Poll Cites Support for Sex Education

A poll of Ventura County voters demonstrated strong support across political and socioeconomic lines for requiring schools to teach sex education.

In the survey commissioned by Planned Parenthood, most voters polled also supported funding birth control for low-income women.

“The significance of this is to show politicians--this is how the voting public feels about family planning and sex ed,” said Terri Thorfinnson, Planned Parenthood spokeswoman. “The politicians are out of step.”

The poll’s questions, however, did not address what constitutes responsible sex education--a question that has vexed school districts across Ventura County.

The survey was conducted by Celinda Lake of Washington, D.C.-based Lake, Sosin, Snell, Perry and Associates.

Professional interviewers conducted the survey by phone in the second week of January. It reached 1,000 registered voters in Ventura County expected to vote in the 1998 congressional election. Thorfinnson said that starting next week, Planned Parenthood will begin using the results to influence candidates and school boards throughout Ventura County.

“We had no credibility in talking to them before the poll results,” she said. “This will set new terrain for us.”

When asked whether they favor or oppose “requiring schools to teach sex education,” 75% of voters responded that they favor the proposal. That support holds up in both ends of the county--with 74% in the east and 77% in the west, Thorfinnson said.

Although Latinas showed the strongest support, with 80% favoring it, three out of four white voters advocated the proposal.

The poll also reveals strong bipartisan support for sex education: 86% of Democrats, 80% of Independents and 65% of Republicans support requiring schools to teach responsible sex education.

Sixty-three percent of Christian fundamentalists favor requiring schools to teach sex education, compared to 72% of traditional Protestants, 64% of Evangelicals and nontraditional religions, 78% of Roman Catholics and 83% of those of no religious persuasion.

Although similar polls were conducted in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, Thorfinnson and Lake said the results in Ventura County were particularly “startling,” given sex education policy skirmishes here in the past.

In Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, particularly, groups have advocated sex education in schools that stresses abstinence.

Then in 1995, the county Board of Education, led by then school board member Wendy Larner, voted 3-2 to ban Planned Parenthood and AIDS Care speakers from educational workshops--a move some educators said could limit what Ventura County schoolchildren learn in sex-education classes.

But a day later, Ventura County Schools Supt. Charles Weis blasted the county Board of Education for its “far-right political agenda.”

The state Department of Education later sided with Weis.

“Administrators have thus far responded to a very small, vocal minority who feel parents don’t want kids to know all the info,” Thorfinnson said. “But in fact, parents assume their kids are getting all the information, and are upset about the fact that there could be obstacles to getting the information in school.”

Pollster Lake said that even those who might philosophically support abstinence still support comprehensive sex education.

“People think abstinence is unrealistic,” she said. “People in focus groups say, ‘Our own grandparents weren’t abstinent as teens. It’s not realistic in today’s world.’ ”

Like other California voters, Ventura voters said they support publicly funding birth control for low-income women.

This, too, cuts across political party lines--90% of Democrats, 80% of Independents and 66% of Republicans support public funding of birth control.

The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3%.