The public school district in Aberdeen, S.D., which showed a Catholic version of a sex education program to students, is taking steps to correct the violation after getting a Jan. 9 letter from Staff Attorney Patrick Elliott.
The health curriculum at Central High School included “Romance without Regret,” a religious presentation promoting sexual abstinence and “chastity” from a Catholic perspective. The presenters prayed and made religious references such as “Realize that purity is a gift from Jesus, we have to ask him of it, and he’ll give it to us.”
It also denigrated students, particularly girls, who had had sex, describing a man who has sex with a woman as “robbing her purity” and watching pornography as “looking at the corpse of a woman’s heart.” It also quoted many debunked and misleading health statistics.
The superintendent called Elliott two weeks later to say that the video was shown mistakenly instead of a secular version of the presentation. She reviewed both versions of the film in full and assured FFRF that she recognized the Catholic version was inappropriate for public schools and would not be shown again.
