about the campaign

Organizations Supporting the Campaign

Campaign Overview

Around the nation and throughout Illinois, people are taking an honest look at sex education in public schools. Parents and educators everywhere are discovering that "Just Say No" just doesn't work.  At a time when 50% of new HIV infections occur in people under the age of 25, 40% of Illinois' new Chlamydia and gonorrhea cases are among youth age 10 to 19, and nearly 19,000 births occur each year to girls aged 19 and younger (2002), it is clear that teens need a more comprehensive approach to sex education.

When it comes to sex education in Illinois classrooms, youth are still being taught to "just say no."  This "abstinence-only" approach leaves Illinois youth in the dark and unprepared.  Abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) programs exclude information about reproductive health care, censor teachers, and deem contraception "dangerous."  Evaluations of AOUM programs prove that they are not effective, yet the government continues to fund them and the media continues to adore them!  These programs go unchallenged because people are unaware of their real content.

To become healthy adults, teens need to know how their bodies function, how to develop healthy relationships, how to think about when and how to become a parent, how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, and much more. Comprehensive sex education includes abstinence as a proven method for preventing pregnancy, but goes beyond "Just Say No" to provide medically-accurate information that helps young people make healthy choices over time.  Always age-appropriate, it covers everything from "good touch, bad touch" in elementary school to STD prevention and contraception in later grades.  This is the Illinois Campaign for Responsible Sex Education.

Using research, legislation, community dialogue, and media work, the Illinois Campaign for Responsible Sex Education will help create a new landscape - informed by hard facts and best practices - for sex education statewide, while helping youth and adults in communities determine which sex education is best for them.