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Community Corner

"Let's Talk About Sex"

Forum to Examine Sex Education Attitudes

"Let's Talk About Sex," a documentary film that takes a revealing look at how American attitudes toward adolescent sexuality affect today's teenagers, will be screened at a Community Forum in Newbury Park on Friday, July 25.

The 7:30 p.m. screening at the Conejo Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship will be followed by a discussion led by church member Robin Lindsey, facilitator of CVUUF's education program Our Whole Lives.

The documentary was created by New York-based fashion photographer James Houston, whose film points out that while Americans live in a society where sex is used to sell everything from lipstick to laptops, teens are rarely offered the opportunity to discuss sex in an open, honest way.

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Houston found that young people pay a high price for the fear and silence around sex and sexuality, including unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and even HIV. U.S. taxpayers are paying billions to deal with these preventable problems, the documentary reports.

The filmmaker says he was shocked to learn that every day in America, 10,000 teens catch a sexually transmitted disease, 2,400 teen girls get pregnant and 55 young people are infected with HIV. Houston found that attitudes about sex are much different in Western Europe and there are far fewer teen-age pregnancies and abortions.

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"Sexuality is such a big part of who we are, and I believe that most people want to talk to their children about it but they just don't know how, Houston wrote for the Huffington Post. "Let's Talk About Sex" was created as a tool for parents, educators and community leaders to initiate healthy, age-appropriate conversations about sexual health.

In the discussion, Lindsey will talk about issues raised in the film and some of the strategies in the church's Our Whole Lives series of courses designed for everyone from young children to adults. The courses equip participants with accurate, age-appropriate information in six subject areas: human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, sexual health, and society and culture.

The forum is open to the public and free; donations will be accepted. The Conejo Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship is located at 3327 Old Conejo Road in Newbury Park. For information, visit forum.cvuuf.org.

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