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Sexual Counterrevolution

How Coronado Parents Got Planned Parenthood Out of the Schools and an Abstinence Speaker In

BY MATTHEW LICKONA

About four years ago, I was called by a health teacher," recalls Coronado parent Kelly Purvis. "They were reviewing the health curriculum," specifically, the ninth-grade family-life curriculum. "Parents had expressed concern about Planned Parenthood's one-hour presentation to the kids. "The teachers asked me, 'Would you please come and look at it as an outside observer, someone who hasn't had kids in the high school, and let me know what you think?' After the presentation, I became concerned about the curriculum."

Purvis' biggest concern "was that they said -- three times in a one-hour presentation -- that 'if you can't talk to your parents, you can always come and see us.' I don't think you can cut a parent out of the discussion of sex. It's not a good idea. I was really kind of floored. My other concern was that they spent very little time talking about abstinence, which in my opinion is the only true safe sex that exists. Ultimately, a group of parents who had expressed concern went to the board of education, and Planned Parenthood was removed from the district."

John Bowen was one of those who went to the board. After hearing Planned Parenthood's presentation -- this time, at a parents' information meeting -- Bowen started poking around on the group's website, particularly its Teenwire section. "The best thing you can do is to hang somebody with their own rope," he explains. "I pulled stuff off the website, and presented it to the board with certain things highlighted. I just asked them to draw their own conclusions about whether they wanted this organization held up to be the experts in this area. After three letters, they voted 5-0 to show Planned Parenthood the door."

Letter one, dated February 4, 2002, highlighted a passage which began, "Despite what your teachers and parents say ... do you think you'll really need to use math after high school to do anything besides balance your checkbook?...Well, there's one subject that's guaranteed to come up in the future ... SEX!"

It set up a quiet tension between the cool people at Planned Parenthood and the more irrelevant parents/teachers -- the same sort of tension that had concerned Purvis. And that tension came to the fore in another highlighted passage. "Worried1" wrote in about a possible STD; the letter opened with, "I don't even know if you handle this kind of email, but I didn't know who else to write to." Bowen's handwritten comment: "Perhaps because they were invited to speak to a health class as experts in these areas?" The Teenwire editors responded by saying, "The best option is to call Planned Parenthood and arrange an appointment for a check up."

Later on, the editors reminded Worried1 that "Planned Parenthood health centers are completely confidential and do not require parental permission for health services."

In Letter two, Bowen laid out what he saw as Planned Parenthood's conflict of interest. "One of the ways Planned Parenthood makes money is by providing abortions for a fee. It is an unacceptable conflict of interest for them to be invited to the health class to teach our kids about birth control. They simply have no incentive to do a good job in the classroom." (When Bowen learned that a recent Consumer Reports study of condom-effectiveness found that the two condoms commonly distributed by Planned Parenthood finished 22nd and 23rd out of 23, with one brand rated "poor" in both strength and reliability, it only strengthened his opinion.) The letter also included more Q&A from Teenwire, including a question on the safety of fellatio following anal sex. "I would ask once again that you consider the following question," concluded Bowen. "Is this organization one that I am proud and pleased to be bringing into our classrooms -- and introducing to our students -- as the experts on these health issues?" Apparently not.

Bowen's efforts were written up in Focus on the Family's Citizen magazine, and he started getting calls from parents in other school districts who wanted to mount similar campaigns. "I drove up to Santa Maria to show them how to do it, and as I was leaving, this lady said, 'Just take this audiotape. This woman came to the school not long ago, and she was wonderful.'"

"This woman" was Pam Stenzel, an abstinence advocate and former crisis pregnancy counselor who tours the country speaking to students. "I listened to it," Bowen says, "and I thought, 'This gal is dynamite.' So I gave the tape to my neighbor, Kelly Purvis."

Purvis was delighted. Simply getting Planned Parenthood out hadn't been a complete solution. "My feeling was that we still needed a really good curriculum for our kids. I listened to the tape and I got on the phone to her company and said, 'Please send me your other tapes. I saw the video, and I really liked it. She's been a parent. She's counseled kids for fifteen years. She's humorous and she's edgy. I think she really knows kids -- what they're thinking, what situations they're getting into. She has empathy for that. She allows kids who have made bad choices to make good ones in the future. She puts the responsibility back on them -- 'It's your decision.' And she supports parents. When I spoke to her, she said that to her, the parent was 'the primary person who loves that child more than anybody else and who is going to take care of that child for years to come.' She gives kids her email address after presentations, and she answers every one of them. And while she preserves the kids' anonymity, she says, 'I always try to connect them back to the parents.'"

Next, Purvis shared the video with two of her children -- she has three currently attending Coronado schools. "Then I took it to the health teacher who had called me. She supported it, and then the principal looked at it and he supported it. Then we went to both the assistant superintendent and the superintendent, and it was approved through that process. We got permission to introduce [Stenzel's video] into the ninth-grade health curriculum. Our superintendent didn't feel that this was a conservative message or a religious message. She felt it was a health message. She pulled out the board policy on health education and read it to me over the phone, and the word 'abstinence' was throughout, yet we were not, in my opinion, supporting that in the curriculum. It's kind of sad that the people who have a message like that are labeled Christian or conservative."

Of course, a lot of people had to be brought on board, and that's not always an easy matter. But, says Purvis, "Coronado is so small that parents can really make a difference. As long as you're willing to put in the work and get side-by-side with the administrators and teachers, they support us in the things that we want for our kids. If you can prove that something is good for your kids and are willing to work for it, they're pretty open to that kind of input."

Purvis had already shown that she was willing to work. "I've been very active in the school board races. I was the middle school PTO President a few years ago. I've been on all the PTOs -- just very, very active with the schools."

That is the reason the health teacher called her. A year and a half ago, Purvis continues, "we had an opportunity to bring Stenzel in as a speaker."

The logistics didn't work out right away, but the opportunity did give Purvis a chance to get the school administration's approval, and also to go over the legality of hosting a speaker who touted sexual abstinence. (According to a September 20 story in the San Diego Union-Tribune, Planned Parenthood has asked for a state review of Stenzel's presentations, to see if they violate a California law requiring comprehensive sex-education programs at secondary schools.) Everything checked out, and a date was set for this September.

In preparation for the event, Purvis & Co. raised awareness via print ads and an email campaign. Also, "we notified by mail every single parent in the district whose children were going to see the event and gave them the option to opt out of it. We had probably a dozen parents ask to see the videotape, and of those, only five opted their kids out. The school district sent the letter, but parents helped make it happen. We took a promotional tape to both middle school and high school PTOs, where I would say 75 parents had a chance to see it. The response was very positive; it sparked a lot of conversation."

The night before the presentation, Stenzel spoke at a family forum to give the public further insight into her work. "I've done a lot of family forums as a PTO President," says Purvis, "and that was the best-attended event I've ever been to. There were over 200 parents. I credit that to the fact that parents are really concerned about kids in this community engaging in behavior that is very risky without knowing the consequences." (The money for Stenzel's fee -- $3500-$5000 -- and the mailing $750 -- came from private donations and from the Family University, "a city-funded program for parents.")

The forum, says Purvis, "was great. Stenzel gave a short presentation about herself, and talked about parents -- how it's important that we live the life we want our kids to live, that we set standards and open the lines of communication. Then she quickly went over what she was going to say to our kids. She's very factual. She said, 'I would love to hear your objections. If you find anything in my material that's incorrect, bring it to me. She's really open, and to me, that's where you have to be when you talk about a subject like sex. I don't think there was 100% support, but a lot of people were excited about having her in Coronado."

Purvis attended both student presentations. "We had one presentation for eighth and ninth graders, and then one for tenth, eleventh and twelfth. What was interesting to me was that the eighth and ninth graders were really receptive, and the tenth through twelfth graders were a little unruly at first. I think that's probably because they're more sexually active -- they're getting tweaked a little bit more, and it's a little bit more uncomfortable. She said that was pretty much how kids were all over the country -- the older kids are like, 'She can't tell me what to do with my life.' Or they're uncomfortable because they've heard things they didn't know, and they've already made decisions without having had that information. There was one group of young men -- who I happen to know were sexually active -- and they were a little unruly. She kind of slowed down and looked up and said, 'I wouldn't expect that kind of behavior from adults. Girls, pay attention: we now know the maturity level of the boys sitting over there.' There was just dead silence; it was pretty great."

Purvis admired the way Stenzel, who also spoke at Grossmont High School recently, connected with the students. "She talked about a song" -- "Bad Touch" by The Bloodhound Gang -- "with the lyric, 'You and me baby we ain't nothing but mammals/So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.' Every kid in the audience knew that song. She said, 'Let me tell you, what takes place on a farm has nothing to do with love.' She said, 'I don't know of a condom that can protect the heart in a relationship, and there's a lot more to sex than just protecting your genitals.'"

Stenzel talked about making responsible choices, and about consequences. "Abortion isn't a pleasant option, and she makes that very clear," Purvis said. "Abstinence is the only safe, healthy thing for our kids to be practicing. The rest of it carries a price tag. As she said, 'There's a cost; how much are you willing to pay?' She did talk about condom use; she talked about actual failure rates, and about what diseases condoms don't prevent. She talked about oral sex -- she didn't miss a topic. I loved what she said about men of integrity, and how the way you treat a woman is very important. And the message for women -- to expect to be treated with dignity. And she was very humorous. She said, 'The only safe sex is one partner -- a monogamous relationship. And that's not one partner at a time.'"

And the response? "A couple of kids came up to her before I left after the assembly and started talking to her. She says she usually gets anywhere from 10 to 50 emails after a presentation. And I was downtown today and a parent came up to me and said, 'I would love to see that tape. I've heard only good things.' We've made it available at the high school library and at the Family University. I think it really got parents thinking and talking and it got parents and kids thinking and talking together. My kids were mortified that their mother was having an abstinence speaker come to the high school. But my daughter came home and said, 'You know, Mom, she hit a lot of points. She's right.'"

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