This story was originally published on Judd Legum’s Substack, Popular Information, to which you can subscribe here. —  it then appeared on Mother Jones and has been republished with the publication’s permission.

A new middle school sex education curriculum in Orange County, Florida, obtained by Popular Information, eliminates previous lessons on the reproductive system, contraception, and consent. What remains is a discussion of the benefits of abstinence and a cursory review of various sexually transmitted diseases.

Orange County’s new curriculum, provided to Popular Information by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, was recently approved by the Florida Department of Education (DoE). That approval was required as part of a law, HB 1069, signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in May 2023. The law requires schools to “teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for all school-age students.”

The new Orange County 8th grade sex education curriculum, for example, emphasizes that abstinence is the only 100 percent effective method to prevent sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. The same information was included in Orange County’s previous 8th grade sex education curriculum, taught in prior years, and submitted to the Florida DoE for the 2023-24 school year, but never approved.

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A very large amount of material has been removed from the sex education curriculum. The 8th grade sex education curriculum submitted last year but not approved is 230 pages. The new, approved version is 36 pages. (You can review both documents in full at the end of this story.)

The old curriculum included basic information about human anatomy that has now been eliminated.

Eliminating this information was not required by the new law. Rather, the law requires the DoE to approve sex education materials as “appropriate for the grade and age of the student.” According to the Orlando Sentinel, department officials told educators in Broward County, Florida, that “[p]ictures of external sexual/reproductive anatomy” should not be included in “any grade level.” Officials in Orange County appear to have received similar instructions.

A DoE spokesperson defended the new restrictions, telling the AP, “A state government should not be emphasizing or encouraging sexual activity among children or minors and is therefore right to emphasize abstinence.”

The old 8th grade sex education curriculum in Orange County, while promoting abstinence, acknowledged that some students are sexually active. It provided information on how to prevent unintended pregnancy and protect against STDs if students engaged in sexual activity. This information has been deleted from the new curriculum.

The old Orange County 8th grade curriculum also included information about the various kinds of birth control, their efficacy, and whether or not they helped reduce the risk of STDs. This information has also been removed.

According to the Sentinel, state officials told Broward County officials that “[c]ontraceptives are not part of any health or science standard.” Instead, contraceptives could only be mentioned as a “health resource.” Here is what remains on contraception in the new Orange County 8th grade curriculum:

Prevention of Pregnancy
Intentional prevention of pregnancy through the use of various behaviors and products, such as:

• Sexual abstinence
• Condoms, pills, devices, patches, etc.

Abstinence and Preventing Risky Behaviors

• Knowing the facts helps prepare someone to make informed, healthy choices.
• Pregnancy prevention methods can safeguard people from the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV disease.

There are no descriptions of the different forms of birth control and no explanation of which forms of birth control are effective in preventing the transmission of STDs. This is a particularly important issue in Florida, which is currently “reporting more HIV diagnoses than almost any other state.”

Previously, Orange County’s 8th grade sex education curriculum included a detailed lesson about the importance of consent before engaging in sexual activity.

Elissa Barr, a professor of public health at the University of North Florida, says that schools across Florida have also been ordered to remove content mentioning consent from sex education curricula. All discussion of consent has been removed from the new Orange County 8th grade sex education curriculum.

During the 2023-24 school year, several of Florida’s largest school districts—including Orange, Hillsborough, and Polk Counties—decided not to teach sex education because the DoE never approved their proposed curricula.

The department hired unnamed “experts” to review each proposed sex education curriculum. These experts were then required to evaluate all materials on 11 separate criteria, some of which were inscrutable. (Experts were paid $330 for each completed review.)

That process has finally been completed, at least in Orange County, for the 2024-25 school year. The result is a sex education curriculum that includes almost no information about sex.

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