Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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In the next session of the Virginia General Assembly, Del. Tim Hugo, R-Fairfax County, plans again to introduce legislation that would prohibit public school systems from administering surveys that include questions about students' sexual activity, or change the surveys in some way.

Hugo says several parents have approached him with concerns about a Fairfax County survey that contained such questions. Their concerns are legitimate, he said, and I agree. But several safeguards already protect parents and children who object to such questions.

The surveys are anonymous. They are chosen by school boards and school superintendents, who may opt for sex-free questionnaires, as Salem's did.

Parents may decline to allow their children to fill out the forms. Students themselves can refuse to participate. Students also can skip any sex-related questions they encounter.

With those protections, I can only wonder what the concerns can be.

People in the "prevention community" support the questionnaires.

"You can't put your head in the sand and pretend that a problem doesn't exist," Dan Merenda, executive director of the Roanoke Adolescent Health Partnership, said in a Roanoke Times story on Monday.

Many parents apparently are satisfied with the Youth Risk Behavior Surveys that many schools employ. They were developed in part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nothing is more important in today's world than information, and few things are more valuable than information about sexual behavior among the young. Nowadays, sex can lead not only to pregnancy but also to chronic and even fatal diseases.

Thanks to the mass media, our children face sexual images and messages as never before. It is imperative that we have some idea of the effect these messages may have on our young, who are no more likely to tell us than we were to tell our parents.

Yes, evidence of sexual precociousness is upsetting. But eliminating or diluting sex-related questions for middle school and high school students would deprive us of clues we can use to fight against today's steaming stew of sexual over-emphasis.

Hugo's bill passed the House of Delegates last session, but he withdrew it so he could "see if there is middle ground, so we can get good information, yet protect the rights of parents."

Hugo and other legislators may have tackled this issue in part for political advantage. Few things attract attention as readily as sex does.

Survey questions don't cause sexual behavior. They help us form a picture of the real situation. And we need that picture now more than ever.