I Am Positive About Positively Waiting

By Roger Gitlin, Editorial

Monday, December 17, 2007

I met Karen about three years ago at a William S. Hart Union High School District parent-student group meeting sponsored by the city of Santa Clarita. This diminutive woman brought with her some of her students from the district who had adopted her Positively Waiting program as their way of life. Yup, these girls and boys would say “no” to sex until marriage.

Was this a throwback to the 1950s? Was Dwight David Eisenhower our president again? Nope. This was modern-day Santa Clarita, and I could barely believe that there was someone teaching abstinence in the 21st century.

I approached Karen after her powerful presentation, introduced myself and told her I was a teacher at the high school level, but not with the Hart district. I taught at Kenyon J. Scudder Juvenile Probation Camp School up Bouquet Canyon. In 2004, the Scudder School was a boys’ juvenile detention center. You see, I am one of those teachers who believes our kids are inundated with sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, and frankly don’t have a snowflake’s chance in Hell of avoiding this sexual minefield of adolescence.

So I invited Karen to my classroom to address our students. Oh, yes, I was skeptical. My colleagues just kind of laughed it off when I told them Ms. Kroph was going to deliver her one-day program to our students. One fellow teacher said to me, “You have got to be kidding. Your kids will laugh you out of the classroom.”

Ah, stubborn me. I held firm, and within a matter of two weeks Karen came to Scudder. The response she received from the boys was unbelievably refreshing. You have to know my students aren’t exactly there for singing too loudly in the choir. The room of 17 adolescent boys was as quiet as I have ever heard it, and Karen laid it out, clearly and plainly. “Boys,” she said, “30 to 50 percent of all sexually active teens have already been infected with at least one sexually transmitted disease.” Conservative estimates say about 19 million new case of STDs are reported annually, about 25 percent among teens.

Each time Karen spoke, the room became more quiet and eyes were glued on the petite woman: “One in six girls get pregnant before she graduates from high school. ... Forty-three percent of the women (that’s almost half) in the United States will have an abortion in her lifetime.” And here’s the one that blew me away. Karen said a young person who begins sexual activity in his or her teens will average 15 sexual partners before he or she gets married.

Ninety minutes flew by and my students were spellbound. This was a realty check.

When Karen finished her program and departed, students came up to me and stated, “I never knew all that about sex. When can Karen come back and tell us more?” Well, needless to say, I was also bowled over by the students’ response. So Karen became a regular to my health and science class. In an effort to maximize her message, I would often merge classes so Karen could reach more students. This was great.

I came to learn Karen Kroph and her Positively Waiting enjoyed similar success in the Hart district as well as the Los Angeles Unified School District. Her message of abstinence was reaching our kids, and that was a very good thing.

Unfortunately, there are some “bad guys” in the picture. Last year a mother of a seventh-grader at Arroyo Seco Junior High School objected to the Positively Waiting message because her daughter was told condoms will keep her safe but waiting until marriage to begin sexual activity is the highest standard of safety. This mother interpreted this message to be a “Christian values message,” and she promptly contacted the ACLU, which just as quickly sent a letter to the Hart district threatening it with legal action (lawsuit time) for teaching an abstinence-only curriculum.

You see, our enlightened state of California actually has a law on the books that requires schools to teach a “comprehensive sex education program.” In short, that means the Hart district would be compelled to allow Planned Parenthood and similar left-leaning organizations demonstrate to your sons and daughters how to put a condom on a banana. The Hart district saw the writing on the wall and politely uninvited Karen from addressing students, choosing to reformat the sex-ed program to focus on HIV/AIDS awareness.

No question, this is a “hot potato.”

I think we need to change the comprehensive sex-education law. The Hart district’s hands are tied on this one. Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Vickie Engbrecht tells me the state of California prohibits “abstinence only” curriculum. So inviting Karen back into the Hart district classroom would necessitate inviting programs that espouse multipartner pre-marital sex, among other things. Regrettably, it’s a wise choice made by the Hart school district, but nonetheless unfortunate.

So what can we do about this?

Personally, I am going to contact Assembly member Cameron Smyth to work on changing this law. You, too, can contact him at:

Assemblyman Cameron Smyth

23734 Valencia Blvd #303

Santa Clarita, CA. 91355

(661) 286-1565

Ask him to introduce legislation to change the law regarding comprehensive sex education. The reasons are many and varied to allow Positively Waiting back in our classrooms for our teens. Here are just a few of the values your youngsters would hear:

1) You will be choosing to respect yourself;

2) You will be proving you really care about your partner’s health and future;

3) )You will be practicing self-control;

4) You’ll be resisting the influence of others;

5) You will give your mate a heart that is not hardened, distrustful or suspicious.

Good luck, Karen, I’ll be praying for you.

Roger Gitlin is a teacher and resident of Santa Clarita. His column reflects his own opinion, not necessarily that of The Signal.