Sex education has opposition in Indonesia

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JAKARTA, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Efforts to introduce sex education into Indonesian schools have been hampered by conservatives who believe it encourages premarital sex, officials said.

A proposal last year to make sex education part of the national school curriculum faced a strong backlash from some political parties was never put into practice, The Jakarta Globe reported Tuesday.

The opposition came mostly from conservative groups worried that sex education would only encourage young people to become sexually promiscuous, the newspaper said.

However, a survey released by DKT Indonesia, a non-profit organization that focuses on family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention, found that ignorance about sex only made young people more prone to sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and death from unsafe abortions.

The survey of young people 15 to 25 in five major cities found 93 percent of them obtained their information about sex from their peers, while only 10 percent got information from their mothers and 2 percent from their fathers.

"Most of them said they were afraid to ask their parents because when they wanted to ask, their parents usually accused them of being sexually active or at least intending to be," Pierre Frederick, a brand manager for a condom company with which DKT is affiliated, said.

The survey also found teenagers and young people had limited knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases.