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Activists spoke out against a sex-ed program used in a Minnesota school district that includes asking straight students to role play gay and transgender relationships.
"Parents are intentionally being deceived and misled about what their children are being taught," one concerned speaker said at the Richfield School Board meeting Monday.
"Programs like 3Rs are not effective," said activist Julie Quist, a Child Protection League board member. While another speaker at the meeting said, "This type of teaching has no place in our schools."
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The speakers were referring to a program called the "3Rs," which stands for "rights, respect, responsibility," and was put together by Advocates for Youth, a group partnered with Planned Parenthood, Alpha News reported.
"While many sexuality education materials have addressed the needs of adolescents, Advocates for Youth realized that such education must begin much earlier," the website for Advocates for Youth explains under its "rationale for curriculum section."
"This K-12 curriculum, therefore, is a collection of lesson plans on a wide range of topics including: self-understanding, family, growth and development, friendship, sexuality, life skills, and health promotion."
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The lessons include asking students to role play various relationship scenarios, including straight students pretending they are in a gay or lesbian relationship and to work through whether the hypothetical couple should have sex.
In one of the lessons, a student is asked to pretend to be a male named "Morgan" who is "very active" in his school's LGBTQ club, while another student is asked to be "Terence," a student who wants to have sex with "Morgan" and is not publicly out as gay.
"Morgan" then outlines a plan for the two students to secretly meet, according to the curriculum, and they "make a decision about whether to have sex."
Other lessons include having students pretend they are transgender and "make a decision" about having sex with a woman, curriculum on anal sex designed for students in kindergarten through fifth grade in the context of HIV/AIDS prevention, and a section for teachers outlining how some straight male students might "have a homophobic response" to the role playing.
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"Should this happen in your class, it’s important to stop what you are doing, notice the interaction, and ask for the class members to reflect on what’s happening and why. Direct the students back to your class ground rules — and reinforce the agreement to be respectful — and that making homophobic comments is not respectful," the section for teachers said, Alpha News reported.
Quist said that research has found that such "explicit sexual education" does not help reduce STDs or teen pregnancies.
"The Institute for Research and Evaluation conducted a comprehensive study on the effectiveness of programs such as this," she told the Richfield School Board. "Out of 60 school-based studies, no credible evidence of effectiveness was found for sustained reductions in teen pregnancy or STDs. There was no evidence of effectiveness for increasing consistent condom use. Failure rates included 88% failure to delay teen sexual initiation and 94% failure to reduce unprotected sex. 12% of these programs found significant negative effects on adolescent sexual health and/or risk behavior."
The entire lesson plan for the curriculum is nearly 700 pages long, and in one lesson designed for kindergartners, teachers are directed to refer to females as "a person with a vulva," while lessons for upper-grade level students list anal sex alongside vaginal and oral sex as routine intimacy options.
"The board does not actually know all the details of our curriculum, I think I can say that with confidence," Chair Tim Pollis said at the meeting following the speakers’ pushback, adding that all content is "age appropriate" and was selected "in partnership with parents and guardians."
Pollis said that the use of 3Rs in the school district "is not new, it’s been in place for a number of years," and "parents are provided opt-out information … in advance … no student is required to participate."
A district spokesperson told Alpha News that "Each year, content is introduced that is age-appropriate."
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The district did not immediately respond to Fox News’s request for comment Friday morning.
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