Steven Mosley | Issues & Insights

Do you know what’s being taught in the sex education program at your child’s school? It’s unlikely that it’s “The Success Sequence.” And that’s unfortunate – because it should be.

In 2019, I ran for school board in Fairfax County, Virginia – one of the nation’s most infamous battlegrounds when it comes to woke public education. I ran on a platform of school choice, listening to parents and reforming the school’s sex ed program to align with community values. Key to my platform was promoting the Success Sequence.

I like to call the Success Sequence the greatest poverty-breaking tool known to man. Unlike most government programs that might cost thousands – if not millions – of dollars per school district to implement with sketchy results, the Success Sequence costs nothing but perseverance and self-discipline.

It teaches that the best way to move up from poverty to the middle class and beyond is to do the following things in sequential order:

• Graduate from high school.
• Get a full-time job. 
• Get married before having kids.

According to an American Enterprise Institute study, “97% of Millennials who follow what has been called the ‘success sequence’ are not poor by the time they reach their prime young adult years.” This is in comparison to over half of the poor young adults who were found to have not followed the sequence. And it is abundantly clear that not following The Success Sequence is even more disastrous for those in poor or black and Hispanic communities.

Additionally, as “drag queen story hours” and other inappropriate materials find their way into classrooms and libraries across the country, it’s becoming increasingly clear that our sex ed programs need reform.

Many parents think they can protect their children from the left’s radical indoctrination by either opting their children out of sex ed classes or teaching traditional values at home. Neither approach has worked.

The truth is that, whether it’s defying biological norms with terms like “dead naming,” “sex assigned at birth” and “gender identity” or preferred pronouns and the weaponization speech codes suspending teachers or students who refuse to comply, no one appears to be safe. This radical worldview has infected and shown great influence over K-12 education culture.

Bottom line: What is taught in sex ed doesn’t stay in sex ed anymore.

What’s a parent to do? Here are a few suggestions:

• Request school boards and state legislatures require sex ed curriculums align with the Success Sequence and remove anything that contradicts it.
• Request school boards remove LGBT propaganda from the curriculum and respect teachers’ and students’ First Amendment rights.
• Request school boards stop perpetuating the myth of “safe sex” and other half-truths commonly taught in sex ed curricula. 

Sex ed programs should still teach about condoms and different types of sexual diseases. But they should also mention the risk of sex before marriage as well as the emotional, physical, and spiritual scars related to abortion, the use of abortifacient birth control, or gender-reassignment surgeries.

There would be a life-changing difference if students were taught through a Success Sequence lens – with value placed on academic achievement, career achievement, and marriage before children.

Parents could still opt their children out of sex ed programs, but most won’t want to because this new curriculum would focus on the students’ well-being instead of radical indoctrination.

Along with his wife Patrina, Steven Mosley leads the Fairfax GOP’s Evangelical Outreach Committee – to get involved, email mrstevenmosley@gmail.com.