We affirm the religious foundations for supporting sexuality education throughout the lifespan -- education that respects the whole person, honors the truth and diverse values, and promotes the highest ethical values in human relationships. We support comprehensive sexuality education programs that are age-appropriate, accurate and truthful. Programs that teach abstinence exclusively and withhold information about pregnancy, contraception and disease prevention fail our young people.
Issues
Our religious traditions affirm that life is sacred. Our faiths celebrate the divinely bestowed blessings of generating life and assuring that life can be sustained and nurtured. We support responsible procreation, the widespread availability of contraception, prenatal care, access to abortion services and intentional parenting.
The courageous witness of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, along with a growing body of social and scientific research, inspire us to affirm sexual and gender diversity as a blessed part of life. Religious leaders must help to create a new understanding of sexual and gender diversity, and to promote full equality of LGBT persons in all areas of religious and public life.
Our faith traditions celebrate the goodness of creation, including our bodies and our sexuality. We sin when this sacred gift is abused or exploited. We call for a new sexual ethic that fosters physical, emotional, and spiritual health – an ethic grounded in respect for the body and for the vulnerability that intimacy brings.
Throughout the world, religious communities have a responsibility to help ease suffering and promote healing. As people of faith, we are called to see, hear, and respond to the global suffering caused by preventable maternal mortality, violence against women and sexual minorities, the HIV pandemic, unsustainable population growth and over-consumption, and the commercial exploitation of sexuality.
Religious Declaration
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Reference Center
Pastors for Sexual Health. Prophets for Sexual Justice.
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