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Teaching Human Sexuality in the High School Curriculum

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Facts of the Potential Litigation
On August of 2011, Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced that all middle and high schools will be required to teach compulsory sexual health education as part of the core curriculum. Required Health classes focusing on human sexuality are provided as mandated at Edward R. Murrow high school. Some of the topics of this course include but are not limited to the following: HIV/AIDS, practicing of safe sex, sexually transmitted diseases, description of both male and female anatomical differences, birth control etc. In October of 2012, Mr. Anthony Leonardi and several other guidance counselors began receiving phone calls from parents of Muslim faith stating, that they objected to the sexual content being taught, particularly surrounding lessons on AIDS, pregnancy, and condom distribution, as it was a violation of their religious practice to learn such material. During the remainder of the school year two other students said that their parents objected to the learning of and being taught lessons of this type.
During November of 2012, a parent requested a meeting with the Assistant Principal of Physical Education to object to her child being taught this subject matter. The parent had requested that her child be allowed to “opt-out” of the class completely if the aforementioned content matter that she deemed as inappropriate (based on her religious and moral beliefs) was not removed from the course. Furthermore, the parent argued that the

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