Sex education in the workplace

[glatt]

Your boss asks you to come to a sex education class he is presenting, complete with slideshow. Do you go? It's at work during the middle of the day.

Now what if that boss is a US Senator, and you are an intern?

As crazy as it seems, for 7 years, Republican Tom Coburn from Oklahoma has been presenting a class to interns concerning the risks of sexual activity. Lots of graphic close-up slides of diseased genitalia are included.

Washington post article

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Sex education is a good thing, and I'm all in favor of it, but there seems to be something fishy about a boss asking his employees to attend such a thing. Also, as a bible-thumping conservative, his presentation is a little skewed toward his own beliefs.

But mostly I'm amazed that a U.S. Senator is giving sex education slide shows in the basement of the Capitol.

from the article:

This was Sen. Tom Coburn's lecture on sexually transmitted diseases, held yesterday for the young congressional staff in the place where such things are talked about: the basement -- in this case, of the Capitol. It is no small thing to ask an intern who is trying his best to mimic a working adult to come to a lecture like this in the middle of a workday, considering the danger of being transported back to the blushing days of high school sex ed.

Coburn, a conservative, Bible-quoting Republican from Oklahoma, tried his best to put the newbies at ease; his staffers called the lecture "Revenge of the STDs" after the "Star Wars" movie, gave out fliers featuring Yoda and C-3PO saying "Oh, how dreadful!" and played campy horror music from "The Phantom Menace" as people filed in. In the back they served pizza and sodas.

For the first few minutes, it worked, as Coburn flipped through slides showing dry facts and figures about STDs, that 2 of every 3 new cases occur in people younger than 25, that most occur in people with multiple sexual partners. Then Coburn got serious. He flipped to his next slide. It showed a part of the male anatomy but not as a science textbook drawing; this was the real thing, and a particularly sorry example; it looked like it had been left outside by mistake and then rusted in some unnatural way, with scaly dry spots, and warts on an angry red background.

"His unwitting patients should get a second opinion," says Bill Smith, vice president of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. "What Dr. Coburn did was resort to typical scare tactics, showing pictures of genital warts that have gone untreated for decades, even though genital warts are highly treatable."

However, even Smith admitted, after hearing a report from staff members who attended, that this was a "different Sen. Coburn. In a lot of cases he did set his ideology aside."

...

During his 40-minute slideshow, Coburn avoided any spiritual overtones and spoke in his usual brisk clinical way. Still, Smith detected bias, taking issue, for example, with Coburn's contention that condoms are only 69 percent effective in preventing HIV; Smith says the latest studies show condoms to be 99 percent effective.

But Smith did give Coburn credit for saying during the question-and-answer portion, "Condoms do reduce the risk of transmission, and they work very well against HIV. If you decide to do any risky sexual behavior, use a condom." Being a family doctor adds a dose of realism to his view; Coburn mentioned that he recently delivered a baby to a 12-year-old.