Faith, Progressive Sexuality Education, and Queer Secularism: Unsettling Associations

Abstract

The progressive sexuality education that I explore in this chapter happens within schools, in out-of-school programs, and at public events (specifically, I focus on a comedy festival act). I recognize that these places are incredibly distinct, with different audiences and purposes. But looking across these sites it is possible to see how particular sets of ideas, which I associate with secularism, produce and reference the 'taken-for-granted' understandings that are apparent to Fields. The focus in this chapter is predominantly the US context, because this is where distinctions between abstinence and comprehensive approaches have been most pronounced and most contested. While these ideas have their roots in the USA they also have resonance beyond the USA, including Australia, where I live. I consider how comprehensive approaches interact with and sometimes frame relations between religiosity, sexuality education, and secularism, and I consider faith-based organizations' (FBOs) relationships with comprehensive approaches. I also draw on Nancy Lesko's Feeling Abstinent? Feeling comprehensive?; her examination of the role of affect in structuring feelings toward these different approaches is placed alongside two ideas of Jasbir Puar's 'sexual exceptionalism' and 'queer secularism'. I identify and trace some of the relations between queer secularism, abstinence versus comprehensive binaries, and their associated affects; I think about how these affective binaries are sustained via sexual exceptionalism and queer secularism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)