By Ashley M. Casey

Associate Editor

Baldwinsville parent Gina Tonello is continuing in her efforts to promote accurate, inclusive sex education for students across New York state. Tonello, who founded Stop the Shaming in 2017 after her daughter’s experience in a health class at Baker High School, is promoting a pair of bills in the State Assembly and State Senate that would require comprehensive sex ed standards for grades K-12. Stop the Shaming is part of the Sex Ed Now NY Coalition.

Assembly Bill 6512, sponsored by Cathy Nolan, and Senate Bill 4844, sponsored by Jen Metzger, are currently in their respective houses’ education committees.

“It’s basically going to require public and charter schools to teach medically accurate and inclusive K-12 sex ed,” Tonello said of the bills. “This curriculum is going to cover healthy relationships, body image — it certainly isn’t just about sex.”

Opponents of comprehensive sex ed for K-12 students say activists like Tonello want to bring the Kama Sutra to kindergarteners. That is not the case at all, Tonello said.

“In kindergarten it looks like basic lessons about friendship, communication, basic building blocks kids need to tackle consent and safe sex later on in life,” she said. “You can’t teach a kid calculus in high school if you haven’t taught them numbers in elementary school.”

The lessons the bills would require at the elementary level include the identification of body parts, how to be a good friend, asking for permission to hug your friends, and what constitutes good, safe touching (e.g. a parent helping bathe their child, a doctor examining them) versus unwanted touching (sexual assault or molestation).

“People that can’t use the proper names for their body parts, it’s starting off with shame … if you can’t say the word ‘vagina,’” Tonello said. “It gives people the idea that it’s not okay to talk about body parts.”

The comprehensive sex ed bill would require the New York State Education Department to create a curriculum encompassing reproductive health, pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and healthy relationships, including LGBTQ+ identities.

“This is really important for them as well because the lessons they are getting in a sex ed class — if they have a sex ed class at all — are not inclusive of LGBTQ people,” Tonello said. “[This bill promotes] learning at a young age to have respect for all people of all orientations. I’d like to think that people are getting more and more open-minded, especially our children.”

Tonello said LGBTQ+ people face higher rates of harassment, bullying, and suicide.

“If we can stop that by teaching people, that’s already a huge advancement,” she said.

While NYSED would draft a curriculum, local school districts would be free to write their own lessons as long as they meet the educational standards.

Tonello said many critics of comprehensive sex ed say these lessons are best taught at home by parents.

“I think some parents do that, but we can’t assume all parents will do that,” she said. “Everybody is benefiting when all kids know these lessons not just the few that get these lessons at home.”

Sex ed in health classes should not replace the discussions families have at home about relationships, sex, health and morality, Tonello said.

“Any of these sex ed lessons would be much better if supplemented at home with discussion with a parent,” she said. “I would love to see discussion sheets sent home with kids. They are very difficult discussions.”

Comprehensive sex ed would improve rates of teen pregnancy and STIs, Tonello said. According to the Guttmacher Data Center, New York State’s rate of teen pregnancy is higher than the national average, and people ages 15 to 24 make up more than 50% of newly diagnosed STI cases.

According to the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, a 2000 study of one comprehensive sex ed program called Safer Choices showed that every dollar invested into sex ed saved $2.65 in medical and social costs later on.

Tonello encourages people to contact their state representatives asking them to support the bills, which already have 23 co-sponsors in the Senate and 37 co-sponsors in the Assembly.

“I really would like to go sit down with these people and give them my perspective as a parent. I just want them to hear me out,” she said. “If someone will actually take the time to understand the bills fully I don’t know how they’d find too much to argue with.”

Learn more about the comprehensive sex education legislation at 3rs.org/3rs-curriculum or stoptheshaming.org.