No. I’m not a fan of this program.
But I’m not a fan of it for reasons that I don’t believe are quite the same as yours, and I think how we get to the result is as important as the result itself.
Damn straight, it could lead to marriage which we all know has harmful psychological and physical effects. 
Can we agree that mandating the teaching of incorrect information is morally reprehensible, and that, by itself, this is a good enough reason to oppose the program?
Daniel
Finally… someone is thinking of the children! 
The teaching of factually incorrect information should never (apart, perhaps, from a wartime, foreign-oriented propaganda or tactical disinformation effort) be government funded.
However, I’m not completely persuaded that this program may be condemned on that basis.
It seems to me, at first blush, that engaging in sexual activity creates a certain health risk. Abstaining from sex protects against that risk. So it seems to me that if this is the only criticism, then it’s not factually incorrect to say that sexual activity is riskier than abstenence. Of course, sexual activity brings certain rewards that abstaining also blocks. But it seems to me that weighing the rewards against the risks in this matter is not a purely factual decision.
I welcome correction and additional information on this point.
See mhendo’s post # 45.
Then you’re a retard. Apparently you’re not aware of the fact that other people having unwanted children negatively effects society as a whole; passing out condoms at the local high school might mean my taxes won’t go to support the spawn of some irresponsible teenager who wasn’t given any support or decent information by her irresponsible parents.
It’s his old schtick. “You may object to this only on strictly Constitutional grounds, and that’s provided you share my interpretation of the Constitution. Otherwise you are a hypocrite.” I know you’re a lawyer, Bricker, but seriously - you do understand that people can object to a policy or law on the basis of it’s effects, right? If there’s an unjust or stupid law, people will object to it. And their objections may not be on Constitutional grounds. Because, you know, many people tend to worry about the consequences of a law. When a bad law like this is enacted, Constitutionality is frankly relevant to me only insofar as it may provide a legal mechanism to get the law overturned. I’m a pragmatist, like many people, and your absurd implication that it’s hypocritical to care more about the results than about the process is getting old.
No, he’s just up to his old tricks. Bringing up irrelevant comparisons to other government programs is just a trick he uses to sabotage actual conversation about political issues.
Yeah, I think we all get that.
The program states, according to the OP:
"(E) teaches that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects; "
and that
“Sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse.”
“Likely” can mean “has a non-negligible chance of occurring.” If they mean that, the word “may” would be clearer than “is likely to,” and I’d remove this objection. But “likely” more often means “probable, expected.” (This is after looking at a few different definitions).
The impression this gives is that if two people French Kiss, there’s a greater than 50% chance of their suffering harmful psychological and/or physical effects. While I’ve not seen research to the contrary, this is certainly an extraordinary claim; absent research showing that deep kissing, heavy petting, and even sex outside of marriage is likely to cause harmful psychological and physical effects, I think this is nonsense, false information.
Daniel
I had the exact same experience. I am one of only two girls in my graduating class that doesn’t have a baby, and the other girl had a disease which rendered her infertile.
I remember one day when I was in school “chapel” (a Bible study session before schoolwork that happened every morning), the principal brought out a letter. It seems that President Clinton had sent letters to all of the private schools asking them to teach sex education. She dramatically tore it up in front of us. She stated that she wasn’t about to teach us “how to behave in the backseat of a car”, her voice trembling with rage. She told us that a school she knew had offered education on drugs, and wouldn’t you know it? All the kids went out and started using drugs!
About a quarter of the girls in my highschool were expelled when they became pregnant.
True, however, abstinence is an unachievable goal for most. In fact, I’d bet (no cite) that there are more psychological problems from unnaturally repressing sexual desire rather than finding a safe way of, um, releasing it.
Teaching abstinence is fine; not teaching how to prevent STD’s and pregancy when you’re not going to be abstinent anyway does indeed result in more unwanted pregnancies and STD’s.
Anecdotally, it’s amazing how many of my wife’s fundamentalist relatives have had kids at 18 out of wedlock or got married in high school because of pregnancy. The model just doesn’t work.
I agree. So how did we get to this result?
A bit of digging shows that this law was enacted as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, better known as the Welfare Reform Bill.
I cannot say whether or not there was much public awareness of this provision in the bill as people argued whether this welfare reform was a good idea or not, but I can’t say I remember any discussion of it at the time. This provision is essentially unrelated to the bulk of the bill, and it’s hard to believe this provision was debated on its own. My WAG is that the GOP Congress of the 1994 Revolution decided to stick in their personal ideological statement in a bill that Clinton wasn’t in a political position to veto on the basis of an objectionable section or two.
I agree that such actions are commonplace - but they’re still an abuse of a technically democratic process; they’re not in any meaningful way a manifestation of democracy.
Abstaining from alcohol consumption reduces the risk of alcoholism to zero. We even tried to ban the sale of alcohol, and it was a complete failure. It made things worse, in fact, and only generated a healthy contraband economy, which enriched such cherished luminaries as Joseph Kennedy. Abtention’s great in principle, but practice gives us no reason to expect it’s an acheivable goal. It’s perfectly valid and advisable to encourage youngsters to put off sex until they’re mature, and it’s also perfectly valid to acknowledge this won’t make enough of a difference to eliminate risk. So, while we’re dealing with the reality of teen sex, it’s only responsible to inform youngsters about sex, to better minimize those risks all around. It is only responsible to make that information accurate. To do otherwise is simply gross malpractice that literally puts he lives of youngsters (and adults, for that matter) at risk. We cannot wish away addictions and desires, and it’s completely impractical to expect everyone will adhere to a uniform moral code of abstention. It just doesn’t appear to me that there’s a better way to deal with these very real problems than to provide the most accurate health education we can.
The abstinence-only programs implemented so far not only ignore their own abysmal track record, they typically are rife with completely innacurate information about contraception and STDs. What real-world argument favors them?
I am not sure I agree with your interpretation – namely, that based on the words you’ve highlighted, we’re funding a program that teaches that French kissing outside of marriage can lead to psychological and/or physical effects. If we are, then I absolutely agree with you.
But I’m highly skeptical that this claim is actually being made in any program funded under this aegis.
Now, if the claim is that sexual intercourse outside of marriage is likely to lead to harmful psychological and/or physical effects, I think we’re still on shaky ground, although not as shaky as the French kiss business. I agree that “likely” is simply not sustainable.
I guess I’d want to see some sort of cite from material actually being taught. I’d be much more comfortable if they taught that sexual intercourse MAY lead to harmful psychological and/or physical effects. That is a defensible claim.
Looks like my link doesn’t work, but you can search Thomas (http://thomas.loc.gov/) for H.R. 3734 in the 104th Congress.
That is not an argument claiming a factual misrepresentation. That is an argument claiming it is UNWISE to try to teach abstinence in view of the ineffectiveness of the approach.
I don’t disagree.
The thing is, the requirement isn’t to teach that sexual intercourse is likely to lead to problems: it specifically states that sexual activity is likely to lead to problems.
Searching for “abstinence education program” returns This as the first hit:
I was going to point out further links, but I had trouble finding any statement even this clear about what’s expected in an abstinence program. Other sites seem to repeat the information in the OP, including such sites as http://www.greattowait.com/ that are designed for teens.
Daniel
Well, I think it’s impossible to argue against the bare fact that abstinence from something removes the risks inherent in that something, but the salient question, then, is so what? Do people, in fact, abstain? Well, nothing I can think of has made them generally abstemious before. Threat of death, maybe, and perhaps not even then. So, we seem to be stuck with the reality that some kids will do drugs, drink beer, have sex, drive cars too fast, and generally behave like reckless idiots until…well, it won’t stop for all of them, really, but after some more-or-less arbitrary age we declare them “independent”. This is the intractable position we’re in when we try to ensure enveryone will be safe and happy. We have to take the ugly reality into account and try to make the best of it.
Oh my god, what incredibly bad coding. Everything after my name is the remainder of Bricker’s post. I’ll report the post ahead of it to a moderator for cleanup; my apologies meanwhile.
Daniel
Check out Secondary Virginity from the Great to Wait site intended for kids:
(emphasis added)
From their page about the program:
This is a site funded by Florida using federal funds, as near as I can tell.
Daniel
Fixed it. Note that I just went ahead and removed the text from Bricker’s post after your name. If that was a mistake, let me know and I’ll reinstate it.