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I'm a proud UU and just have to stick up for my church's sexuality program. The Letter Writer's concerns are clear--she should bring them to the attention of the Religious Education director, who is hired specifically to deal with such issues. The other teacher needs to be dealt with. Simply.
But as an alumni, so to speak, I found my church's OWL program to be incredibly important to my healthy sexual development. When a kid taunted me on the playground using the word blowjob, I was able (at the age of twelve) to use that "question box" to find out exactly what a blowjob was. Highly useful information in playground self-defence.
In my OWL program, we talked about things from masturbation, to condom use, to the importance of love in sexual relationships. Which was great, because it gave me strength to wait until I could have safe sex in a loving relationship. And the healthy lessons I learned at 12 and 13 certainly helped guide me through the sexual free-for-all that happened around me at college. I was a lot luckier than most of the girls I knew in that regard.
I learned that respecting myself sexually was much like respecting myself spiritually. Something, that as a Unitarian, I was brought up to do by making well educated, well thought out decisions. As a young woman, that kind of self-respect focused, highly educated sexual education is invaluable--and not so easy to come by.
There will always be teachers who cross the boundaries. I don't think anything this inappropriate teacher is doing is seriously scarring. Unitarian kids are also taught to question all the things their religious educators teach them--Unitarians are smart kids, and even at 13, they are using their judgement.
