Paraguay sex ed curriculum welcomed

Evangelicals and other Christians are expressing strong support for Paraguay’s first national sex education curriculum, to be rolled out in 2025.

The initiative is a response to the crisis by which the country has the second highest rate of teenage pregnancy in South America, surpassed only by Venezuela. Paraguayan government figures show that, in 2023, 10,697 adolescents aged 15–19, and 405 girls aged 10–14 gave birth in the country, which has a population of under 7 million.

Equally alarming are the figures on sexual abuse, with 4,084 girls and adolescents falling victim last year.

Both evangelical and Catholic churches have expressed support for the new curriculum. It refers only to sex between ‘a man and a woman’, warns that ‘we know condoms are not an adequate protection’ and that ‘masturbation leads to problems of frustration and isolation’. Students are also to be taught that ‘sexual relations are not for children or teenagers, nor for boyfriends or girlfriends; they are for adults committed to each other for life’.

One of the programme’s most prominent supporters is Miguel Ortigoza, an evangelical pastor from Capitol Ministries, a Washington-based not-for-profit organisation that has held Bible studies in the White House. He insists that Paraguay ‘has a very strong Judeo-Christian culture that still prevails, and there’s fierce resistance to anything that goes against our principles’.

But the curriculum has attracted much criticism from various liberal groupings, both in the UK and South America, who argue that it is driven not by scientific evidence but religious fundamentalism.