BISMARCK (AP) - North Dakota lawmakers approved a one-sentence bill Tuesday that orders both public and private schools to teach the merits of sexual abstinence, a proposal that took three weeks and a dozen meetings to finish.
Negotiators from the House and Senate finally reached an agreement Tuesday on the wording of the measure, which says health classes must teach the "social, psychological, and physical health gains" of avoiding sex outside of marriage.
The bill does not prevent schools from teaching other sexual health topics, such as contraception, legislators said.
House members approved the bill 81-12 on Tuesday, and the Senate followed with its endorsement, 43-4. The bill now goes to Gov. Jack Dalrymple.
"The intent is to try to focus on how important it is to stay away from those activities, rather than looking back in hindsight and trying to correct those problems they may have caused," said Sen. Larry Luick, R-Fairmount.
Sen. Connie Triplett, D-Grand Forks, said the bill merely restates what middle schools have been teaching for decades.
"This kind of health care teaching has been going on in our state and across the country for a very long time. We are not reinventing the wheel here," Triplett said. She called the bill "just an unnecessary layer of value judgment."
The Senate's version of the bill said each school district's health curriculum should have abstinence "as its objective." Critics said that took too much power from local school boards. The new measure says a "portion" of each school's health education must include teaching about abstinence.
Negotiators also quarreled over whether to discourage sex "before" marriage or "outside" of it.
Rep. RaeAnn Kelsch, R-Mandan, the chairwoman of the conference committee, said the phrase "before marriage" could lead students to think they're sexually unrestricted after getting married.
"This sends a much stronger, louder message, and probably more true to the facts," Kelsch said. "Once you're married, it doesn't mean that abstaining from outside issues goes away, and children should be taught that."