The Family Foundation: Teach Students Biology not Ideology

March 28, 2018

Members of the Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee (FLECAC) in Fairfax play a pivotal role in determining what public school students will learn in their sex-ed, or "Family Life Education" (FLE), classes. The Committee's decisions impact the final decisions its School Board will make, and the Fairfax County school system in particular is known for being a trend-setter for other school districts in Virginia and nationwide.

One member of FLECAC, Dan Press, recently decided that one particular definition in the FLE curriculum must be changed. The term to be redefined: "biological sex."

Refusing to recognize that biology determines a person's "sex," Mr. Press (and others) actually argued that sex is arbitrarily "assigned" at birth. He even claimed that all major medical institutions in the country agree with him! Incredibly, a majority of the FLECAC members thought he was right! The Committee recently voted to change the term "biological sex" to "sex assigned at birth" for all FLE classes from 8^th-10^th grades.

"Biological sex" is by no means a confusing or ambiguous term, no matter how much the members of FLEPAC want Fairfax students to believe so. (Read The Family Foundation's blog about the definition of "Sex & Gender.")

There are efforts to enact seemingly endless policies that enshrine this kind of identity confusion in law – like giving boys and girls unfettered access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers reserved for the opposite sex. Now we are witnessing an attempt to use this identity confusion as the basis to abandon the teaching of biological facts in High School.

This attempt to teach radical ideology instead of basic biology in schools must be opposed. The members of FLECAC plan to address this issue head-on at their upcoming meeting on April 12^th. Residents of Fairfax are invited to attend the meeting, but these meetings are not open for public comment.

Please send your comments to The Family Foundation, and we will deliver them to the members of the Committee. In particular, we'd like to know about every Biology textbook, Medical journal article, and other scientific and peer-reviewed resource that contradicts the outrageous claim that sex is "assigned at birth" rather than determined by biology.

It cannot be too much to ask for FLE classes to be consistent with what is being taught in biology classes. Please send your list of resources to Sean Maguire at sean@familyfoundation.org before April 12^th so that they can be shared with the members of the Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee.