This essay examines the relationships between homosexuality and sex education in New Zealand during the 1970s. It argues that reading sex education debates and resources provides a useful way of exploring connections between the ontologies and politics of sexuality at that time. In particular, the advent of social movements concerned with sexual issues marked a turning point in homosexuality's appearance within formal and informal modes of sex education. During the 1970s, sex education and related debates became a key site at which various conceptualisations of homosexuality were constructed and contested. By analysing the struggles between radical and conservative perspectives, we can see how same-sex desire came to symbolise changing sexual mores, as well as broader ideas about social order and social change. (Contains 13 notes.)