By Alethea Thompson
Sexual Health Educator, Planned Parenthood of Central and Greater Northern New Jersey
Sex Education can be eye-opening to high school students, as well as college students. I feel students relate to music more often. There is a video that I have had the opportunity to see several times. My daughter, who is 22, brought it to my attention. It is about two men who are in a relationship and the beginning shows the men in love, and one of their mothers who accepts the relationship. However, when the couple goes to public places, such as the park, and they are holding hands, one mother pulls her children away from them and make negative facial expressions. Another time, the couple is harassed by a group of men, and later, when one of the men was walking through the neighborhood alone, he was beat up and died. His partner committed suicide.
This is a very deep video about men in a same-sex relationship. The artist of the song, “Far Away,” is Marsha Ambrosius, and her song was inspired by one of her own friends who committed suicide. It is such a beautiful, but sad song. It showed how people can be judgmental and go as far as being not only verbal abusive but physical abusive. This kind of behavior can have a very negative impact on peoples’ lives. I feel this video can be implemented into an educational program.
As I agree with you that this subject could bring a very interesting point to the table I feel like making this an educational video for young adolescents might not be the best idea. I feel like our school systems should set a very strong foundation on sex and same sex marriages before exposing them to something as violent as this act. I feel like most young children would be very confused after seeing something like this because most of them probably haven’t had much experience dealing with same sex couples. Maybe after setting a strong base against violence or “hate crimes” as one might call them then may come the possibility of introducing this topic. Children at this age are experiencing changes and lets say for instance that there may be a young child who is experiencing same sex desires, I feel like this would confuse the child even more and cause them to ask themselves if they might be beat to death if they go down that path or experience something else. The point I’m trying to make is that even though this could be a good idea, in my opinion we have a lot of teaching prior to relaying this message.