The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (also known as SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change) develops and advocates for the adoption of left-of-center “comprehensive” sexual education curricula and opposes abstinence education and parental oversight of sex ed classes in K-12 schools.

Background

The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States was founded in 1964 by sexual education activist Mary S. Calderone, then a medical director at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, along with fellow activists Wallace Fulton, William Genne, Lester Kirkendall, Harold Lief, and Clark Vincent. ¹

In the 1980s, following the initial outbreaks of HIV/AIDS, SIECUS began co-sponsoring events with LGBT organizations, such as Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and publishing materials about the disease directed at the public, particularly parents, such as How to Talk to your Children About AIDS. ²

In the 1990s, to expand its federal policy advocacy efforts, the organization opened an office in Washington, D.C. Later, in the early 2000s, SIECUS began to focus on policy advocacy on the state and local level. In 2019, the organization changed its branding, typically identifying itself with the acronym “SIECUS” and adding the tagline “Sex Ed for Social Change,” in lieu of its fully spelled out name.  ³

Advocacy

Opposition to Abstinence Education

In 2022, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States released a booklet, “Federal Funding Overview: Fiscal Year 2022,” which in addition to noting various favored federal and state sexual education programs, outlines at length the group’s opposition to programs that it categorizes as either “Abstinence-Only Until Marriage” or “Abstinence-Only / Sexual Risk Avoidance.” According to the booklet, these programs, which generally advise young students that the best way to avoid sexually transmitted infections is to avoid engaging in sexual activities, “deny autonomy of young people, stigmatize sexually active young people, and exclude LGBTQ+ identifying folks.” ⁴

Opposition to Parental Rights bills

In a 2022 policy brief published by the SIECUS, “Defending Access to Inclusive and Affirming Education,” the organization advocates against “Parental Rights” bills (also known as “curriculum transparency bills”), which generally allow parents of children at a given public school to have access to detailed information about sexual education classes taught at the schools their children attend. According to the brief, such bills are tools of the “the Regressive Minority…to increase [the] administrative burden on schools and censor educators.” ⁵

Sex Education Grant Criteria

According to a 2023 report published by the Claremont Institute, titled “The Sex-Ed Industrial Complex: How Conservative School Districts Peddle Radical Sex Education to Children,” it is claimed that SIECUS was one of several “radical interest groups” which helped develop the “National Health Education Standards (NHES)” criteria for determining recipients of grants towards sex education programs. Other groups listed include Planned Parenthood, the Transgender Training Institute, Future of Sex Ed, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and Advocates for Youth (AFY). ⁶

People

Christine Soyong Harley has been the president and CEO of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States since 2019. Previously, Harley ran a boutique consulting firm and was the director of Intergovernmental Affairs for the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders during the Obama administration. ⁷

John Santelli is the chair of SIECUS’s board of directors, a professor of population and family health and pediatrics at Columbia University, a senior consultant for the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Adolescent Health. Formerly, Santelli was the chair of the Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia’s Mailman School, a member of the 2016 Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, president of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, and, before joining Columbia’s faculty in 2004, an employee of the Baltimore City Health Department and the Centers for Disease Control. ^{8 9}

1. ^[1]“Our History.” SIECUS. Accessed July 18, 2022. https://siecus.org/about-siecus/our-history/
2.  “Our History.” SIECUS. Accessed July 18, 2022. https://siecus.org/about-siecus/our-history/
3. “Our History.” SIECUS. Accessed July 18, 2022.https://siecus.org/about-siecus/our-history/
4. “Federal Funding Overview: Fiscal Year 2022.” SIECUS. March 2022. Accessed July 18, 2022. https://siecus.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/FY22-Federal-Funding-Overview.pdf
5. Macklin, Alison, and Nawal Umar. “Defending Access to Inclusive and Affirming Education.” SIECUS. 2022 Accessed July 18, 2022. https://siecus.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/SIECUS-POLICY-BRIEF-Defending-Access-to-Inclusive-Affirming-Education.pdf
6. Miller, Anna K. and Scott Yenor. “The Sex-Ed Industrial Complex: How Conservative School Districts Peddle Radical Sex Education to Children.” Claremont Institute, Accessed August 14, 2023. https://dc.claremont.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/The-Sex-Ed-Industrial-Complex.pdf
7. “Christine Soyong Harley.” SIECUS. Accessed July 18, 2022. https://siecus.org/staff-profile/chris-harley/
8. “Staff & Board.” SIECUS. Accessed July 18, 2022. https://siecus.org/about-siecus/staff-and-board/
9. “John Santelli.” Columbia: Mailman School of Public Health. June 7, 2022. Accessed July 18, 2022. https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/people/our-faculty/js2637