Convicted Offender Enters Sex Education Debate : Schools: Ex-coach supports banning Planned Parenthood and AIDS Care from workshops.

An unexpected voice has been added to the debate in Ventura County over sex education in public schools: that of former Ventura High football coach and convicted sex offender Harvey Kochel.

Kochel, who pleaded guilty in 1993 to having sex with a 15-year-old girl and served half of a two-year prison sentence, wrote a letter to the county Board of Education earlier this month supporting a proposal to exclude Planned Parenthood and AIDS Care from sex education workshops for teachers.

Kochel, 51, said the letter was written at the suggestion of members of his church, the Missionary Church of Ventura.

“That was just to try to support the cause of what our church is trying to do,” said Kochel, who declined further comment when reached at his home Thursday.

In the one-page letter, Kochel says that both Planned Parenthood and AIDS Care “either directly or indirectly, condon sexual activity by students . . . by ‘selling’ the concept of ‘safe sex.’ ”

Students, he said, should be taught to abstain from sex until “they have matured in the interactions of men and women.”

“Once sex becomes a part of an adolescents life-style their lives are not the same--the innocence of youth becomes history,” Kochel wrote.

Kochel, the most successful football coach in Ventura High history, also condemned homosexuals, describing same-sex relationships as a “perverse, wrong way of life.”

“Please don’t open up any doors to the homosexual community,” he wrote, urging the county Board of Education to ban gay men infected with AIDS from speaking to students.

Mary Jo McGrath, the lawyer who investigated Kochel for the Ventura Unified School District, said she was stunned that the former coach and teacher would write such a letter.

“I guess the thing I question is given what the man did, everything he says in here (the letter) underscores the harm that he did,” McGrath said. “If he really had a change of heart about what he did, he could make a big difference in speaking directly to people who think it’s no big deal.”

But Board of Education Trustee Angela Miller said she welcomes all letters on the subject, no matter who writes them.

“They tell us we all have a right to voice our opinions, that this is America,” Miller said.

Added Kathleen Parsa, a member of Kochel’s church who encouraged the letter-writing campaign: “He’s just a different person this past year that I’ve known him. People do change.”

Along with Kochel’s letter, county Superintendent of Schools Charles Weis has received more than a dozen letters in support of Board President Wendy Larner’s effort to ban Planned Parenthood, AIDS Care and the Public Health Department from participating in county-sponsored training sessions.

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The office also has received 71 signed petitions backing Larner’s proposal.

Larner said she is concerned that information presented by the three groups is inappropriate for teachers to relay in the classroom. Through their words and actions, she said, those groups violate the spirit of the state education code and laws prohibiting sex with minors.

“They are encouraging teachers to teach children about something children ought not to be doing,” she said.

Instead of talking about “safe sex,” Larner said, teachers’ workshops should place more emphasis on abstinence. Condoms, she said, should be discussed only in terms of their failure rates.

The effectiveness of other birth control methods, Larner said, could be discussed with high school juniors and seniors, but only in the context of marriage.

Representatives from Planned Parenthood, AIDS Care and the health department have defended their educational programs saying they do emphasize abstinence. But representatives of those groups also said teen-agers need to be fully informed about AIDS, birth control and sexually transmitted diseases in order to protect themselves.

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To stop giving that information to teachers, they said, will ultimately harm children.

Larner’s proposal comes two months after another trustee suggested reviewing the policy on outside speakers for sex-education workshops sponsored by the county.

Weis, whose office provides support for educational programs, said he does not believe it is the role of the county Board of Education to dictate the content of teacher training sessions.

Larner disagrees, saying the board is responsible for setting broad policies that influence curriculum. She will present her idea at a board Monday, in a meeting that is expected to draw advocates on both sides of the sex-education issue.

It begins at 6 p.m. in the Administrative Services Center, 5189 Verdugo Way in Camarillo.

The Unity Pride Coalition, Ventura County groups that represent the civil rights of people infected with HIV or AIDS, has announced plans to hold a demonstration before the meeting.

Coalition Director Neil Demers-Grey said he expects 30 to 40 people to protest the proposed exclusion of Planned Parenthood, AIDS Care and public health workers.

Larner said she does not mind the controversy, but hopes the protesters will remain orderly.

“As long as they do things according to constitutional principles, I have no objections,” she said.