Comprehending comprehensive sex education: legislative framing of students, sex, & sexuality

The curricular frameworks which guide sex education have been a topic of interest among social science researchers and scholars. However, the literature has only been critical of abstinence-only-until-marriage approaches without applying the same level of scrutiny to comprehensive educational frameworks. To address this gap, this research uses an interpretive policy analysis to determine how the California Healthy Youth Act and the Sexual Health Education Accountability Act define students and sex, and how they bring students and sex in conversation with each other. This analysis establishes five thematic categories: sex as medically accurate and objective; expectations for students; sex as risk; students as nonautonomous; and sex as age appropriate. Overall, it was found the policies promote and value behaviors, relationship styles, and a fear/risk approach to sex while separating students form their autonomy and excluding other identities, and relationship and family structures. Future research should focus analysis on comprehensive sex education, both within and outside o f the classroom. Legislators should reconsider associating sex with inherent risk and expand current and future legislation to be more inclusive to better address the sexual diversity of students.