Hidden Link

February 29, 2024

By JENNIFER SMITH 

After about a decade of disinterest in a law aimed at modernizing and codifying sex ed standards, House leadership seems poised yet again to wave it away. Instead of viewing newly updated state sex ed guidelines as a sign of momentum, as advocates do, House Speaker Ron Mariano suggests that it is in fact a new reason to slow-walk the Healthy Youth Act for a fifth time.

“Given that it has been less than a year since [the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education] adopted the new guidelines, it is important that we give school districts adequate time to implement them, rather than rush to potentially amend or codify them into law,” Mariano said in a statement Monday.

Proponents have expressed mystification, and frustration, about the House’s continued resistance to the bill. Former Senate president Harriette Chandler, who supported the bill during her time in office, repeatedly called the long delay “a disgrace” last month on a local cable show she hosts while talking with bill sponsor Rep. Jim O’Day.

“They changed the entire framework through DESE, finally,” O’Day told Chandler, emphasizing that the last time the sexual health guidelines were updated was in 1999. “Here we are now in 2024, where we at least have a good, solid, well-rounded, medically accurate, age-appropriate, evidence-based [standard],” he said. 

O’Day said the new guidelines, which mirror Healthy Youth Act priorities, indicate that Gov. Maura Healey backs the bill’s goals in principle. 

“So we now have that framework, but that’s all we have,” O’Day said.

The state finally acted after 25 years to update its guidelines, recommending medically accurate, age-appropriate programs. But the proposed law doesn’t just codify the new standards. It would also require data collection on what sexual education programs are being taught across the Commonwealth and impose a requirement that the state guidelines be updated at least every decade.

Proponents of the bill say a shortcoming of the new state education department guidelines is that they are not curriculum mandates. 

As Sen. Sal DiDomenico, a bill sponsor, noted last week, Massachusetts schools that choose to offer sexual health classes could still emphasize abstinence-only or scientifically inaccurate instruction. The Healthy Youth Act still lets schools opt not to teach sex ed and allows parents to opt their children out, but it creates a floor for the quality of instruction that is offered.

During earlier unsuccessful attempts at passage, proponents said school and parent flexibility had been a sticking point in legislative debate. Several senators say they are unclear about the rationale for another delay.

Despite the recent rush to protect reproductive health options following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Beacon Hill can still be “sex shy.” 

O’Day noted six years ago that some legislators worried that the bill would encourage youth sexual behavior. "There are some of my colleagues who are still skittish about this issue," he said in 2018. "It blows my mind. But it is what it is.”

In the Massachusetts Legislature, ambivalence and substantive objection can have the same effect. Without buy-in from the speaker, the bill may wither without a House vote for a fifth time, as proponents scratch their heads trying to decode Mariano’s resistance.

“To be honest we don’t truly know,” said Jamie Klufts, co-chair of the Healthy Youth Coalition, when asked why Mariano seems reluctant to move the bill forward. “We just hope to have the opportunity to speak with him and other House leadership to make sure they know that this bill matters so much right now.”

The Senate’s only scheduled business on Thursday is taking up the Healthy Youth Act once again. Asked by reporters on Monday if she was confident about its chances in the House, Senate President Karen Spilka said only that “there’s confidence that it will make it out of the Senate.”