It's that time again!

On June 25th, one week before legislators return home and two weeks before the next vote, papers around the country were complicit in changing the balance on the Title V funding in their states. The gist of some articles was states should join the "trend" away from abstinence education or take a "more common sense approach" or don't let "far-right wing groups" impose beliefs or face "reality" of teens having sex. Wow, there's intellegensia at work! Let's all join the crowd, don't bother with facts, don't bother with kids and their futures, let's just appeal to emotions.


But if you do some investigation, the lead opponents are showing their true stripes.


Craig Covey, Midwest AIDS Prevention Program: "Abstinence-only is a flawed policy, and some people have become sick because ot it and others have died". He then reports that teens have half of the 900 new cases of HIV in Michigan each year.

They wouldn't be in that bind if they had been abstinent. Since sexually abstinent kids are generally non-intravenous drug users and infected blood transfusion extremely rare its probable all 450 kids had sex or shot up. That perfectly used condom offers only 85% risk reduction with one use with an infected partner. The risk gets greater as that sex increases, especially among teens. The Safe Sex rules didn't help those kids. The question is did they believe that they would or did they ignore the rules. That's not Abstinence Education's problem since we tell them the risk is to great to take at all.


Caroline Fredrickson, Director of ACLU's Washington Legislative offiec: "...these (abstinence)programs censor vital health care information, teach gender sterotypes, discriminate against lesbian and gay teens, and in some cases promote religion in violation of the Constitution".

Even if you believe the unproven opinion that says 10% of the population is gay, that leaves 90% that aren't. Everyone receives HIV information in school because potentially everyone could be at risk. There are plenty of support programs for GLBTQ teens. But its the other 90% that potentially have the babies too young and don't succeed at marriage and parenthood. Even if we ignore the effects on society and our national tax burden, it seems that addressing those issues with heterosexuals is essential, not discriminatory of those who have no part in the problem. But guess what, every aspect of abstinence education--building character, relationships, delaying sex, monogamy--is a valuable, healthy messages for 100% of teens.

James Waggoner, Advocates for Youth: " America’s norms around sexual behavior are deeply conflicted with shame, fear, and denial competing with openness, pleasure, and prevention. These conflicts lie at the core of many of our failed policies. "

Please understand that at the very core of our opponents arguments, rarely stated openly, is that sexual behavior deserves complete "openness" because it is a natural human activity and therefore there should be no boundaries. Furthermore, the only norm should be pleasure which is anyone's pursuit as long as they take a bit of prevention.

Cecile Richard, Planned Parenthood:"The United States is facing a teen-pregnancy health-care crisis, and the national policy of abstinence-only programs just isn't working. It is time for everyone who cares about teenagers to start focusing on the common-sense solutions that will help solve this problem."

Planned Parenthood is probably the leader in double-speak. The Guttmacher Institute, named for a former Planned Parenthood president, has reported that 68% of America's children receive comprehensive sex education while less than 25% receive abstinence education. Yet on the Planned Parenthood website, it says only 5% of kids learn about condoms and contraceptives. They imply that "the national policy" is hurting teens. I agree but when contraceptive sex education has a 12 to 1 advantage in getting federal dollars, I'd say that national policy has little to do with abstinence education.

SIECUS website: "By definition, abstinence-only-until-marriage programs discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. These programs typically deny or ignore the very existence of LGBT individuals. By offering marriage as the only answer to risk for HIV and ignoring the fact that same-sex marriage remains illegal in most places, these programs wrongly teach that there is no way for LGBT individuals to be sexually active and remain safe. In fact, when same-sex sexual behavior is addressed, these programs often suggest that it is inherently wrong and to blame for the AIDS pandemic. "

What is this viewpoint called--"an agenda", social engineering", "political correctness", "societal change". Secular Abstinence Education never addresses LGBT issues because the concepts it teaches are universal, as pointed out above. Personally, I don't know if LGBT individuals can be sexually active and remain safe unless they are in a monogamous, committed relationship with an uninfected partner, which is abstinence. I doubt two teenagers are anything but serially monogomous, which doesn't count. But the reports I read cite higher HIV rates and soaring STI rates among gays, and that consistent and correct condom use is a rarity. In effect, GBT youth are among the most at risk because of HIV within that population. That said, is the inferrence that, because they can't marry, homosexuals can have unrestrained sex, then so should heterosexuals. Is that a new definition of equality?

By the way, the AIDS pandemic began with a nonsexual infectious incident that occured to a gay man and was passed on through his gay partners. That is a fact. It is not pointing fingers at gays; it was an accident of circumstance. However, it was predominantly gay behaviors that made that initial contagion into an epidemic and HIV prevalence that created the pandemic.

I agree with Kay Hymowiz, an author/editor, responding to the "pregnancy pact" in Massachusetts said "unless someone has figured out how to force young people to take birth-control, sex education is completely beside the point". Information doesn't equate with using it. But the tradgedy is, is that where we are headed - forcing temporary sterilization on all teens so they can have sex without the tax burden of their offspring on the rest of us?