American conservatives: If you are opposed to legalized abortion, are you opposed to sex education and birth control information being provided in public schools at age-appropriate levels?
For those who oppose it, does your attitude towards these subjects derive from your religious beliefs? If so, which beliefs exactly? If not, whence comes your opposition?
If it is not a moral/religious issue, is it a medical one? Where teenagers are concerned, do you distinguish between chemical forms of birth control (e.g. the pill) vs. mechanical ones (condoms, some IUDs, diaphragms)?
I admit up front to having a sort of agenda here: it has always seemed to me that people who were anti-abortion and anti-birth control (especially for teens) were simply anti-sex, with the view that sex is for procreation only and never for fun. Or perhaps only anti-sex outside of marriage. This seems a rather one-dimensional view, however, so my agenda is to try to understand the objections to sex and birth control information being provided for teenagers. For context, providing this information seems pragmatically to have the positive effect of reducing unwanted pregnancies, ruined lives and/or desire for abortions.
I’m Conservative, but that’s not driven by religion. Even though I am religious.
My faith actually works against many of the so-called “conservative” behaviors I see labelled.
My faith tells me that it’s not my job to act as act as a prosthetic conscience for other folks. “Accursed is he who causes his brother to stumble in his walk,” “In my Father’s Mansion there are many rooms,” “Judge not” and “Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord” are important aspects of my faith - I try to take them seriously (though as a human, and prone to sin, I often fail).
So - Sex Ed? Well, I’ve found nothing in the Bible that says folks shouldn’t know how their bodies work. Indeed, my church teaches comprehensive sexuality courses to young teenagers - My daughter went though it, my son is going through it, and my nephews have also gone though it. And you know what? Casual sex is down, and medically unneccessary abortions are essentially non-existant within our congregation. Because the kids 1) have few gaps in their knowledge, 2) have had sex thoroughly de-mystified, and 3) they’re largely immune to the typical bullshit games people use to encourage other teenagers to engage in risky sex.
I’m NOT going to tell folks they can’t have their medically-unnecessary abortions. It’s NOT my place to be their conscience - that’s between them and their consience and God. BUT - peopel will have abortions, whether or not I approve - so, it would be uncompassionate of me to make them illegal and thus unsafe.
I personally am Born Again, but I generally alternate between UCC (United Church of Christ) and UUA (Unitarian Unaversalist Asscn). Boith are liberal organizations, though you’ll find some hard-core conservatives therein anyway - Also more than a few libertarians. Including some whom are rather further to the ‘Right’ than I. Truthfully, I don’t NEED a church - I want one. I can talk to God and Christ on my own, and I’m sure they’ll hear me as well or better than if I let someone get inbetween us.
My take on faith puts me outside many of the more ‘conservative’ congregations because I’m not very angry, and I THINK about my faith, and what that faith means. I’m aware that Christ was a radical liberal. I’m aware that the only time he blew his cool was to get pissed at the bankers. He spoke power to the weak, and compasion to power; he comforted the afflicted, and afflicted the comfortable. If I am to claim His Grace for my own salvation, I must try to understand where he was coming from, and what he was trying to do. I’m going to fail, because I’m only human, but it’s my duty to try. It’s not my job to judge - God can handle that. It is my job to apply the Golden Rule as best I am able.
And yeah, that doesn’t sit comfortably with a lot of right-wingers.
Don’t use me as a model. Find your own way, as best you can - your life is yours, and what works for me will likely not work for you. But if you like what you see, well, I’m happy to talk about my walk of faith. Take what you find to be good, leave the rest.
I’m not religious and don’t want to be. I have found my way. I was just saying you have a good attitude compared to most of the Christians I come across.
I’m not one of those the thread is aimed at, but until/unless you get some that are, I’ll give my impression of such people based on what I’ve read and heard them say.
The group that is most famously/notoriously both anti-abortion and anti-birth control (even for married couples) is the Catholic Church. If I understand their position (and I’m not at all sure I do), it’s that procreation isn’t the only purpose for sex, but it’s so important a purpose that there’s something unhealthy and perverted about trying to separate them.
More generally, among Evangelical, conservative, and some not-so-conservative Christians who are anti-sex outside of marriage, the rhetoric that I’ve encountered (at least from modern sources) doesn’t hold a negative view of sex, but rather sees sex as so special and sacred that it should be reserved only for marriage.
My understanding is that one major objection is that it sends mixed messages or weakens the directive not to have sex outside of marriage. “Don’t do this” vs. “Don’t do this—but if you do, here’s how.”
Well I am Republican although for political ideology I’d best fit as moderate not conservative. I’m also agnostic despite being baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church before leaving in early adulthood. My childhood included 12 years of Catholic school as well. The church by the way was not anti-sex. Sexual pleasure within the bounds of marriage is a good thing by doctrine…as long as you don’t use birth control.
I’m with about a third of Republicans that fall in the abortion should be legal in all or most cases part of polling data. I’m also with the almost 3/4 of Republicans that believe sex education should include both discussions of abstinence and birth control rather than it being either one or the other. We drop a bit when they include whether it should be publicly funded but it’s still 2/3 in support of education that includes birth control. We’re Republicans after all. Put “publicly funded” in any poll question and the numbers likely go down.
The two dominant positions in the Republican party members are opposition to abortion AND support for providing education on birth control (as long as you at least bring up abstinence as an option. Even Democrats prefer both instead of just one.) Yet we end up with the minority driving the platform. That is a different issue.
Gov. Kasich was on the Daily Show earlier this week. He wants to end gerrymandering. His description of it’s effects on both parties just popped into my mind on how a minority of republicans can drive the train on birth control education just popped to mind. If you can deal with the cognitive dissonance of a Republican Governor railing against gerrymandering, you might find it interesting.
I’m a religious conservative who is against abortion and comprehensive sex education in schools.
I believe that sex outside of marriage is sinful and damaging socially, psychically, and psychologically to its participants. I have no problem with teaching the biology of sex but teaching values about sex should be left to the parents. Public education is not about imparting values to students but information.
Also having been a teenager I have no doubt that the idea that a semester of sex education can convince horny teenagers to act in a responsible manner is a fantasy. Sex education always fails to change sexual behavior in teens and will continue to do so. As a taxpayer and a parent I don’t think it is a good idea to continue to waste money and time on something doomed to failure.
Thank you for your response. I wonder if it makes a difference to your views that, even if it does not reduce sexual behavior much, knowledge of birth control measures does significantly reduce teen pregnancies?
In other words, we both seem to agree that sex is going to happen anyway. The difference with birth control information is fewer unwanted teen pregnancies (and possibly fewer unwanted pregnancies later in life). Does this affect your views?
Wow, that is just so so so wrong. I grew up born again, fundamentalist Pentecostal and attended private, religious schools. You can imagine how much sex-ed there was.
So many of my peers ended up pregnant it’s not even funny.
How can anyone possibly believe that education is anything but a positive??? Give young people the knowledge that their body is theirs to control and they won’t end up losing their virginity in a game of truth or dare.
If there was evidence that birth control information resulted in fewer teen pregnancies. However, the evidence is that it does not. See the recent meta-analysis summarized here. If you don’t want to go there here is the bottom line "“As they are currently designed, sex education programmes alone probably have no effect on the number of young people infected with HIV, other STIs or the number of pregnancies,” said lead author of the review, Dr Mason-Jones.
I find this unsurprising since the schools find it hard enough to pound math and science into kids head and have 13 years to do it. One class is not going to be enough to affect behavior.
I grew up in Fundamentalist Pentecostal churches but attended public schools. I knew girls who got pregnant but also know that personal experience is no substitute for data.
In fact, kids who attend church weekly are almost half as likely to be sexually experienced at age 14, and teenager who are very religious are much less likely to be come pregnant than those who are non-religious. See herefor summaries of the data for religiousness and sexual activity.
In fact if people really wanted there to be fewer teen pregnancies they would defund sex education and use it to pay kids to go to church.
Your first cite says of the programs studied:[ul]
[li]55% found no significant impact on age of sexual behavior and 2% found that they lowered the age of sexual behavior.[] 61% had no effect on frequency of sex and 10% increased frequency of sex. []62% had no effect on number of partners and 3% found increased number of partners. []52% had no effect on condom use. []53% had no effect on contraceptive use and 6% had a negative effect. []69% had no effect on pregnancy rate and 7.6% had an increase in pregnancy rate. [] 60% found no effect on STI rates and 20% found an increase in STI rates[/li][/ul]
Anyone who believes that this shows that sex education works has fallen victim to data mining and a weasel worded abstract.
