( Post Millennial )
"[We have] in our society, an assumption of asexuality of people with intellectual disabilities. It's a myth that's perpetuated, and really we are all sexual beings from birth until death."
Taverner has been an advocate for sex literacy in US congressional briefings.
Taverner's views were echoed in Planned Parenthood's "Fundamentals of Teaching Sexuality," which makes the claim that "sexuality is a part of life through all the ages and stages. Babies, elders, and everyone in between can experience sexuality."
In a 2012 interview, Taverner said that sex education for children should include lessons on pornography. This is a position the executive director has maintained until at least February 2021, according to Fox News.
Taverner appeared to say that pornography can be useful due to its widespread accessibility.
"There's access to erotica, pornography, that was very different for young people 30 years ago," he said. "It [was] certainly not as accessible, certainly not as instantaneous, so there's a lot of information that is useful."
When Taverner was interrupted by the interviewer interjecting with "some of it is wrong," he replied with "some of it is wrong, a lot of it is wrong," but added, "there is good stuff out there as well."
In a 2021 Fox interview, the sex-ed activist said that while educators "never wanted pornography to be the primary source of sex education," "instruction needs to adapt to modern times."
"If we talk about porn, [some think] is it going to make people want to watch it? Which is the same faulty kind of premise as if we teach about condoms," Taverner said. "It's going to make people want to have sex with condoms, maybe that's not a bad thing."
"If this is what they're doing with their cell phones and tablets and their laptops, then we need to shift our education and stop doing the banana on a condom and think that, you know, we've done our thing,' he added.
According to Taverner, comprehensive sexuality education should start in kindergarten.
"Sexuality education is not isolated to a particular point in a person's life, it's a continuous process," he said.
He then went on to say that 5 and 6-year-olds should be taught about STD prevention and how babies are conceived.
"Young children are learning about sexuality from the attitudes their parents display [and] when we think of K-12 education we may be talking about what makes a family, we may be talking about disease prevention… Age-appropriate sex education is so important. And we have to let our experts guide us."