John Oliver Eviscerates American Sex Ed – But the Reality Is Even Worse

John Oliver’s HBO show Last Week Tonight has made a name for itself in part by producing digestible 15-minute segments about current affairs that are both funny and poignant – and that often spread like wildfire around the Internet on Monday mornings. The latest such segment is focused on the state of sexual health education in the United States, and how purity culture – the idea that virginity is a state of moral accomplishment – pervades sex ed.

The video gets several aspects of America’s broken sex ed system dead on: the likening of people (especially young women) who have sex to trampled roses, dirty shoes and chewed-up gum, for instance. Oliver is also right that only 13 states have in place legal standards requiring sex ed students to be taught medically accurate information. The information presented in most sex ed seminars and classes – which are often insufficiently long to begin with – has to make it through a gauntlet of upset parents, community advisers and conservative teachers before getting to young people. As a result, school boards often choose to outsource their sex ed curricula to organizations that are already vetted and approved by the Department of Health and Human Services.

But what John Oliver only spends one sentence on in his segment is arguably the most important part of our broken sexual health education system: the fact that federal money is often used to fund unscientific, inaccurate and religiously oriented abstinence-only education programs. This is all thanks to a federal law signed by Bill Clinton.

Title V provides funding to school districts wishing to bring in outside organizations to promote abstinence-only or so-called “abstinence-plus” sex ed. You’re probably familiar with abstinence-only education. Not having sex is presented as the only real way to prevent pregnancy; if contraceptives and barrier methods are mentioned, their failure rates are featured prominently, and LGBT orientations are not discussed. Abstinence-plus programs, meanwhile, focus on abstinence, but acknowledge other alternatives. Religious organizations tend to prefer the former.

There are a few funding streams for abstinence-only education. School boards receive money to bring in abstinence-only organizations through Title V. In other cases, school boards aren’t up for fighting the battle for comprehensive sex ed, and their money goes to these same programs practically by default. The coordinated lobbying campaign abstinence-only organizations engage in ensures that even money not specifically earmarked through Title V still often ends up in abstinence-only educators’ hands.

How much money are we talking about? According to a 2007 study from Mathematica Policy Research, the federal government allocates some $50 million for abstinence-only education under Title V; states’ grants match those funds at 75 percent, resulting in nearly $100 million total in government money going to abstinence-only education each year.

Sarah Jones, a spokesperson for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, tells Rolling Stone that parents who want comprehensive sex ed for their kids often have to fight against both the inertia of school boards and behemoth organizations like Focus on the Family and the National Abstinence Clearinghouse, which publishes pamphlets and novella-length guides for parents wishing to start an “abstinence revolution” in their area. The NAC advocates agitating school board officials and using its specially curated information to make the case for abstinence-only sex ed at school board meetings.