UCC - Youth activist Shelby Knox shares her story

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

> Youth activist Shelby Knox shares her story
> Written by Diane Weible
> July 2, 2011
Shelby Knox didn?t set out to be a youth

activist. She just did what she thought needed to
be done. One of the featured Suncoast Saturday
speakers, Shelby shared her inspiring story with workshop attendees.

Having grown up in a Southern Baptist Church in
Lubbock, Texas, Shelby didn?t think much about
the fact that her hometown was considered the
second most conservative city in the nation. And
at age 8, she didn?t think much about the
Southern Baptist Church decision to follow the
Ephesians 5:24 mandate for wives to be
subservient to their husbands ? until her mother
explained to her that this meant women could not be leaders in the church.

As a teenager, Shelby went through the 10-week
abstinence program in her church. She didn?t
think much about that either because she didn?t know anything about sex.

That was, until a friend confided in her that she
was pregnant.  Her parents had kicked her out of
her home and she was going to be kicked off the
soccer team.  When Shelby asked her friend how it
happened, her friend replied, ?He told me I
couldn?t get pregnant the first time.?

Shelby, a member of the Lubbock Youth Commission,
started talking with others on the Commission and
found no one knew anything about sex.  Every
year, just before prom, the school brought in a
pastor named Ed (Sex Ed, as he was known by the
students), who told the students they could
receive sexually transmitted infections (STI) by
shaking hands, half of all gay people die before
the age of 40 and that masturbation makes a
person selfish and can lead to depression and suicide.

Shelby said Pastor Ed was a religious leader in
the Christian community. ?This is what he?s
telling you and you didn?t question it.?

But she did question it, and so did others on the
Youth Commission. They went before the school
board and told them that the sex education being
offered in the schools needed to be improved.

They got nowhere said Shelby, because from 1985
to 2001 the Federal Government gave money to
schools to enact programs promoting abstinence.
The Lubbock Schools received just under $100,000
a year to ?bring this guy in and lie to us,? she said.

According to Shelby, a lot of media attention was
focused on Shelby and the other youth because
they were young and they were talking about sex.
Her church told Shelby that she could no longer
sing on the praise team.  Her parents, who were
conservative but also very supportive of her,
fought back on Shelby?s behalf.  When word came
back to her father that he was being dishonored
in the church because ?he couldn?t control the
females in his family,? the Knox family left the church.

Shelby spent the next three years helping

students get condoms and going with people to
Planned Parenthood for STI tests and pregnancy
tests. Just before she graduated, Shelby and the
other youth were given another opportunity to go
before the school board to ask for three things:
medically accurate health textbooks,
professionals certified by the health department
as qualified to teach sex education and the
public release of curriculum public so parents could see what was being tau ght.

The School Board response was to disband the Youth Commission.

Shelby took her fight to the University of Texas
where, as a student, she fought for medically
accurate textbooks. The Texas textbooks,
according to Shelby, say the best way to prevent
pregnancy is to get a lot of rest.

> When ?The Education of Shelby Knox,? a
> documentary detailing Shelby?s fight for
> comprehensive sex education, debuted at the
> Sundance Film Festival in 2005, the media
> attention was once again focused on
> Lubbock.  This time, it was ?Dateline? and ?20/20? asking the quest ions.
Shelby was shocked by all the attention she received.

?People thought a young person doing this was
extraordinary,? she said. ?To me it didn?t feel extraordinary.?

Shelby now speaks at 50 colleges each year and
works with student leaders to promote programs
such as those that fight violence against women
and teach young women about the availability of emergency birth control.

?I became an ambassador for good people doing this good work,? she said.