Podcast Transcript: LGBT-Friendly Teen Pregnancy Prevention

NCFY: Welcome to Voices from the Field, a podcast series from the Family and Youth Services Bureau.

When the Hub Teen Center in Bristol, VT, won an ACF grant to start a teen pregnancy prevention class, they wanted their curriculum to be as inclusive as possible. That meant tailoring the material so that it was relevant to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth, as well as their straight peers. 

Program coordinator Ryan Krushenick says such efforts are essential since you never know what experiences young people might have in their personal lives. 

Ryan Krushenick: We wanted to make sure while teaching this lesson that it was 100 percent queer positive. Anyone that walks through the door, whether they’re eleven, whether they were nineteen, we didn’t ask if they were gay or straight or bi or questioning or neither. And we didn’t assume their orientation. A lot of teens say that they’re straight. And if they are, they are. If it turns out later in life they’re not, they’re not. I’m never going to assume that someone’s going to be one thing for their entire life or not. 

Additionally, we wanted to make sure that we weren’t just teaching safe heterosexual sex. We had to show the risks and the remedies of safe homosexual sex. A lot of people who were in here just asking questions didn’t know that female-to-female sex, it was possible to transmit any disease. So there would be no need for safe sex. They thought it was completely 100 percent safe, which isn’t true. That’s a standard misconception. 

There’s a lot of stories about very pressured situations where someone’s more or less badgering and harassing for sex out of someone and ways to resist that. We made sure that it wasn’t always just a male badgering a woman. Maybe sometimes it’s a male badgering another male. Maybe sometimes it’s a woman badgering a male. We kept everything as gender neutral as possible. And we always made sure that when we could and when it was allowed to throw in if you’re going to have say anal sex, here’s the way how to do it safely. Or if you’re going to do oral sex on a male or a female, here’s the risks that you need to look out for. 

And at first, the kids sort of giggled a little bit. But then when we got into it and we talked about the risks and what was more risky and what was less risky, they were all very receptive. There wasn’t one teen there that didn’t ask at least a few questions every lesson. 

NCFY: Krushnek says that the approach can help every teen, no matter how they identify themselves. 

Krushenick: There were strong possibilities that at least one if not more of the people in our twelve person group would at least have a same-sex relationship, whether its long or short-lived at some point in their life. Our goal is to make sure that whether it’s once, whether it’s a lifetime thing, whether it’s an on-and-off thing, that it’s safe and that they feel comfortable entering it because they’ve been armed with the skills and knowledge to know how to deal with anything that could come up within their adult or sexual life. 

When we started up the lesson, we started out by saying with grins on our faces very directly, there’s going to be some awkward subjects in here. There’s going to be some things that make you laugh. There’s going to be some things that maybe make you think a little bit. It’s going to be awkward, but we’re all in it together. We’ve got this. And I think the kids are really receptive to that. 

We weren’t talking to them like teachers. We weren’t talking to them like a classroom. We were talking to them like peers. And I think that really helped to bring everybody to a comfort level that was equal. 

And that was just sort of the aesthetic that we carried through with it. You’re going to learn everything. And even if you’re not gay, even if you’re never going to have a homosexual relationship, you’re going to know the risks that go into it. 

And maybe at some point in your life, you’re going to have a friend who is engaging in these relationships and they might have some questions. And they can turn to you to be able to answer this because you took the course. You know the risks. You know the way to avoid the risk and you can help them out. It’s not just what they’re learning for themselves, but what they can bring to the table, to their community, their friends and people they meet along the course of their life. 

NCFY: For more information on teen pregnancy prevention and cultural competency, visit the National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth, online at ncfy.acf.hhs.gov.

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