(Sarah, this is for you)

So lets see, thinking about to high school, (it really wasn't that long ago, but does still feel like it) one sex education class seems to stick in my head the most. I remember one year that our class was separated into two classrooms, “Boys” in one classroom and “Girls” in another. Mind you, no one actually asked about gender and just went by perceived sex. Once in our respective classrooms we were bombarded with information about how our bodies are changing, where we would grow hair. (as if we didn’t know this information from middle school) They played a video on childbirth, yes childbirth, the video showed just a women in labor, all the pain she was going through and then a very disgusting shot of the baby exiting their mothers womb. As if this wasn’t enough to scare us they then invited in a group of youth to talk to us about “Love”

All the boys were split into two groups, each group sat in a circle around a big cut out of a heart. We were given a number of art supplies, crayons, markers, magazines, etc and then instructed that this “heart” represented “Love” and that is was our job to fill it will all the things we loved, with all the feelings love brought, with all the things that reminded us of love and with everything beautiful we could find. Our group cut out lots of images and a few of the more artistic students drew pictures of their friends and families, their pets and even some of their favorite foods. 

Each group spent about 30 minutes decorating their “Love”, we even were allowed glitter and confetti. The heart was filled with so many wonderful things, it was a great way for all the youth to connect with each other and we were all very proud of the work we had done. Each group was then given 10 minutes to talk about their love and talk about some of the people in their lives that they loved. This is where the story gets horribly depressing.

The two youth facilitators took these hearts and walked around the room so that we could all see the beautiful works of art. They told us that just like love, this art took a long time to make. It took lots of experiences, it took many people and most of all it was beautiful. That just like love, this piece of art meant so many things and was very unique. They said that we had made something very beautiful and they were proud of us.

They said that this “love” though, was very fragile, and that something so small could destroy it. They told us that sex served only to destroy this love. *at this point each of the facilitators ripped up the art we had made* They told us that by having sex before marriage, that we were destroying this love. *They continued to tear the paper, over and over and over, and then had some youth in the class help tear the paper*

By now some of the youth in the room were in tears (myself included) they had destroyed any good idea I had about love and made it very easy for me to take a virginity pledge at the end of class for a sucker and a sticker. I didn’t want sex at all anymore, I thought it was so nasty and it took a long time for me to even be able to watch any sexual scenes on TV. I couldn’t even watch couples kiss and felt so disgusted when any of my friend would bring up sex.

This traumatizing experience in Salt Lake City, Utah left me feeling cold and horrible. I can’t even imagine what that would have been like for youth who had already had sex and had to go through with that presentation.

Thanks for reading,

Ernesto Dominguez