Nancy King on Sex Education

By Aaron Kaufman.

As voters prepare to go the polls in September, Democratic voters in District 39 should know a vital piece of information before they make their decision in the State Senate primary between Saqib Ali and Nancy King: Mrs. King has worked to prevent Montgomery County from modernizing its sex education curriculum.

In 2002, as a member of the Montgomery County Board of Education, she cast the lone vote (Page 49) against a revised sex education curriculum that included a video demonstration of how to properly use condoms and allowed teachers to openly address homosexuality in class. At the time I was a member of the Family Life and Human Sexuality Advisory Committee, a group of county residents appointed by the Board to advise them on sex education matters. We lobbied to institute these common-sense changes to our sex education curriculum. The committee wanted to make sure that our county’s youth had the tools they needed to make healthy decisions and that our school curriculum promoted tolerance of all individuals, regardlesss of sexual orientation. The revised curriculum was passed 5 to 1. Even Republicans Sharon Cox and Steve Abrams supported the revisions.

King’s vote against this widely-embraced piece of legislation was something one might expect of a school board member in Alabama or Mississippi. However, her archaic views with regards to sex education have no place in Montgomery County.

Full disclosure: I am volunteering on Saqib’s campaign this summer and the above reflects policy differences not personal ones.