ADF Calls on Colorado School District to Drop Explicit Sex Ed Curriculum

by Nicole Hunt | August 18, 2026 | Education Sexuality

Parents shouldn’t have to go digging to learn what their children are being taught in school about sex, gender and their bodies. But according to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), that’s exactly what’s happening in Colorado.

On August 11, ADF sent a demand letter to Roaring Fork School District in Carbondale, Colorado on behalf of local parents. The letter challenged the district’s choice of sex ed curriculum and the process by which it informs parents of their options to learn more about the material and opt their child out.

The district uses a sex ed curriculum called 3Rs (Rights, Respect, Responsibility). It was adopted in May 2023, despite protests from many parents, whose concerns were dismissed as “sensational.”

At the time, the district told parents there would be a clear opt-out process.

3Rs is a free curriculum authored by Advocates for Youth, an LGBT activist organization with ties to Planned Parenthood, to promote an “honest, inclusive sex education for all students.”

StopCSE.org, an online resource that collates information about comprehensive sex education curricula, gives this curriculum a very high harm score for children due to its “explicit and disturbing” content.

ADF’s demand letter alleges:

The 3Rs curriculum includes graphic visuals and ideologically driven content aimed at children as young as five years old — an offense compounded by Roaring Fork’s failure to provide adequate notice and opt-out rights to parents, violating their fundamental constitutional rights.

According to ADF, the 3Rs curriculum shows kindergarteners illustrations of naked male and female bodies and teaches them to identify certain body parts, including “vulva,” “nipples,” “anus” and “penis.”

Shockingly, ADF says the curriculum even asks kindergarteners how they like to be touched.

The ADF demand letter calls on the district to cut the reprehensible 3Rs curriculum completely from all classes.

At the very least, they urge the school district to change the opt-out procedure into an opt-in process to ensure parents receive meaningful notice of the sexually explicit material appearing in class and can exercise their constitutional rights to direct their children’s upbringing and education.

ADF maintains that doing nothing in response to the letter will constitute ongoing violations of parents’ rights by the school district.

In a press release, ADF Senior Counsel Kate Anderson, director of the ADF Center for Parental Rights, alleges that the district’s current notification process intentionally makes it difficult for parents to know what is being taught and how to opt out:

Roaring Fork Schools is not only introducing kindergarteners to explicit content but also burying the information from parents and denying them a meaningful choice to opt their children out — by design.
It’s understandable why parents are so concerned. Roaring Fork Schools must immediately abandon this controversial sex ed curriculum, or at the very least, allow parents sufficient notice to choose what is best for their family.

The letter details the stories of three different families in the school district who lacked sufficient notice, information and details to be able to opt their children out of the explicitly sexual materials.

ADF leaves no room for misinterpretation; if the school district fails to remedy the situation, they may soon face legal action.

No lawsuit has been filed, but ADF is putting the district on notice.

Parents, not school districts, have the God-given, constitutionally protected, primary responsibility to direct the upbringing and education of their children. The Roaring Fork School District controversy strikes at the heart of this right. The violation must be addressed.

The Daily Citizen will continue to follow this developing story.