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The Hawaii Department of Education is temporarily pulling the plugs on a controversial sexual health education pilot program in response to the uproar it caused amid recent debates over same-sex marriage, according to a press release sent out to the media today. 

Pono Choices, a set of lesson plans about teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections that was funded by the federal government and developed by the University of Hawaii, was being piloted at 12 public schools and had been slated for implementation at another eight later this school year. 

It was one of seven DOE-approved sex-ed programs. But in recent hearings over the same-sex marriage bill — which was recently signed into law — Pono Choices became a focus of much of the opponents’ testimony. Critics described the program as an overly graphic endorsement of oral and anal sex that wasn’t appropriate for the middle schoolers who were learning it. 

Leila Hayashida, the department’s superintendent for the Office of Curriculum, Instruction and Student Support, had this statement:

“Recent concerns over the department’s sexual education curriculum have resulted in misstatements and misunderstandings about the learning that takes place in the classroom … We recently asked the (Center on Disability Studies) to address public concerns about the curriculum’s descriptions of healthy, unhealthy and abusive relationships.”

— Alia Wong