And we’re not talking just about sex, but about any “sexual stimulation between two persons”:
Not only is it bad; it’s bad for you:
And of course, for you gays, no touchy-feely ever:
There’s at least an argument for encouraging abstaining from sexual intercourse until adulthood. But this goes well beyond that, in multiple directions. It says that not only should intercourse be abstained from, but any sexual stimulation between two persons. And such mutual stimulation is bad, they say, not just for teens, but even for unmarried adult couples of any age.
What we used to call “making out” when I was a teen would certainly qualify as sexual stimulation between two people. They gonna say even grownups shouldn’t do that??
Ain’t enough rolleyes. Yet this is official government policy.
Wouldn’t it be fun if a reporter at the morning press gaggle started asking questions of Scott McClellan about exactly what this meant, and why the government is telling, say, a middle-aged dating couple that their kisses shouldn’t be too passionate?
Ayup. When talking with kids, you can’t explain that homosexual preferences occur in a certain percentage of the human population and the populations of other species. You can’t point out that many people remain lifelong unmarried partners. You can’t point out that fidelity is more important than marriage for sexual health (i.e., an unfaithful spouse exposes you to more risk than a faithful unmarried partner). There’s all kinds of stuff you can’t point out. It’s sickening, literally.
The article quoted in by the OP is about the criteria for to qualify for funding under the Community-Based Abstinence Education Program. As has been noted many times in threads like this, if you don’t want to follow the rules, don’t take the money.
While I agree with RTFirefly as to the stupidity of abstinence-based sex education, nobody is forcing anybody to teach anything here. The rules come attached to the strings of the funding program, which isn’t mandatory, as far as I could see.
Now, whether or not abstinence-based sex education is something the government should be promoting is another debate, one which doesn’t have to involve the complications of funding criteria.
42 USC § 710(a) et seq sets aside funding that can only be used for abstinence education. So the “business” HHS has in offering a grant with these terms is “complying with the law of the land.”
Now, if your question is, “What business is it of the federal government to promote, by law, abstinence education?” then I certainly agree with you.
But I would also say the federal government promotes, and has promoted in the past, a number of policies I find highly questionable, and that fit into the category of “none of their business.” So my question to you is: are you condeming this exercise of federal power because it’s inappropriate for the federal government to exert influence in this manner, or because the stance taken on the particular subject matter is something you disagree with?
But there’s someone out there who finds highly objectionable just about anything the federal government does. That doesn’t mean all of those things are the same.
There’s a difference between promoting a highly questionable activity–say, invading another country–and promoting values using incorrect information–say, invading another country based on false evidence, or promoting abstinence using false information.
I’m not sure I understand exactly what you’re saying here. The Community-Based Abstinence Education Program is publicly funded, right? Why shouldn’t the public then be able to bitch and moan about its rules?
Ye serpents, ye generation of wankers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Oh wait, you already have!
But will the Feds fund new, non-sex-ed classes to teach the slow amongst us how to gratify themselves?
Apart from one-person sexual stimulation, does this mean that threesomes and orgies don’t count as sexual activity? Given the other claims, does this mean you can’t get pregnancy, STDs or psychological harm as long as you have more than one partner at the same time?
Actually, it doesn’t bother me that they’re promoting abstinence among minors.
But I find it kind of astounding that they’re saying the adult population should not only abstain from sexual intercourse if we’re not married, but should abstain from seemingly any other mutually stimulative contact.
I’m Pitting this policy because it is not just something I personally disagree with, but because it’s so far out of line from what the vast majority of Americans believe and practice as to seem a relic from a distant past.
Daniel talks about “teaching community values” but this is beyond even what most evangelical churches expect from their unmarried believers. Exactly what ‘community’ do these values reflect?
jayjay: what bothers me isn’t that anybody “is forcing anybody to teach anything here,” since they’re not, but that, as I said to Bricker, the official U.S. government stance on sexual morality is not remotely in the same universe as most Americans are.
Um…there’s more to this than the simple question of who’s taking the money. There’s the question of who’s GIVING the money, and that’s me. I don’t especially want my tax dollars used to bribe/extort educators into teaching “abstinence only,” let alone “heterocentric abstinence only.”
