Madam Chairman and Committee Members
My name is LeAnna Benn. I am the co-founder and National Director of Teen-Aid, Inc. founded in Washington State in 1981 for the sole purpose of teaching abstinence until marriage and the character development skills needed to achieve that goal.
I am here to urge you to vote No on HB 1178.
My reason is cost. This bill will cost the taxpayers of Washington in 3 ways.
1) It will cost to review all the sex education and abstinence education materials used in this state. Which department will hire a doctor to keep current on ALL medical research and do ongoing review of K-12 materials for all schools? There is no fiscal note on this bill. Or is this unnamed department going to only review certain publishers as the OSPI has chosen to do in the past when it reviews materials?
2) Teen-Aid, a publisher of abstinence education materials provides 22 people above minimum wage jobs in this state. Teen-Aid also brings over ¾ of a million dollars in federal grants to our state plus out of state dollars from sales of curricula. This law will negatively impact those funds.
3) Sales have been hurt tremendously by the publishing of our name on the OSPI website as unapproved materials. There are no adequate provisions for getting materials approved or due process for publishers. This law has the potential of further controlling or banning the materials produced in this state. We brought suit (which cost the state) but found that the state can say what it chooses and the court system has no recourse. The same materials were reviewed in several other states and found to be accurate. For example, today OSPI lists materials not even submitted for review dated 1988, which of course are no longer in print yet are still publicly criticized. There is no mechanism for re-review and HB1178 has no proviso either.
In actual practice schools cannot use HIV materials even if local doctors find them scientifically sound because school boards can only use “approved” materials. There is a Catch 22 with the HIV “medical accuracy” clause. And the only other unapproved materials are produced by abstinence promoters including the Medical Institute for Sexual Health who was just awarded a 3 year HHS/MCHB contract to help abstinence grantees keep medical materials current.
Why would you want to continue this unjust and costly practice? I urge you to vote “no” on a costly state censorship bill.
Thank you!
LeAnna Benn
National Director
509-482-2868