ABSTRACT
Sexuality education is undoubtedly one of the most controversial subjects in the school curriculum. In a recent article entitled “Sex, lies and political extremists,” Debra Haffner, president of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), describes receiving more than 30,000 hate letters in one month. These letters, according to Haffner, are the result of a campaign by an extremist political and religious organization called Concerned Women for America. The letters accuse SIECUS of promoting “promiscuity, homosexuality, masturbation, abortion, pedophilia and incest” (1996, p. 2). Many letters also include handwritten personal attacks on Haffner. She is warned that she will be “destroyed” and that God has a place for her in the “lake of fire.” In over twenty years of work in sexuality education Haffner claims she has never received so much hate mail. “I am horrified,” she writes, “because the attacks are outright lies.” Haffner admonished her readers to “join together to combat religious and political extremist organizations and their influence” (p. 3).
