Conservative group's sex talk at high school questioned

Heidi Hall | The Tennessean

Show Caption Hide Caption Excerpts from conservative group's pregnancy presentation Beth Cox and Joi Wasill of Decisions, Choices and Options address a Lifetime Wellness class at Hillsboro High School in Nashville, Tenn., this month. This video is audio excerpts of the presentation.

STDs will leave you infertile -- if they%27re not treated

Having sex%2C drinking spit can expose people to different diseases

Medical textbooks don%27t address issue of when life begins because it%27s an opinion

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Having sex with eight partners is the equivalent of drinking a whole classroom's spit.

A new sexually transmitted disease is out there that will become the new AIDS.

All medical textbooks say life begins at conception.

For an hour, Joi Wasill, the founder of nonprofit Decisions, Choices and Options, and Beth Cox of the Sumner County School Board provided a captive audience of high school freshmen and sophomores their take on STDs, abortion and adoption.

It wasn't completely accurate, a Vanderbilt University doctor said. But neither Tennessee state law nor the class curriculum prohibits what was said.

And the nonprofit — with its strong Christian, Republican and anti-abortion ties — is on a list of approved presenters in Nashville-Davidson County's public schools.

The content of Wasill's presentation came to light after a Hillsboro High School student recorded it earlier this month. In an interview Thursday, Wasill insisted her beliefs are irrelevant in the classroom setting.

"I'm an educator. Just as with any educator, my personal opinions and personal faith do not come out in my presentation," she said.

On the recording, Cox takes the first half. One of 4 people who start having sex at the students' age will get an STD, she says.

"Ladies, that's especially important for you, because many of those STDs will leave you infertile," she says. "You can no longer have children later on in life."

Condoms break, she said.

Birth control pills aren't 100% effective. She said she has a friend who became pregnant three times while taking them.

If a girl becomes a single mom to a boy, she says: "Who's going to do all those things that men like to do with men? Hunting, fishing, playing ball, all those things that teach them how to be a man and setting those boundaries?" She tells them that she has information about a faith-based center for pregnant women.

Then Wasill takes over, saying "fetus" means the same thing as "baby" while holding a model of one. She shows ultrasound video and pictures, saying one is of her friend's now 5-year-old child. She paints a grim picture of the various types of abortion: dismembered fetuses, punctured uterine walls, bleeding for 8 to 9 weeks, death.

As for adoption, never discourage it, she tells the class. Don't even use the term "give up" the baby. If a girl says she's pregnant, send her to the nurse, and she should start taking prenatal vitamins.

Every bit of the presentation is based on research, Wasill said later. And if students think it portrays one option over another, she can't help it.

"Again, we're getting the medical, factual information that comes straight from the health textbook and other sources," Wasill said.

The presentation isn't helpful, said Dr. Mary Romano, assistant professor in Vanderbilt's Division of Adolescent Medicine. Its biggest problem is that it uses scare tactics.

That never works with teens, whose developing brains too rarely allow reason to outweigh pleasure or believe anything bad will happen to them, she said.

Other than that, the presentation relies on facts taken out of context. STDs make you sterile if they're not treated. Drinking spit and having sex introduce you to different kinds of diseases. Most medical textbooks never broach the idea of when life begins because that's based on people's opinions, Romano said.

What gets through to teens are factual messages, in context, delivered consistently, over time, that parents echo.

"What you want to do is have the teen walk away with knowledge and skills. Teach me skills to negotiate that situation. If I'm going to have sex, who do I go to for information?" Romano said.

A permission slip for the class didn't include any mention of abortion or adoption. It says parents will have convenient access to the content. School district spokeswoman Olivia Brown wrote in an email that parents could attend a public meeting on the district's Lifetime Wellness curriculum that took place last school year, and state standards for the class include mention of abortion.

Several Hillsboro parents asked to comment on the class either didn't respond or declined. One said she didn't have enough information from the school.

A Tennessee Department of Health spokeswoman said the agency's staff is unaware of the discovery of a new STD as deadly as AIDS. Wasill said she was referring to recent reports of a drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea.

Metro Nashville School Board member Michael Hayes, whose district includes Hillsboro, wrote in an email that excerpts of the presentation surprised him.

"Fortunately, I believe the Hillsboro High School kids are smart enough to separate fact from fiction and that some of the opinions and scare tactics used in the presentation they will know are incorrect," he wrote, but he would need to know more to comment further.

A state law passed last year doesn't define who's qualified to talk to students about sexual health.

Cox's school board bio lists her occupation as Decisions, Choices and Options presenter and says she served on Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam's 2010 campaign and as a delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention. Wasill is a former Hendersonville High School marketing teacher and mother of an adopted son.

In a 2009 radio interview with Richard Land, then-president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Wasill said God spoke to her through one of his radio show guests, urging her to promote the pro-life beliefs she'd always held. The result? "We are in 38 high schools across Tennessee, and we are happy and thrilled that God has just literally flung open the doors of the public schools," she said.

Her group website lists positive responses from students in Nashville-area high schools in three counties.

The group's presentation at Hillsboro High is just "Chapter 2 billion" of America's culture wars playing out in public schools, said Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

The first arguments came in the 19th century over which Bible should be taught, he said. Now, in a world where people can't pretend teens aren't having sex, the conversation has shifted.

"I don't doubt for a second this is surreptitious pro-life messaging," he said. "The question is what's the responsibility of the designated officials in the school system?

"This class is a magnet for propaganda."