BOISE, Idaho — After a national moral panic campaign by right-wing blogs and social media accounts, Idaho conservatives are pressuring public officials to suspend porn literacy classes being offered as part of the state’s sex education programs.
A right-wing group called the Idaho Freedom Foundation took credit for initiating the campaign, claiming in a blog post that public health districts in the state “promote abortion, porn, gender transition and other degenerate topics” under the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s sex education program.
The term “degenerate,” which the group uses to designate any form of sexual content, was prominent in eugenics discourse and used extensively by the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s to justify censorship.
Idaho Freedom Foundation staffer Anna Miller tweeted, “Idaho’s government offers ‘porn literacy’ to students, Planned Parenthood curriculum and advocates for abortion. If this can happen in Idaho, it can happen anywhere.”
The conservative group called for “public outrage” about Idaho’s sex education program, “funded by federal grants,” using tax dollars to “purchase sex education products from the group Education, Training, and Research (ETR), whose curriculum is developed and endorsed by Planned Parenthood” and derided ETR as “an interest group promoting porn literacy.”
The group objected to what it termed “instruction on kink and power, pleasure, sexual identity, sexual acts, and sexual exploration in relation to pornography.” The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, by contrast, described the program as “evidence-based, optional sex education curriculum.”
Libs of TikTok Magnifies the Moral Panic at a National Level
Controversial right-wing social media account Libs of TikTok then magnified the moral panic at a national level, mocking an ETR video discussing non-shame-based sex education, teaching critical thinking skills, and the importance of porn literacy for students.
A researcher with conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation tweeted, “The future of conservatism will depend on parents willing to be called bad names in order to fight back against the people pushing porn, drag queens and gender confusion on our kids.”
The Idaho Freedom Foundation decried what it called “radical gender ideology” infiltrating Idaho schools, and quoted social media comments from “the public” declaring, “That’s why I homeschool,” “This is unbelievable and has got to stop!” “What ever happened to just sticking with teaching the three R’s in elementary schools?” and “It’s things like this that remind people why they need school choice.”
The group also quoted Allie Stuckey, an American Conservative commentator and podcast host, claiming that “Teaching children ‘porn literacy’ in school is sexual abuse.”
The Idaho Freedom Foundation called upon the Idaho Legislature to “put a stop to both Planned Parenthood and ETR’s influence in schools by rejecting federal grants funding the state’s sex education program.”
The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Responds
The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (DHW) issued a statement yesterday, Big Country News reported, clarifying that its Reducing the Risk program for Idaho schools “does not discuss porn literacy, and it is not a subject taught in the curriculum DHW provides. DHW does not collaborate with or seek the endorsement of Planned Parenthood for sex education curriculum.”
DHW further stressed that “high schools or school districts can choose to offer Reducing the Risk as part of a sex education curriculum. Schools that choose to offer Reducing the Risk do so with parental consent. They offer opt-in or opt-out for parents, in accordance with school district policies and Idaho Code.”
Groups like the Idaho Freedom Foundation do not oppose all mentions of porn in educational contexts, however, as school districts throughout the country regularly invite religious and conservative anti-porn and anti-sex-work speakers to disseminate non-fact-based “porn education.”
