More evidence that "a little learning is a dangerous thing":
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are more likely totake chances with other kinds of sex that increase the risk of sexuallytransmitted diseases, a study of 12,000 adolescents suggests.
Oy. You keep facts away from kids, and guess what? They get some strange ideas.
But I think that "abstinence-only" sex education is not primarily about — and really was never intended to be about — keeping kids physically safe. If you want your children to avoid getting pregnant and/or sick, you won’t keep information about condoms and pills away from them. They work perfectly well, and in their heart of hearts, even the most passionate anti-sex activists know that. In fact, their effectiveness is exactly what they fear: It’s a situation of moral hazard, wherein if something has few consequences, people will feel free to do it. They believe that "information" equals "incentive", and who’s to say they’re wrong? These folks don’t want a world where sex is inconsequential.
No, "abstinence-only" is and always was about maintaining the moral purity of parents, not kids. It’s less the physical danger of pregnancy and disease that they’re concerned about; it’s more the spiritual disease of sex from which they want to protect their kids. And apparently, they would feel just as rotten if they led their kids into sin, as if they let their kids get sick or pregnant. So if something bad happens to the kids, it’s because they didn’t listen to their folks or their teachers. Their fault, not ours.
In the abstinence-only formulation, the question of "What will we tell the children?" emphasizes the "we", at the expense of the "what", and clearly "children". It’s a fascinating — and heartbreaking — moral experiment, with real-life consequences.
Absitence only programs have the potential to poison the youth of America more than safe sex programs ever could. The safest way to not be the victim of a car accident is to never enter a car. However if one is going to be a passenger or driver of a motor vehicle is it not best that they know to put on a seatbelt? Teens are going to continue to have sex whether abstinence only programs go into affect or not. However with the presence of the Abstinence only programs they will be ignorant of the correct and safe ways to have sex. A Word to Conservative Fundementalists: Get over your own hang ups and ideas of morality and take the virtuous route. Quit sheltering your children and actually try to protect.
This is the most interesting analysis of the Abstinence issue that I’ve read. Excellent reading.
Hi Cary,Thanks for writing. To take your analogy further, the abstinence-only crowd thinks the problem is driving itself, not the danger of an accident. And so they denigrate the effectiveness of seat belts in hopes that kids will be so scared that they’ll stay away from the car.Once we understand that to these folks, it’s about the sex itself (and parental responsibility), and not so much the accompanying dangers, we can come to grips with the abstinence movement. To a lot of people, that issue needs to be addressed one way or another by folks who support “comprehensive” sex ed.
Yes, this is an important part of what drives abstinence only education, the anti-choice political movement, and several other related issues: It’s a coded national debate about sex.That’s why you find the same groups driving political efforts to criminalize abortion, force abstinence-only education, ban sex toys and stores, ban porn, and make contraception unavailable. On pragmatic grounds, some of these things are contradictory. Most obviously, less contraception means more abortion. But in the one way they all tie together, they’re also perfectly consistent: Anti-Sex Politics.That’s why we’re losing ground everywhere. If abortion choice were really only a womens’ rights issue, we’d be winning. Acceptance and support for equality for women has been on a steady rise, and political and legal rights for women have been rising with it. But that’s not going to help us keep abortion legal, if we don’t tackle the fundamental core.We need to openly counter anti-sex politics, with bold, forthright, pro-sex politics that isn’t ashamed of itself. We need to declare that we believe sex is good, and if more people have more sex, that’s a better state of affairs all around. The only hope we have of winning this argument, is if we actually engage in it. Most of our leaders are still hiding, afraid that it’s political suicide. And that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that’s taking significant chunks of the progressive agenda down with it.
“We need to declare that we believe sex is good, and if more people have more sex, that’s a better state of affairs all around.”Well Cos, I think that slogan would be political suicide, too. đŸ™‚ I would prefer a small-L liberal attitude from the government about sex: it’s just not the government’s business. That’s actually an attitude that I think folks agree with: “Get the hell out of my bedroom.” A “pro-sex agenda” seems a little in-your-face, and doesn’t sound like something I’d be into.We need to understand what the other sides’ real motivations are. Right now, they’re still forced to couch abstinence-only as “sex ed” (our frame), when in fact it’s “sex ignorance” they’re pushing. But we’ve got to acknowledge that most parents really really don’t want their kids having sex under any circumstances, but are indulging in wishful thinking that “abstinence only” is going to keep them from it. And we’ve got to hold out hope that they’ll take tough reality over wishful thinking.I do think that we can win this on pragmatic grounds. If we say “We get results, we keep kids safe”, I think we win most of the time. Because after all, that’s true.
I disagree. We can’t win by looking at what “most people agree” with, and just saying that. That’s how we’ve been losing ground for a while now. They boldly push for what they want and believe in, we fail to counter, “knowing” that most people don’t agree with their extreme views… and lo! some people move over to their side each time, and as time passes, the right grows stronger and the left grows weaker. They achieve this exactly through doing the things we’d think are political suicide. What’s actually happeneing is, they try to convince people of their point of view, and they succeed in convincing people sometimes. We try to tell people that our views and theirs are the same already. We never convince anyone to change their thinking about anything because we don’t try because we’re afraid that a lot of people wouldn’t agree.Pragmatic grounds don’t work. Very few people vote pragmatism. They vote worldview. They vote common sense. To someone with an anti-sex worldview, common sense is that more contraception will lead to more sex will lead to more disease and more social breakdown and more abortions. No matter how incorrect that is in practice, we’ll never convince most people who think it’s just common sense. We have to show them our worldview first, and then show them the facts and give them an opportunity to see how those facts might fit in to a different common sense.So I assert: We will continue to lose ground on all of these issues (abortion, sex ed, contraception, artistic freedom, family planning, etc.) until we embrace bold pro-sex politics.