Politically A-Sexual - or Non-Sexual - or maybe Just Stupid.

[Guest]

Bush Seeks Funds for Abstinence Education

By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush's re-election insures that more federal money will flow to abstinence education that precludes discussion of birth control, even as the administration awaits evidence that the approach gets kids to refrain from sex.

Congress last weekend included more than $131 million for abstinence programs in a $388 billion spending bill, an increase of $30 million but about $100 million less than Bush requested. Meanwhile, a national evaluation of abstinence programs has been delayed, with a final report not expected until 2006.

Ten state evaluations, compiled by a group that opposes abstinence-only education, showed little change in teens' behavior since the start of abstinence programs in 1997.

The president has been a strong proponent of school-based sexual education that focuses on abstinence, but does not include instruction on safe sex.

Complete Story - http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news...603822833.htm&sc=1151&photoid=20041126TXLJ102


Here's the next step for the political powerhouse that is the religious right.

Even though ten state reports already show little effect on behavior from abstinence programs, we should just tell those little sluts to say "No." to sex.

And of course we should remove the funding for birth control education.

For heaven's sake, "Just say No" worked with drugs, didn't it?

(I have already begun discussions about this with my daughter. And I hope my kids wait for sex until they have a clue how to handle the situation. But at least when that time happens they'll have enough information to make an intelligent decision.)

 

[rgraham666]

The people behind this are too blinded by ideology to think much about what they're doing. They can't allow themselves to do so. They might find out they're wrong.

One of the more interesting statistics I saw recently was comparing births in blue and red states. In red states the number of children born to single mothers is significantly higher. My own conclusion, and I could be wrong, is that the disconnect between belief and reality keeps kids from learning useful information about sex. They find out how through the usual means of gossip and experimentation, but don't learn any of the consequences because nobody gossips about that.

An interesting conundrum is that many of the backers of the current administration are in the entertainment industry, which depends heavily on implied and explicit sexual activity. It will be fun to watch when the religious right and the entertainment people start butting heads.

 

[cantdog]

If they see it. Blinders are blinders. My Dad switched to republicanism to protect his guns and gradually bought into the whole thing. His own blinkers got so long and wide that entire sections of the world vanished. When you'd just have to deny them anyway, it makes little sense to acknowledge their existence in the first place.

cantdog
adjusting his own blinders

 

[R. Richard]

One problem with sex is that very few people seem to be able to think clearly about the matter.

As has been pointed out, the religious right wants to pretend that there is no such thing as sex. The left seems to want to think that wild, abandoned sex is the answer.

The sexually ignorant wind up in trouble, due to their ignorance. The sexually wild tend to wind up in trouble due to reality (The hippie generation in San Francisco quickly found out that, while sex is free, babies are not.)

There has to be a middle ground here. I have spent a lot of time trying to convince ladies that I have found the middle ground. I am still meeting a lot of resistance (too many have closed minds).

JMHO.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Reason number 1 of 9,576,942 that abstinence education will never work in schools (now in sparkly new calculus/physics notation):

Desire for respect of peers >>> Respect for school

 

[Evil Alpaca]

Abstinence only education is almost an oxymoron. Trying to enforce the concept of nothing is . . . dumb. First, the sex drive is one of the most powerful biological and evolutionary forces in all non-asexual beings. Trying to convince people to simply "not do it" is analagous to telling gravity to "just stop working so we can fly." There is simply no real evidence to support the idea that abstinence only policies work, and plenty to show that those areas have an increase in teen preganancy.

But even if these policies did prevent anyone from having sex before marriage (this is a BIG hypothetical here), sexual compatibility is an important part of marriage and sexual incompatability is one of (if not the) leading causes of divorce. People need to come to grips with their own sexuality before they know what they want in a long-term partner, but the same people who demand that everyone not have sex until marriage are the same ones who condemn divorce (a very plausible aftereffect of such a union).

Teach kids what the options are, but stress waiting until they are comfortable enough with the idea before jumping in.

 

[thebullet]

I lived in a small, rural, conservative, republican town for several years. The kids in that town had three things to do in their spare time: get drunk, get high, get laid. This is an absolute fact: 30% of the girls in the Senior class were pregnant. This was in the 70's.

Now I'm living in a very rich, suburban, conservative, republican town. By the time my son was in high school in the late 90's, EVERYONE was doing it. I'm not talking about the football stars banging the cheerleaders. I'm talking about the fat ugly pimply girls going down on the computer geeks. I'm talking about the skinny little clarinet players with no boobs getting gang banged by the trombone section.

You can close the barn door, GW, but the fucking cow is long gone.

 

[cantdog]

This is a job??

Who calls it a job, to basically tell people nothing? Why would a program to keep people ignorant require funding at any level at all?

I mean, a person who has become knowledgeable about STDs and reproductive pharmacology, who will keep up on it, who will tell people these vital thing clearly, okay, this I can fund.

Funding ignorance? Just put the kids in an empty lecture hall twice a month and pay nobody at all to tell 'em nothing.

Then at least, when they tell their parents what they did today, they will know beyond peradventure, "We had sex ed, but nobody told us jack shit."

cantdog

 

[SummerMorning]

Hear hear.

I love it here. Free condoms rule.