I’ll admit I’ve never heard of a condom race. I learned about it from a Right Wing Fundagelical website ChristianPost.com. according to the website, “’It’s shocking,’ Rebecca Friedrichs, the founder of For Kids & Country, said in an interview with The Christian Post when describing the condom relay races 10- and 11-year-old girls have been participating in at schools where, in front of boys, they’re taught how to put a condom on a model of an erect adult male penis.”
Rebecca Friedrichs’ For Kids and Country Website is very opposed to sex education in schools.
In fact, she refers to it as Sexxx education. For her, admitting people have sex is pornographic. She, like most Fundagelicals, claim to be anti-abortion but refuse to do the one thing that has been shown to reduce the abortion rate: teach comprehensive sex education. Freidrichs uses the “protect the children” mantra made popular by Anita Bryant in the 70s. She claims that sex education that discusses topics such as oral sex, anal sex, and condoms will psychologically scar children.
Freidreichs is joined by other Fundagelicals who are apoplectic about children learning how to use a condoms.
The Washington Post reported on the new California guidelines. “The framework, The Washington Post reported, covers six subject areas: nutrition and physical activity; growth, development and sexual health; injury prevention and safety; alcohol, tobacco and other drugs; mental, emotional and social health; and personal and community health.
In kindergarten through third grade, children will learn about gender identity; they’ll be taught about masturbation in fourth through sixth grades; in seventh and eighth grade they’ll learn about consent and sexual abuse, and in ninth through 12th grade, they’ll learn more about “contraception and healthy sexual relationships, including advice for LGBTQ students,”
Are there really “condom races”? The answer is yes. The condom race activity was added because research shows that these races increase the acceptance of use, and empowers women to know how to use a condom correctly and makes women more likely to request a man use a condom during sex. Is this a bad thing? The use of condoms reduces unwanted pregnancies and STIs. If training girl to use one correctly helps them, why wouldn’t we do it? The answer is that Fundagelicals continue to push abstinence-only education to the detriment of children and teens. They refuse to face the reality that children and teens have sex. They hold to the ideals of purity culture that have been shown to be harmful to women. Purity culture ties a woman’s identity and worth to virginity and can lead to lifelong shame and sexual dysfunction. So, I’m guessing that Friedrichs prefers Christian girls to deal with shame and sexual dysfunction instead of knowing how to protect themselves from STIs.
Friedrichs fills her website with fear. Children are going to learn about anal sex! Children are going to learn about BDSM! Children are going to learn gay people exist! I can tell you that as a former youth pastor, the Junior High School students I worked with talked about sex and exchanged information about sex, and so much of it was wrong. I ministered to youth pre-internet days. Now, teens have access to so much pornography; they are already developing sexual dysfunctions.
Park et al report in their research findings that, “Internet pornography’s unique properties (limitless novelty, potential for easy escalation to more extreme material, video format, etc.) may be potent enough to condition sexual arousal to aspects of Internet pornography use that do not readily transition to real-life partners, such that sex with desired partners may not register as meeting expectations and arousal declines.”
Yes, even good Christian kids get a hold of pornography. As a youth pastor, I had several High School boys admit to pornography addiction. (This was back in the day when it came in magazine form.) If Fundagelicals refuse to teach them “the facts of life,” then the internet will, and it will have devastating consequences.
When the term “condom races” is taken out of its full context, removing it from its purpose, and deliberately deleting its proven outcome, it can be made to sound inappropriate and scary. Do you know what is even scarier? Teenagers are going out into the world without knowing how to use a condom.