Becoming “Sex Ed Girl”

Shelby Knox, a Baptist teenager from Lubbock, Texas – home of Buddy Holly and astronomical teen pregnancy rates – fights for real sex ed in a new documentary.

By Rhian Kohashi O’Rourke

She started off as a solid Republican girl, pro-life, committed to celibacy, an opera singing straight-A student and an all-around goody two-shoes.  But Shelby Knox, then 15 years old, ended up surprising everyone as she evolved into a passionate advocate in the fight for fact-based, comprehensive sexual education in Lubbock, Texas.

Lubbock County’s sky-high sexually transmitted disease (STD) and teen pregnancy rates inspired Shelby to question her state’s decision to be one of only three states to enforce a stringent Abstinence Only sex education policy. Not surprisingly, Texas was also ranked as one of the three states with the highest teen birth rates in the nation in 2002. In Shelby’s home town of Lubbock, teen pregnancy and STD rates are alarming: according to the Texas Department of Health’s statistics, 3.64 percent of Lubbock’s teens were pregnant in 2002, and in 2003, Lubbock had 1,725 STD cases.  Lubbock tops the charts for teenage gonorrhea rates, which are twice the national average.

Despite these undeniable facts on the ground, Texas continues to enforce its Abstinence-Until-Marriage sex education policy, which was signed into law in 1995 by then-Governor George W. Bush.  The sex ed program is centered around teaching that the only safe sex is no sex.  Teachers are not required to even mention contraceptives (except for their failure rates) and are threatened with dismissal if they do, putting the 90% of young people who have sex before marriage at risk.

The Education of Shelby Knox , a documentary shot over a three-year period, follows Shelby, who is full of spunk and fiery life – as she speaks out to city officials, her peers, the adult community and pretty much anyone who will listen.  Shelby, who is religious and not sexually active, takes a virginity pledge through True Love Waits, promising to remain a virgin until marriage.  However, she is quickly labeled the “Sex Ed girl” – and is shunned by many members of her Southern Baptist community.  Despite ferocious opposition that would intimidate even the most self-confident adult, Shelby relentlessly challenges the school board to take responsibility and give young people the medically accurate knowledge they need to protect themselves from disease and unwanted pregnancy. Stunning members of her community further, Shelby goes on to champion a group of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) students who are fighting the Lubbock school district because they want to have a gay rights club. 

Shelby ’s instinctive quest to defend the underdog makes for a tremendous coming-of-age story and a reminder that even in the reddest of red states there are young progressive leaders among us.

Selected for this year’s Sundance Film Festival, The Education of Shelby Knox will be featured on PBS’s documentary series POV on June 21, and will have its DC premiere at the Center for American Progress on May 24, followed by a panel discussion with the directors and Shelby herself.  Shelby, now a first year student at the University of Texas-Austin, recently spoke with Campus Progress over the phone.

Q: The film follows you over a three-year period as you evolve from a “good Southern Baptist girl” to a liberal Christian and strong feminist. When the directors approached you, did you have any inkling about where you would end up politically?

A: They actually never thought that I would be the main character of the film. They kept thinking that they were going to make a film about all of the students in the Lubbock Youth Commission [the group through which she carried out her sex ed fight]. They knew before me that I was going to change so they started focusing the camera more on me. About a year in, they told me that the film was going to be about me. I was really surprised because I didn’t realize that they had been following me more than the others. I was shocked – I didn’t think that a story about me would make people want to go to a theater.

Q: In the film we see you make the celibacy pledge. Did your friends have personal experiences with teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases?

A: When the youth commission chose sex education as our issue, we did it because so many people we knew had children or had impregnated someone or had a STD. None of my close friends had had that problem but I had been in a lot of classes with pregnant girls who were being convinced to go to this alternate school with other girls that were pregnant. One day, they would just suddenly disappear, and I realized that this was happening more and more as I got older in high school. It was very upsetting to me to see these girls leave school and their environment because they weren’t getting the education to protect themselves from pregnancy.

Q: In a previous interview you explained that there were major misconceptions in your town about pregnancy and said that a peer asked you: “If my boyfriend smokes enough pot before we have sex it’ll kill all of his semen for a couple of hours, right?” What were some other misconceptions?

A: If you dipped a penis in Coke it would kill the semen. If a girl didn’t have an orgasm she couldn’t get pregnant. You could use a balloon as a condom! I was like, “Wait! How does that work?!”

Q: Did you find that as you were becoming more and more involved in the issue that you became an informal peer educator?

A: Definitely. People my own age from my high school would come to me because they knew I had the information. They would say, “I have these symptoms – I think I have a STD.” I would be able to tell them where to go to get tested and where to buy condoms and how to talk to their partner about sex. That was one of the things that I was most proud of: that I was someone that other teens could talk to.

Q: Sex is still a taboo topic in many parts of the country – when was the first time that you talked to your parents, a teacher or community member about it?

A: The first time I talked about sex was when I got my period at age 12. My mom talked about how my body was now able to have a child but that didn’t mean that I was ready to have a child. Of course you would hear about it in church but you wouldn’t hear about what it was exactly. You would just hear, “Don’t have sex, people are going to force you to have sex, don’t have sex!” So that was people’s introduction to sex, being told not to have sex when they weren’t even old enough to know what it actually was.

Q: Did you think that that type of reinforcement was helpful to people in the community?

A: I don’t think so. When I first started working on this issue, I was convinced that not everyone could make that choice. Abstinence wasn’t right for everyone. There were people that had been molested, raped or had experienced incest. These kids were thinking that they were terrible people. I didn’t see it as my position to judge them. I decided that it was my position and the position of the school to tell students how to be safe if they decided to have sex.

Q: How did you feel when you didn’t win your fight for comprehensive, fact-based sex ed?

A: I felt like I had failed my peers. I later felt guilty when the gay-straight alliance lost their fight also. I felt like they would not have lost if I had been successful in getting sex education into schools. But I really learned later that that’s the nature of politics. That you win and you lose. Just trying made the environment in Lubbock better. It isn’t as taboo now. It was a small victory even though we didn’t win overall.

Q: What do you think of the way the film portrayed you?

A: I think the film does very well portraying me when I was younger. What a lot of people don’t know is that I’m very serious and that I love intellectual things. I sometimes come across as being naïve and young and self-centered.

Q: A lot of times people forget when they are watching documentaries that having a film crew present affects what happens. Would you agree?

A: Definitely. Have you ever heard of the Heisenberg principle? To observe something is to change it. Even if you are a fly on the wall. It changes the way people behave. Some people naturally perform for the camera; some people get freaked out and don’t say what they would normally say. You see examples of both in me. People are more aware of themselves because they’re analyzing everything through the lens of the camera.

Q: Your parents were incredibly supportive throughout the entire documentary. Tell us about their transformation.

A: My parents are so great – and they wonder how they raised a liberal child. They always told me that I should think the way I wanted to and they didn’t have a right to tell me what to think. So they have this daughter who is going to the other end of the political spectrum. We still disagree about politics. I’m going to see John Kerry speak on Saturday. My mom asked me if I should get a carton of eggs to throw at him. But in the end, it doesn’t matter what our political views are – they are always supportive.

Q: In the film you say that your priorities are G-d, family, and country in that order. Does this still hold true?

A: Those priorities still hold true even though in the film, I was sort of saying it tongue-in-cheek. That motto is on the front of the Boy Scout handbook. My brother was a boy scout at the time and I thought that would make my parents happy. But even now, I know that that it is right.

God, first of all, is the spiritual influence in your life. And then my family, who has been so wonderful, and then also my country, which I want to serve by becoming a public servant. We’re going through a difficult time with a Republican president. But I’ve never lost faith in America and Americans—we can become more progressive and turn over a new leaf.

Q: I have heard people who have watched the film say things like, “We need every Shelby Knox we can get!” How does it feel to be a role model?

A: On one hand, I’m really glad to be the face of such an important issue. There are a lot of youth activists. I just happened to be put in this film to give all those activists faith. There’s another part of me that thinks I’m just a dorky college student trying to get through midterms and finals while flying all over. I think it’s funny that people think that I’m a role model because I’m just a regular student.

Q: What would your words of advice be to young high school and college activists who are fighting progressive battles?

A: It’s the teen voices that count the most in issues that relate to them. All the adults in the world can tell a school board that they need sex education or that there needs to be gay-straight alliances to support high school students. But the students’ voices are the most important. In the end, if you win or lose, you made a difference just by making the problem known.

Learn More:

National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS)

Advocates for Youth (AYD)

Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)

Check out our Reel Progress film series

Watch video of Shelby’s May 24 visit to our screening of The Education of Shelby Knox

Visit the film’s web site at www.ShelbyKnox.org for information about the film and upcoming screenings

Illustration: Matt Bors

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