Utah lawmakers block bill to teach consent in sex education classes

Utah lawmakers have blocked a bill that would add the teaching of consent in a state where sexual violence is rampant.

In 2020, Utah was ranked as the 11th most dangerous state in the US for rape and sexual assault, KUTV reported.

The new legislation, known as HB0177, was struck down by the Utah statehouse education committee by a vote of seven to four. Certain elected officials argue that young people should be taught to abstain from sex, and believe that teaching consent in sexual education classes sends the signal that it's okay to be sexually active.

The senior director of reproductive rights at the State Innovation Exchange, Jennifer Driver, told The Guardian that that is "not what consent means,” adding: "When you don’t teach sex education when you’re not teaching about consent, you actually are putting young people ... in harm’s way."

Parents in Utah must opt-in for their kids to receive sexual health classes. The bill, which would have affected grades 7 to 12, would also have made sure that students were taught about coercion, sexual violence, and sexual assault mitigation.

The bill states that consent "means freely-given, informed, and knowledgeable agreement to do something, or for something to happen". The legislation also would have provided "sexual assault resource strategies", which the bill states "means tools a student can use to get help to address the physical and psychological effects of sexual assault if the student is sexually assaulted".

The struck-down law would also have included "sexual violence behaviour prevention education", which the bill says is education that "leads to a student understanding that no one has the right to touch an individual in a sexual manner if that individual does not want to be touched, is free from victim shaming, and focuses on developing a student's communication skills so that the student is able to communicate about, and show respect for, other individuals' boundaries".

Conservatives are pushing back on a local level across the US as the Biden Administration makes progress on minority rights a the federal level, something that many social conservatives see as detrimental to their traditional values.

Rape is the only violent crime that is committed in Utah at a rate above the national average. A Utah Department of Health website states that "nearly one in three women will experience some form of sexual violence during their lives".

According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2019 survey, 7.6 per cent of high school students in Utah said that they had been forced to have sex.

In October 2019, the state's largest paper The Salt Lake Tribune wrote that reported cases of gropings at Utah colleges in 2018 had tripled compared to three years earlier.

Current sex education in the state that addresses rape focuses on "refusal skills", putting the spotlight on the victim rather than the perpetrator.

Vice president of the anti-abortion group Pro-Life Utah Deanna Holland told The Guardian that she was "uncomfortable adding consent into our curriculum when our current curriculum already teaches these safety skills".

Utah law currently mandates that abstinence be put forward as the best way to avoid unwanted pregnancies and STDs. Representative Moss and other advocates have said that they will continue to try to pass the new legislation.