"There is no end. There is no beginning.
There is only the infinite passion of life"
Frederico Fellini
On Tuesday evening, September 29, 2009 Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican senator from Utah, succeeded in getting passed in the Senate Finance Committee a new measure to re-fund the disastrous Abstinence Only Sex Education that clearly was so ineffective under the eight years of the Bush Administration. The measure would restore funding to the tune of $50 million dollars, in order to promote teaching children in schools to refrain from sex until marriage, while excluding teaching children age appropriate information about a variety of topics, including prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and contraception. I hope we can all succeed in getting our congressional representatives and senators to remove this funding from the final health care reform proposal.
Let me be clear; I am all in favor of not having a nation of pregnant teenage girls, or a nation of boys and girls that are suffering from sexually transmitted diseases. I am concerned that the ages of beginning sexual activity, not just sexual intercourse, are getting younger and younger. I am concerned that the sexualization and maturity of our nation's girls is getting younger and younger, including concerns about the increasingly earlier onset of menstruation. With physical changes, comes behavioral changes, including changes in libido.
An excellent paper from Pacific Lutheran University, "Sex Education in Schools", by Boyle, Ely, Karanasos, Long, Pena, Shook, and Waggoner published in late August 2009, lists some alarming statistics (http://www.scribd.com/doc/19213552/Sex-Education). By age 17, 50% of high school teens have engaged in oral sex; between 5% and 30% of 13 year olds have engaged in actual intercourse, and 9 MILLION new cases of STDs have occurred in people between the ages of 15 and 24 EVERY YEAR. As of 2006, 31% of our teens in this country had experienced a pregnancy, and this country had the highest teenage pregnancy rate of similarly developed countries.
Abstinence only sex education programs have been the ONLY kind of sex ed federally funded for the past eight years. Abstinence only sex education teaches one thing; to abstain from sex until marriage. Abstinence only sex ed drastically limits what questions may be answered by teachers, including limiting the ONLY information they may provide about condoms, for example, to the failure rate. Abstinence only programs were developed around the idea that if students are taught about preventing pregnancy or protection from Sexually Transmitted Diseases like HIV/AIDS, it is the same thing as promoting pre-marital sex, a bad assumption. Ignorance may be bliss for parents, but stupid is never better than smart, and ignorant is never better than informed.
In contrast, a comprehensive approach to sex education teaches not only about abstinence, but also provides age appropriate medically accurate information about contraception, as well as age appropriate information about relationships, decision making, assertiveness, resisting peer pressure, STDs and about unintended pregnancies. And comprehensive sex ed includes parents or caretakers as partners with teachers.
The final sentences of the "Sex Education in Schools" says it well. "Teens are going to do what they want to do despite what we teach them. Hopefully, having more knowledge will lead them to make smarter choices whether they chose to remain abstinent until marriage or become sexually active before."
The famous actress, Marlene Dietrich said it well too, "In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact."
I should have included a link to this article by Meghan McCain. Instead, I will offer it here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-07/the-gop-is-clueless-about-sex/
KR,you are partially correct.
ReplyDeleteAbstinence is included in comprehensive sex ed, which is sometimes referred to by the alternate description "abstinence plus" sex ed.
Under abstinence only sex ed however, there was an increase in pregnancy rates, and also increases in other kinds of sexual behavior which included a substantial risk, such as both oral and anal sex, resulting in increases in sexually transmitted disease.
When information about transmission of STD's and risky behavior are provided, it offers reason for better choices instead of simply trying to forbid unspecified activity. It is pointless to simply try to forbid something when that order cannot be enforced.
The greatest reason consistently offered for abstinence only sex ed over the comprehensive version was the FEAR that providing information would encourage undesirable behavior. There is no indication that fear is justified, and quite the opposite in fact appears to be true.
I believe we are probably in agreement KR that it IS desirable for people to wait to have sex.
Some of the conversations I have had while researching this article were with female friends about the age at which they lost their virginity. The trend was that the younger my female friends, the elearier they tended to have begun having sex, and a correlation, the earlier they began haivng sex, the less likely they were to do so responsibly, and the more likely they were to have given in to pressure from their partner - often a partner who was at least a year or two older than they were.
That was anectdotal rather than a scientific poll, clearly. But I wonder how that compares with the ages and the circumstances for men across a similar range of ages.
KR wrote:"Completely abstaining from any sexual activity is 100% effective,"
ReplyDeleteAnd it has been demonstrated KR, by the resulting statistics of pregnancies and STDs, that there IS NOT ANY SUBSEQUENT ABSTENTION FROM SEX just because that is what is taught.
I wrote :"I believe we are probably in agreement KR that it IS desirable for people to wait to have sex."
ReplyDeleteKR wrote: "Do you think 13 was too young?"
Too young for what, KR, and for whom?
To young to be having have sex? Yes
To young to be taught about sex? No.
K-Rod said...
ReplyDelete"DG, the fact remains that completely abstaining from any sexual activity is 100% effective."
Yes, it is --- IF, and only IF, people abstain 100% from sexual activity. Clearly they don't in practice abstain from sexual activity, making your statement nice theory,but not good education, and not good public policy.
"Just admit the truth and be careful of the knife cutting both ways... "...just because that is what is taught."
Sorry, KR, but this sentence makes no sense. Teaching correct science and medicine, instead of religious beliefs, is hardly "a knife that cuts in both ways".
KR wrote:
"And as for 13 being too young for sex, yes, but I fall back on the old saying; Do as I say, not as I do."
Would you want a 13 year old child of yours, either a son or daughter, to have sex at that age?
If this is a biographical statement, (1)do you think it is too young? (2) Were you actively having safe sex, or at-risk sex at that age? (3)Why in the world do you think 'do as I say not as I do' is going to stop anyone else from having sex, if you were having sex at that age?
That is an unreasonable expectation for everyone to follow, however much it is a desideratum. Therefore, sex ed should address reality, not "would't it be nice" fantasies.