This week’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver tackled the appalling state of sex education in the United States. If you were lucky enough to receive adequate sex ed as a youth, you’re sadly probably in the minority; as there is no required standard for sex ed in this country, with only 22 states to mandate it, and only 13 requiring the information taught to be “medically accurate.”
That’s super f*cked up! Elaborating, John Oliver points out that Mississippi, the state ranking second in teen pregnancy, has a law that prohibits condom demonstration in class. Utah bans teaching “the intricacies of intercourse,” while eight states are considering laws about what teachers can teach about homosexuality, and, to top it all off, Congress just passed $75 million in funding for abstinence-only education.
Because “human sexuality, unlike calculus, is something you actually need to know about for the rest of your life,” Oliver enlisted the help of Nick Offerman, Laverne Cox, Jack McBrayer, Megan Mullally, Kristen Schaal, Kumail Nanjiani, and Aisha Tyler to put together an actually helpful sex ed video for teens (17:45 mark). It even features a cameo from former sex ed tape actor Jonathan Banks to remind everyone that “if anyone ever tells you that getting your period makes you better at bowling, they’re a f*cking idiot.”
