Abstinence-only Sex-Ed is Absolute Horseshit
Feel free to stalk our every post with the f*cking c*nts RSS feed, subscribe to f-ckingc-nts.com by email, follow our new posts and random comments on Twitter, or become a fan on facebook. Go on. You know you want to! All the cool kids are doing it ...
Abstinence-only sex education is utter horseshit. The concept, in a nutshell: Prevent pregnancy by telling kids not to have sex until marriage, but don't teach them how to use contraception, because knowing how a condom works will make them want to have sex.
This is like teaching driver's ed by telling people not to have accidents, but NEVER talking about drunk driving, because it might make them want to drink.
It's fucking stupid.
And statistics back that up. Abstinence-only education, in all but one scientifically valid study of such programs used in US schools, has only one consistent effect: It makes kids less likely to use birth control when they have sex. Isn't that great? It doesn't have any statistically significant effect on how many kids do have sex during their teen years. It doesn't significantly delay kids' first sexual experience. But it increases the odd that those kids will have unsafe sex when they finally decide to "do it".
See, abstinence-only sex ed programs don't tell kids how to use a condom properly. They don't explain female birth control options and their advantages. They tell kids how often contraception fails, and don't have sex until marriage. Period. That's it. So, while condoms are 90+% effective when used properly, all these kids are being taught is that their real-world failure rate is closer to 30%. How can we remedy this? By teaching them HOW TO USE condoms properly, perhaps?
But we can't do that, because then kids will actually think about having sex, and we don't want that. So let's just convince them that condoms are a waste of their time. Then they can go out and enjoy some unprotected sex, and learn first-hand all about pregnancy and STDs. Because y'know, experiential learning is the best kind, isn't it?
So who is promoting utter sexual ignorance among US teens? Well, let's see … the only segment of the US population who actually strongly supports abstinence until marriage are the strongly religious folks. And let's face it, here in the US that's mostly Christians. The Mike Huckabees of the world. The same people who, as I recall, pulled their kids out of the sex-ed classes during my school days.
The Jesus freaks' kids were already getting the no-sex-until-marriage line from their parents, and got to sit in the library for an hour (or something like that) … and the rest of us got actual, useful, real-world information about how to get knocked up, and how not to. Sounds like a good compromise to me. Everyone's parents get what they want: Jesus freaks and too-embarassed-to-explain-anything-themselves alike.
But no. Apparently being responsible for their own kids' sex education isn't good enough for the Bible-thumping contingent. The rest of the kids? If their parents are too embarrassed and/or too ignorant to pass on important information like how to use contraception to them, apparently they ought to get stuck with the evangelically-approved "stick your head in the sand and cross your fucking legs" version of the facts of life too.
Of course, in the perfect Christian world, this would result in kids never having sex before they got married, and there would be no such thing as teen pregnancy or teen VD.
However, unlike the abstinence-only crowd, I live in the real world. And so do all those pregnant teenagers. Thankfully, a lot of them can get abortions, receive some actual contraception information at the clinic, and get on with their lives, relatively unharmed and hopefully all the wiser for it.
Of course, in perfect Christian-land, that wouldn't happen either.
The problem here is that these self-righteous jackasses, who'd like nothing more than to legislate their absurd moral strictures down the rest of our throats, can't seem to get it through their impenetrable skulls that they can't legislate human behavior out of existence. You can eliminate rational, comprehensive sex education. You can outlaw abortion. And then you end up with a bunch of pregnant teenagers, having unwanted babies, or dying in illegal, unsanitary abortion clinics. And even if they get lucky, and don't spawn any unwanted kidlets, there's still the little question of STDs.
Then again, I guess if your kids end up with AIDS because you didn't want them to know how to use condoms, that whole "wages of sin is death" line really came home to roost, eh?
Wake up, assholes. Here is the one brilliant thing your Jesus-besotted brains can't seem to grasp about this country: Freedom of religion. That means YOU can pull your kids out of sex-ed, if your religious beliefs demand it. But it ALSO means you can't force the rest of the country to wallow in your God-mandated ignorance, because the same principle that gives you freedom to practice your religion also grants the rest of us the freedom NOT to.
Let's put this simply, so all you moralizing braindead cunts might have a chance at grasping it: A LOT of teenagers fuck. Quite a few of them fuck a LOT. Telling them "don't fuck until you're married" is going to do about as much good as telling people to "Just Say No," which, as we all know, delivered a swift and final death blow to the US recreational drug industry. Prohibition never solved anything.
True, prohibition never solves anything. But there's a huge swath of the population that just can't seem to get their heads around that. I'd find it mildly amusing if it weren't so damned scary.
Perhaps the thought is that if they keep their own kids from falling into the traps of drugs, sex, alcohol, etc. and prohibit the rest of the population from properly learning about such things, those opposed to them will die off, leaving only a pure, shining Christian nation under that will re-write the Constitution the way the founding fathers surely must have meant it to be. Hell, they already outbreed us prodigiously.
Bleh, I need to go puke now. Move to Holland anyone?
29th January 2008 at 5:29 pm | permalink |hehehe … Yeah, let us sin ourselves into oblivion, so they can get on about their business of … hmm. What is their business anyhow? Oh, that's right: Promoting ignorance and superstition, and legally meddling in the the private affairs of others.
30th January 2008 at 5:16 pm | permalink |i completely agree. abstinence education is the only thing that I had, and it was utter horse shit.
23rd February 2008 at 12:33 pm | permalink |I'm so very glad I not only went through school before they started that crap, but had a mother who was willing to explain everything to me properly herself.
23rd February 2008 at 2:58 pm | permalink |wow, great article, ive only just started reading your stuff as of yesterday and i love it already.
im also glad i live in canada, where we learn sex-ed in school, nationwide
24th February 2008 at 1:55 pm | permalink |@alexander: Thanks! :-)
24th February 2008 at 2:45 pm | permalink |In my high school, Health was a required course during sophomore year which included comprehensive sex education. I did a report on genital warts and thus will probably never have sex or enter a room where someone has masturbated, ever. Comprehensive sex education IS abstinence sex education! VD is icky!!
26th February 2008 at 10:14 am | permalink |@tashton: Well, y'know, we had comprehensive sex ed in my school, supposedly … but they never made us do any reports like that! lol … sounds like it's a damn good idea. heh
26th February 2008 at 1:17 pm | permalink |I am from California, born here and live here now. I did live in Texas for about 9 months though, when I was a sophomore in high school.
Fortunately I had sex ed. as a freshman, and it was completely comprehensive. I moved to TX, where sex ed was abstinence only, and that was in 10th grade.
To make a long story short, 8 out of the 10 friends I had in Texas are either pregnant or have babies now, and all of them were sexually active before I even thought about it.
Doesn't say much for their sex ed. :/
25th March 2008 at 3:23 am | permalink |@ashley: Yeah, not bothering to tell kids how NOT to get pregnant really doesn't help them not get pregnant … shocking but true. hehe
25th March 2008 at 4:20 pm | permalink |I went to Catholic High School and I can tell you that the rumors are most definitly true. telling someone not to have sex most definitly increases the interest.
Funny how me, the person who's mother gave a detailed informative talk on condoms, stds, and consequences has yet to ever have a pregnancy scare. I don't have casual sex and I don't do things like have sex with people who's sexual history I'm not aware of.
I wish I could tell you how to fix this. I am currently studying to be a teacher and in a Psychology and Education class we learned that several years ago in Pennsylvania the parents of our state decided they wanted "values" taught in public schools. After careful debate, they decided to teach "Working-together" as a value to students. Parent's angrily railed against the school boards saying they wanted their children to be self-sufficient and the idea was dropped.
In my opinion, PARENTS should be teaching the values, morals and ideals we want our kids to learn, just as mine taught me. Teachers shouldn't NEED to teach sex ed. They should be teaching Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Discipline and Work Ethic. Instead we're coddling kids and breeding a slew of kids who fuck with no idea of consequence and fail in the real world.
lol, and somehow I think I can change this.
29th March 2008 at 9:02 pm | permalink |@hellationships: "they decided to teach "Working-together" as a value to students. Parent's angrily railed against the school boards saying they wanted their children to be self-sufficient and the idea was dropped" *blink* As though working together and being self-sufficient are mutually exclusive? Dear god.
See, it's exactly that kind of reasoning that makes me think kids shouldn't have to rely on their parents to inform them about the world. ;-)
30th March 2008 at 3:17 pm | permalink |You know, I actually agree with this post. I thought it was impossible for me to agree with a word you say (our views are polar opposites :o) but I agree. While abstinence is what I'm going with as it is a teaching of Christianity, kids who aren't Christians aren't going to care about abstinence as far as faith goes. And since they're not Christians, one more sin isn't going to make any difference…
17th April 2008 at 1:12 pm | permalink |@macie: That's a very good point … hadn't thought of it from that angle. :-)
17th April 2008 at 3:58 pm | permalink |