“Thank you, thank you!” for Teaching Safer Sex

This past weekend, Teaching Safer Sex, Third Edition, Volumes One and Two received the AASECT Book Award, a prestigious honor given by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. Editor-in-Chief Bill Taverner and Associate Editor Susan Milstein were on hand to receive the award at the 2013 AASECT Conference in Miami, Florida. Associate editor (and recently retired Planned Parenthood educator) Sue Montfort was not able to attend.

Awards Committee Awards Chair Dennis Sugrue noted that there were two finalists for this award: Teaching Safer Sex and New Directions in Sex Therapy: Innovations and Alternatives, by Peggy Kleinplatz. Dr. Sugrue said that comparing the books was impossible, since each contributed something uniquely important to the respective fields of sex education and sex therapy. Consequently the awards committee decided to honor both books, marking the first time both sex education and therapy books have been honored by AASECT in the same year. One AASECT conference attendee remarked that Teaching Safer Sex should be required for every high school in America.

Dr. Milstein thanked Elizabeth Boskey and Lis Maurer, who nominated Teaching Safer Sex for this award. Dr. Boskey is the resident expertt at STD.About.com. She is also a perennial favorite presenter at the National Sex Ed Conference. Maurer is the director of The Center for LGBT Education, Outreach, and Services at Ithaca College. An expert sexuality educator, we have featured Maurer multiple times on our blog.

Dr. Milstein also described the work of the original authors, Peggy Brick, Steve Brown, Catherine Charleton, and Hillary Kunins, who envisioned a new approach for safer sex education – one with interactive, engaging activities that focused on the attitudes and skills needed for people to take responsibility for their sexual health. She noted that this was a radical idea at a time when AIDS education meant learning as much about the biology of the disease as possible. 

Taverner thanked the 21 members of the editorial advisory board and the 27 contributing authors to Teaching Safer Sex. Since there was not enough time to name everyone, all the contributors are listed at the end of this article.

Taverner also thanked copyeditor Mary Lyn Koval, who has been making editing CFLE publications since 2001. Afterward, Taverner observed, “Mary Lyn made her way through 50 lessons and nearly 500 pages of Teaching Safer Sex. It’s one thing to read 500 pages; quite another to find every formatting and grammatical error in those pages!”

Taverner thanked Planned Parenthood of Central and Greater Northern New Jersey, the parent of the Center for Family Life Education (CFLE) and its CEO, Triste Brooks, describing her as a firm supporter of positively framed sexuality education. He thanked the board, which endorsed this project, especially major donors to the CFLE, Barbara Bunting, Alexandra and Eric Schoenberg, Pat Stover, Naida Wharton, and Nora and Raymond Wong.

Finally, Taverner asked for a moment of silence to remember his mentor, Robert T. Francoeur, who passed away in October 2012. Francoeur received the AASECT Book Award in 2005 along with Raymond Noonan for  their expansive International Encyclopedia of Sexuality. That work is available at the Kinsey Institute.