MONTGOMERY — Members of the Alabama Senate passed legislation on Thursday creating a new extracurricular religious instruction program in public schools.
The bill by State Sen. Shay Shelnutt (R-Trussville) would allow parents to choose for their public school student to attend a religious release program sponsored by a church or local community-based religious organization.
"This is just an option. Some parents don't have this opportunity for them to learn about this," Shelnutt said on the Senate floor. "It's not going to take away from any of their instructional time on any of their core classes."
Another bill by Shelnutt that passed on Thursday would require any sex education or human reproductive curriculum or program in a public K-12 school to exclusively teach "sexual risk avoidance" and encourage abstinence from all sexual activity, and would prohibit any sex education instruction for students in kindergarten through fourth grade.
"It's going to stop the teaching of comprehensive sexual education. There's some inappropriate things being taught to our students that we don't want taught. We want it to be scientifically-based," Shelnutt told reporters on Thursday. "We want it to be based on what's best for our students. Sexual abstinence is the best and only 100% way to avoid unwanted pregnancies for STDs. That's the main focus of what we want taught to our students."
Both bills now head to the House for consideration.
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