Who We Are
We’re building a movement of informed, tenacious sex ed voters, and we need your help.
Sex education is so much more than the birds and the bees.
Sex education can improve school safety and reduce child abuse, gender-based violence, and LGBTQ+ bullying. It can prepare students to communicate well about complex and often difficult topics, and to have healthy, satisfying relationships for the rest of their lives. It can teach our kids to co-create a world where they are safe in their own bodies and identities, and respect the humanity of every one of their peers.
So it’s no surprise that every poll taken reveals the same thing: sex education enjoys broad support in the United States. Why then is it so hard to pass and implement comprehensive, progressive sex education policy? Why isn’t there more outrage and activism focused on making it a resource for our kids? Why are even progressive candidates and elected officials reluctant to say the word “sex” and make comprehensive sex education a top priority?
We believe three interlocking factors are at play:
- Voter ignorance: Most voters haven’t spent much time thinking about the issue. Many think, falsely, that kids are already getting good sex ed at school. Others are in favor of improving sex education, but believe (erroneously) that this puts them in the minority, so they are afraid to speak up about it. But most of all, voters don’t know what’s included in sex education, and they don’t know how it could play a major role in creating a better future for us all.
- Defensive posture: Too many campaigns for sex education focus on a narrow, stigma- and fear-based message about teen pregnancy and STI prevention. The problem with this approach is twofold: first, many parents don’t want to think their kids will have sex while still teenagers at all, so they don’t believe their children need support and detailed, reliable information. Second, this scare-mongering messaging ignores the culturally transformative potential of sex education, missing out entirely on the chance to inspire voters to get involved in making real, meaningful positive change in their homes and in their communities.
- Lack of movement power: Until EducateUS, there has been no national c4 or PAC organization with sex education policy as a top priority. Other c4 and PAC organizations get involved in the issue periodically, but they are rarely willing to risk their hard-won political capital on it. In practice, that means that our movement has had vanishingly little political power.
We have the power to flip the script on all three of these factors, and that’s exactly what EducateUS is built for. Together with you and leaders on the ground in communities across the country, we’re telling a big, bold new story about the culturally transformative power of sex education. We’re turning undecided and unengaged citizens into passionate sex education voters, and building a juggernaut of grassroots power strong enough to usher in a new era of sex education — one in which every child in the country learns how to love and be loved without shame, blame or fear. And we’re doing it in solidarity with other anti-racist, feminist and pro-LGBTQ liberation organizing forces, as our causes are one and the same at the root.