Promoting adolescents’ rights to “affirm their own sexual and gender identity and orientation” may not be what you’d expect from a group of theologians. But that’s just one of the progressive messages on sex and faith in an “Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Adolescent Sexuality,” put out this week by the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing.

The open letter –written by religious leaders, for religious leaders – calls on all faiths to help young people understand the risks and pleasures of sexuality. Religious institutions are uniquely positioned to reach adolescents, the theologians argue, serving more teens than any other agency except for public schools.

Are progressive faith groups like the Religious Institute just an isolated minority? Not necessarily. For all the coverage heaped on cultural conservatives, progressive religious voices are out there, they just don’t garner the same attention. Media Matters, a nonprofit watchdog organization, just released a study that found the U.S. media disproportionately presents conservative leaders as the voice of American religion. (On TV, for example, conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed almost 3.8 times as often as progressive leaders.)

Here’s to not making the same mistakes ourselves.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Current Stories, Sex Positive Faith, Sexual Ethics Interactive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.