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Bush's sex fantasy - The White House is pouring money into programs that tell teens to just say no to sex. Most experts say the programs don't work -- except to enrich the religious right.
By Michelle Goldberg (Full article is at Salon.com; you need to read an ad to get a "day pass'.)
Feb. 24, 2004 | George Bush's proposed 2005 budget cuts funding for veterans' healthcare and public housing. It freezes funding for after-school programs and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families grants. It provides less than one-sixth of the increase needed to close the budget shortfall in the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which helps low-income HIV patients access medical care and lifesaving drugs. It cuts state Medicaid funding by $1.5 billion.
Yet when it comes to abstinence education, money seems to be no object. Bush's budget recommends $270 million for programs that try to dissuade teenagers from having sex, double the amount spent last year. Much of that money would be given in grants to Christian organizations such as Youth for Christ and to anti-abortion groups operating so-called crisis pregnancy centers, outfits that masquerade as women's health clinics but deliver a strongly anti-abortion message and often medically inaccurate information. It would pay for school programs that teach kids that premarital sex leads to psychological maladies and that sex with condoms is a kind of viral Russian roulette.
Experts in sex education and AIDS prevention say that in a country where the vast majority of people lose their virginity before their wedding night, these lessons aren't just distorted, they're dangerous. "To promote abstinence-only in the era of AIDS is to promote ignorance. It's inexplicable," says James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit organization devoted to sex education. Some abstinence-only programs, like more comprehensive sex education, have been shown to delay the age at which teenagers first have sex -- which almost everyone agrees is a good thing. Yet studies also show that when teenagers from abstinence-only programs do have sex, they're less likely than others to use protection. Perhaps that's why the teen pregnancy rate in Texas remains one of the highest in the country, despite the abstinence-only policies Bush pushed as governor.
"When you displace decades of public health practice based on what works and substitute a more ideological and political approach to preventing teen pregnancy and HIV, you're really using young people as a political football," says Wagoner. "It's their health and lives that are placed in the balance as a result." And it's not just American lives, either -- Bush is using American leverage to try to force other countries to promote abstinence-only education at the expense of safe sex.
. . .
Bush's involvement with the abstinence-only movement stretches back over a decade and is about more than just electoral politics. It's a case study in the right's subversion of science. Their ideas rejected by mainstream scientists, conservatives have built their own scientific infrastructure, which then buttresses once-derided theories in the political arena. This administration recruits its scientists from that right-wing counterintelligentsia, which has been funded by some of the same groups that are now collecting taxpayer money to teach abstinence-only programs instead of traditional sex education.
The Bush administration has lately come under fire for distorting science for political expediency. Last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report on the administration's abuse of science, along with a statement signed by more than 60 scientific luminaries, including 20 Nobel laureates. "When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions," the statement says. "This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government's own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice. Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front."
. . .
Last year, Metro Atlanta Youth for Christ received a federal grant of $363,936 a year for three years, doubling its budget. The group has used the money to hire three "abstinence educators." These educators aren't required to have any specific credentials in public health. They do, however, have to be Christian, because Metro Atlanta Youth for Christ won't employ people who aren't.
Other federal grantees include Bethany Christian Services -- listed on the Department of Health and Human Services Web site as Bethany Crisis Pregnancy Services -- which bills itself as a "not-for-profit, pro-life, Christian adoption and family services agency," and A Woman's Concern, a crisis pregnancy center in Boston. None of the 2003 grants went to Jewish or Muslim groups. Not that many Jewish groups are applying -- the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which represents the Rabbis of Reform Judaism, the country's largest denomination, passed a resolution in 2001 calling for comprehensive sex education and rejecting government funds for abstinence-only programs.
. . .
That hasn't stopped conservatives from trying to export the abstinence-only messages to countries that receive American aid. A recent law mandates that one-third of U.S. assistance to fight AIDS globally be used for abstinence education. "In effect, this makes 'abstinence-until-marriage' advocacy the single most important HIV/AIDS prevention intervention of the U.S. government," says the Guttmacher report.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is trying to force its anti-condom agenda on the rest of the world. As Politics & Science reported, in December 2002, "the U.S. delegation at the Asian and Pacific Population Conference sponsored by the United Nations attempted to delete endorsement of 'consistent condom use' as a means of preventing HIV infection. U.S. delegates took this position on the grounds that recommending condom use would promote underage sex."
By Michelle Goldberg (Full article is at Salon.com; you need to read an ad to get a "day pass'.)
Feb. 24, 2004 | George Bush's proposed 2005 budget cuts funding for veterans' healthcare and public housing. It freezes funding for after-school programs and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families grants. It provides less than one-sixth of the increase needed to close the budget shortfall in the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which helps low-income HIV patients access medical care and lifesaving drugs. It cuts state Medicaid funding by $1.5 billion.
Yet when it comes to abstinence education, money seems to be no object. Bush's budget recommends $270 million for programs that try to dissuade teenagers from having sex, double the amount spent last year. Much of that money would be given in grants to Christian organizations such as Youth for Christ and to anti-abortion groups operating so-called crisis pregnancy centers, outfits that masquerade as women's health clinics but deliver a strongly anti-abortion message and often medically inaccurate information. It would pay for school programs that teach kids that premarital sex leads to psychological maladies and that sex with condoms is a kind of viral Russian roulette.
Experts in sex education and AIDS prevention say that in a country where the vast majority of people lose their virginity before their wedding night, these lessons aren't just distorted, they're dangerous. "To promote abstinence-only in the era of AIDS is to promote ignorance. It's inexplicable," says James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit organization devoted to sex education. Some abstinence-only programs, like more comprehensive sex education, have been shown to delay the age at which teenagers first have sex -- which almost everyone agrees is a good thing. Yet studies also show that when teenagers from abstinence-only programs do have sex, they're less likely than others to use protection. Perhaps that's why the teen pregnancy rate in Texas remains one of the highest in the country, despite the abstinence-only policies Bush pushed as governor.
"When you displace decades of public health practice based on what works and substitute a more ideological and political approach to preventing teen pregnancy and HIV, you're really using young people as a political football," says Wagoner. "It's their health and lives that are placed in the balance as a result." And it's not just American lives, either -- Bush is using American leverage to try to force other countries to promote abstinence-only education at the expense of safe sex.
. . .
Bush's involvement with the abstinence-only movement stretches back over a decade and is about more than just electoral politics. It's a case study in the right's subversion of science. Their ideas rejected by mainstream scientists, conservatives have built their own scientific infrastructure, which then buttresses once-derided theories in the political arena. This administration recruits its scientists from that right-wing counterintelligentsia, which has been funded by some of the same groups that are now collecting taxpayer money to teach abstinence-only programs instead of traditional sex education.
The Bush administration has lately come under fire for distorting science for political expediency. Last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report on the administration's abuse of science, along with a statement signed by more than 60 scientific luminaries, including 20 Nobel laureates. "When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions," the statement says. "This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government's own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice. Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front."
. . .
Last year, Metro Atlanta Youth for Christ received a federal grant of $363,936 a year for three years, doubling its budget. The group has used the money to hire three "abstinence educators." These educators aren't required to have any specific credentials in public health. They do, however, have to be Christian, because Metro Atlanta Youth for Christ won't employ people who aren't.
Other federal grantees include Bethany Christian Services -- listed on the Department of Health and Human Services Web site as Bethany Crisis Pregnancy Services -- which bills itself as a "not-for-profit, pro-life, Christian adoption and family services agency," and A Woman's Concern, a crisis pregnancy center in Boston. None of the 2003 grants went to Jewish or Muslim groups. Not that many Jewish groups are applying -- the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which represents the Rabbis of Reform Judaism, the country's largest denomination, passed a resolution in 2001 calling for comprehensive sex education and rejecting government funds for abstinence-only programs.
. . .
That hasn't stopped conservatives from trying to export the abstinence-only messages to countries that receive American aid. A recent law mandates that one-third of U.S. assistance to fight AIDS globally be used for abstinence education. "In effect, this makes 'abstinence-until-marriage' advocacy the single most important HIV/AIDS prevention intervention of the U.S. government," says the Guttmacher report.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is trying to force its anti-condom agenda on the rest of the world. As Politics & Science reported, in December 2002, "the U.S. delegation at the Asian and Pacific Population Conference sponsored by the United Nations attempted to delete endorsement of 'consistent condom use' as a means of preventing HIV infection. U.S. delegates took this position on the grounds that recommending condom use would promote underage sex."
