As long as we're talking about sex
December 20, 2002
Let's just make all of the Far Right even more disgusted with me by linking over to AlterNet's story on the silliness of the Bushies bribes regarding abstinence only education:
Since arriving in office, Bush and his band of merry men have been brainstorming ways to get sex out of the classroom and back into marriage where it belongs.No doubt they consider the media's recent focus on abstinence a victory: Two weeks ago, Newsweek's cover story examined "The New Virginity." If you believe that one, American teens � led by supercute Miss America � are falling head over heels for Bush's just-say-no message. (Or maybe it's American magazine editors who are falling head over heels for Bush.)
Unfortunately, spin and hype aren't much help to the eleventh grader in heat. It has never been easy to be a virgin in high school, and it's no easier now that it's supposedly cool to abstain. The only thing that's changed is what's being taught. In Grand Old Party tradition, the means is bribery. Bush has set aside $135 million for abstinence instruction next year � almost twice what was spent in 1998 � and here's the bitch: Most of these funds are reserved for programs that promote abstinence until marriage as the One True Way (as opposed to abstinence as a fairly sensible option in one's teens, which is an idea that many more sensible people can get behind).
The problem with this kind of instruction isn't that it makes you think about sex � teens don't need much help in that department � but that it gives you blinders. For as long as it sticks, abstinence is the only way to protect yourself from STDs and pregnancy. But let's just say it doesn't stick � let's say you lapse somewhere along the way, as I did. Then abstinence-only education leaves you completely unprepared for the emotional and physical realities of sex....
To further prove just how upright, honest and concerned the administration is in these matters, the Bushies just got slammed for deleting info from CDC condom fact sheet about their usefulness in combating STDs, about how to properly use them and in pointing out that the wide spread availability of condoms does not make young people more likely to...
have sex at an earlier age.
And not content to keep the ignorance here at home, the Bushies also tried to pressure the UN to change the International Population Control agreement away from mentioning "consistent condom use" as a way to prevent HIV infection and to, instead, stress abstinence and monogamy.
Mayberry Machiavellis indeed.
Posted by Jody at December 20, 2002 12:52 AM
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