Sex Ed Week in Review: The Hobby Lobby Issue

Hobby Lobby, Religious Freedom, and Us

By now, most people within the sex ed sector and throughout the U.S. are aware that on March 25 the Supreme Court heard Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. The issue at hand, writes SCOTUSblog, is whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) allows for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby craft stores to exclude contraceptives that are otherwise afforded to all individuals under national health insurance law from coverage under employment-based health insurance due to the corporation owner’s religious objections. However, RH Reality Check argues that this case is also very much about sex discrimination, since “refusing to provide insurance coverage for contraception is sex discrimination” in the opinion of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The article confronts the grim fact that a ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby would, in the words of Justice Elena Kagan, “quite directly, quite tangibly [harm]” women by reducing access to some of the most effective forms of contraceptives, such as IUDs, which also bear some of the highest up-front costs. The New York Times linked to an amicus brief filed by reproductive health experts indicating that one-third of women in the U.S. would switch to a more effective form of contraception, such as IUDs, if cost was not an issue. But with the focus remaining on the issue of religious freedoms within greater news media, the real negative impact the case could have on women remains mostly unaddressed.

LGBTQ Nation and The Advocate further assert that a ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby could negatively impacts LGBT+ individuals, since allowing religious exemptions from the Affordable Care Act could lead to for-profit corporations seeking religious exemptions from paying for other services, such as HIV treatments. Or they could seek exemption from non-discrimination laws that protect populations whose identities they religiously oppose. Considering recent pushes for religious liberty laws at the state level, such as Arizona’s SB 1062, which would very likely lead to widespread public discrimination against LGBT+ communities, this is a threat that gay and trans* people are not taking lightly. However, according to Edie Windsor’s attorney Roberta Kaplan, the court has said that corporations must “follow laws of general application” when they have argued against other laws, such as minimum wage or child labor laws, based upon religious beliefs. This provides some assurance against such a harmful slippery-slope outcome to the court’s ruling.

Separate, but why?

In the March 13 issue of TIME magazine, Camille Paglia argued that there are real biological and social differences between boys and girls, and that sex ed classes should be sex-specific in order to address those issues properly. However, a 2014 meta-analysis by Pahlke, Hyde, and Allison comparing academic outcomes of 1.6 million students in same-sex and coeducational classrooms from 21 countries and the U.S., specifically, showed “no, or not much” advantage of single-sex over coeducational schooling (p. 23). The study sites biological differences between males and females as one of the underlying motivations for supplying single-sex education. Differences that are the same, or very similar to the ones pointed out by Paglia. But the authors found “no support for these assumptions” that “boys and girls should have better outcomes in [single-sex] classrooms compared with [coeducational] classrooms” because they “need to be taught differently” (p. 24).

“So why are we still doing it?” asks The Conversation. While the APA study did not look at performance in sex ed coursework, The Conversation article points to sources showing that single-sex education increases gender stereotyping and decreases sexual equity. In light of recent instances addressed by Martha Kempner (such as this one), of public schools forcing students to conform to stereotypical gender norms instead of supporting their interests and natural individual development, it does not make sense to implement methods in sex ed classes that produce the same negative effects on the sexual and social development of girls and boys that sex ed is supposed to be working against.

Comprehensive Sex Ed Riles Mass. Controversy

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Sen. Katherine Clark and Rep. Jim O’Day have stirred up controversy by introducing Bill H.3793, “An Act Relative to Healthy Youth,” which would require any school district teaching sex ed to teach “the benefits of abstinence and delaying sexual activity; the importance of using contraception to prevent pregnancy and [STDs]; and the need to develop relationship and communication skills.” In other words: “accurate, age-appropriate and comprehensive” sex education. However, the opposition, including Andrew Beckwith of the Massachusetts Family Institute, are framing the issue as one of a loss of local school district control over deciding what information is “age-appropriate” for students in any particular area of the state.

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