Uncommon Ephemera Preserves Six Filmstrips from "About Your Sexuality," a 1970s Unitarian Universalist Sex Education Program

A donated collection broadens the range of what's known to survive from the filmstrip format

JOHNSON CITY, NY - July 6, 2026 - Uncommon Ephemera, the filmstrip preservation initiative founded by Mark O'Brien, has scanned and archived six filmstrips from About Your Sexuality, a sex education curriculum published by the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) beginning in 1970, after being contacted by a private donor looking for a permanent home for them.

About Your Sexuality was taught to UUA congregants ages 12 to 14 in mixed-gender classes and was notable, and controversial, for using real photographic filmstrips to depict anatomy and sexual behavior rather than illustrations. At its launch, The National Observer called it "the most comprehensive, explicit, and possibly controversial set of materials ever assembled for use in a classroom." A legal challenge over the course eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, which upheld a congregation's right to teach it. The 1973 revision, from which four of the six donated filmstrips come, also affirmed homosexuality and bisexuality, a position reflected in the collection's "Homosexual Lovemaking" filmstrip.

The filmstrips were sent to O'Brien by a private donor who had held onto them for nearly 30 years after receiving them from a professor of sexual ethics during graduate school. The donor had previously attempted to place the collection with an academic archive but was turned away, and later found O'Brien's work through the Make It Mid-Century newsletter.

The set includes four filmstrips from the 1973 revision (Male and Female Anatomy, Four Sequences, Love Making, and Homosexual Lovemaking), a vocabulary-focused filmstrip, Breaking the Language Barrier: Moving from Slang to Scientific Vocabulary, and a separate, non-explicit Guidance Associates filmstrip Learning About Sex produced as a "special edition for the Unitarian Universalist Association." All six were distributed on Eastmancolor stock and show significant fading, the same dye instability affecting most of the filmstrips O'Brien preserves.

"Almost everything that survives from this format is aimed at little kids or is a dry facts-and-figures film about science, math, or history," O'Brien said. "Sex education filmstrips existed for older students too, but they were usually shot with a lot of restraint. This collection is a rare example of a mainline denomination going in the opposite direction. It expands the historical context dramatically around the type of material that was published on the format."

Five of the six filmstrips are missing either their original soundtrack or teacher's guide. O'Brien is asking anyone who may have surviving audio or print materials from the About Your Sexuality program to get in touch.

Warning: the linked filmstrips below contain explicit photographic depictions of human sexuality.

About Uncommon Ephemera

Uncommon Ephemera is a media preservation initiative focused on saving American educational and industrial filmstrips. All preserved materials are made freely available through the Internet Archive. For more information, visit uncommonephemera.org.

Links:

• Breaking the Language Barrier: Moving from Slang to Scientific Vocabulary: archive.org
• Learning About Sex (special edition for the Unitarian Universalist Association): archive.org
• Male and Female Anatomy (Unitarian Universalist Association, 1973): archive.org
• Four Sequences (Unitarian Universalist Association, 1973): archive.org
• Love Making (Unitarian Universalist Association): archive.org
• Homosexual Lovemaking (Unitarian Universalist Association): archive.org

Media Contact:

Mark O'Brien
[email protected]