.org. The law is named for Erin Merryn, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who lobbied for the law in her home state of Illinois. If Gov. Cuomo signs it, New York will be the 37th state to enact Erin’s Law.

On the home front

While she has been advocating in Albany and Capitol Hill, Tonello is still busy working for change here in Central New York.

After the Baldwinsville school district disinvited New Hope Family Services in December 2017, Stop the Shaming began to lobby other districts. Westhill also ended its relationship with New Hope in late 2017, and Liverpool, Marcellus and Onondaga followed suit in 2018.

Stop the Shaming has submitted Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests to area school districts asking for their sex ed curricula so a panel of health educators can “give them a report card grade just so parents can see” what their children are learning.

“There’s so many misunderstandings out there about what is being taught. It needs to be standardized,” Tonello said.

Tonello said she is hoping to hold a community-wide sex ed class in one of the school districts that still welcomes New Hope to their health classes.

“If I can’t get the CPC out of the school, I can bring the sex ed to them somehow,” she said.

Her goal is to work with ACR Health or another local health education agency to provide a session of unbiased, comprehensive sex ed for parents and community members. She said she is hoping that would spark conversations among parents and children in those communities.

“Parents are faced with so many struggles and questions and they’re busy,” Tonello said. “If you’re not happy with this, join with us and help us.”

To learn more about Stop the Shaming’s mission, visit stoptheshaming.org or facebook.com/CNYstoptheshaming.