I would assume that this can lead to a TON of a) misconceptions about sex and b) ineffective sex ed programs.
I live in this school district and have already had to have “the talk” with my now 11-year-old because he was told that puberty only entailed getting more hair, becoming smellier and that you should try not to touch yourself even if your penis gets hard. He was given no information on sex, so instead he reiterated what he heard on the bus, which was that women became pregnant through oral sex.
If he can’t even get accurate information on going through puberty and is already being shamed into thinking that masturbation is bad, I can’t imagine that a pro-life group would provide him with accurate information on the biology of sex, information on sexuality and other important data he really needs going into middle school. It makes me uncomfortable to have this discussion with him so early, but I’m his mom and it’s my job to provide him with factual information. But it’s also the school’s responsibility not to be conservative or liberal, but at least to give factual data.
At the risk of a hijack, it really does. Adultery (sex outside of marriage by a married person) is called out by name and denounced in numerous places, but the prohibition on premarital sex is addressed in 1 Corinthians 7:2 “But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.”(ESV). He goes on to talk about, in vv 8-9, it being better to be single except for the whole sex thing “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”
While the word “sex” is not there, to interpret that passage in any way other than marriage being a cure for sexual immorality is a bit of a stretch. And if sex outside of marriage is immoral, well, the Bible speaks a lot about sexual immorality, and not as a “thou shalt”. Of course, this also implies that, in some circumstances, sex alone is a valid basis for marriage. That in itself could be a pretty interesting discussion for another thread.
As to the OP, I’m squarely on the fence. I lean towards “Let the schools teach what they will, I will guide my children in accordance with my morality and values”.
You must not have read the studies. The first one says "As they are currently carried out, education programmes alone probably have no effect on the number of young people infected with HIV, other STIs or the number of pregnancies,” said Dr Amanda Mason-Jones from the University of York, the lead author of the review, "
The second one says “We concluded that abstinence-only programs do not appear to reduce or exacerbate HIV risk among participants in high-income countries”
Others have already pointed out the incongruence here.
Even if I could magically summon up every study on the subject, read them, and offer up my authoritative opinion, there would still be the issue of whether or not I accurately interpreted the studies. In your case, I think it’s quite fair to say you did not accurately interpret the studies. I have literally no idea how you get from “We concluded that abstinence-only programs do not appear to reduce or exacerbate HIV risk among participants in high-income countries” to “Sex education doesn’t work”. The whole point is that abstinence-only is NOT SEX EDUCATION.
But it’s okay, you don’t have to be the ultimate polymath. That’s why we have organizations like the AAP, CDC, AMA, and the like - so that we don’t have to know everything, and can turn to them when our knowledge is lacking. And they all say you’re wrong. Seemingly every major science-based medical organization that has said anything on the subject thinks that comprehensive sex education and improved access to birth control leads to less teen pregnancy and fewer STIs. Why do you insist that they’re all wrong, and you must be right? Isn’t this the kind of thing that should make you stop and think, “Huh, all the major bodies of experts disagree with me, maybe I should reevaluate my stance”? Isn’t not doing so almost absurdly arrogant?
Yes, as has already been said, it shouldn’t be an issue: Schools teach Facts on how things are (including laws about rape etc.), Parents teach values on what should or should not be done, Kids make up their own mind.
But the extremists feel so insecure in their belief and feel at least subconsciously how weak their arguments are that they use scare tactics of alternative Facts to enforce their morals. So instead of “sex should be meaningful with a loving Partner, not some horny guy who will Forget you in a week” it becomes “every time you have casual sex you will get an STD or get pregnant because God punishes you” - which is factually wrong.
How many still remember a few years ago during a discussion in legislature about a law limiting abortions even in case of rape, a Conservative/ Republican politican talked about how “the female Body has a defense mechanism in case of rape, the stress causes the Body to shut down, so women can’t get pregnant through rape”, showing a lack of any competent, real-world knowledge about medicine or female biology, yet being sure he was right?
That’s because in the Bubble he came from, the same untruths and wrong Facts are repeated by everybody and thus believed to be true. (One newspaper traced the Claim back to one single Investigation in a Nazi concentration camp. Yeah, those circumstances are comparable to rape today. :rolleyes:)
It’s not just medical bodies; it’s many Western European countries which have some Kind of sex ed in School at least as part of biology, and nobody seriously suggesting abstinence-only education. It’s quite easy to trace the numbers of teen pregnancy (and abortions) for each Country year to year and compare when each Country switched from Catholic style “All sex is bad, so don’t have any” to fact-based real sex ed “These are condoms, which protect against the following STDs, but not HIV; etc.”
In all western european countries I know off - which are better for comparision than poor rural African ones because more similar - the numbers of teen pregnancies have gone down because of better education and better Access to both condoms and pill.
The strongest push of course was AIDS, where the govt.s realized that telling Kids “don’t have sex or you will die” didn’t help, but saying “for fucks sake, if you have sex use a condom” did lessen the spread. (Currently the public perception is that AIDS can be cured, and other STDs are also on the rise, so our govt. is running a campaign with ads in the subway about “have sex any way you want, but with a condom” - here’s an article http://www.rbb-online.de/panorama/beitrag/2016/05/kampagne-gib-aids-keine-chance-liebesleben.html with pics at the end.)
And look at the yellow pic lower right on this side http://www.liebesleben.de/ - our govt. puts that on subways for children and Teens to see - because the Teens Need to know it. (Text says: Surprisingly simple - use condoms)
The purple one in the upper left says “no matter what your kink is - use condoms”, which is a pun in German: worauf ihr steht literally means “what you are Standing on” hence the footwear, but usually means “what your kink / taste is”
The Catholic Church is not against birth-control. It has narrow views on what forms of birth control are acceptable and when, but it’s not against birth control as a concept nor does it push “full quiver” policies or consider that procreation is the only purpose for sex. That’s the official view: there are both groups which are more extreme on one side (and which do push the idea that sex should happen any time the husband wants it and that the more kids the better) and others which are more to the other side (I’ve mentioned before that the sex ed provided by the nuns in my school included detailed explanations of every contraceptive method available at the time, including pros and cons; my brother’s neocatechumenal group threatened with giving a bath in the river to a visiting preacher who wanted to push quiverfull).
Um, wait, did something Change? I’m not Catholic, but going by Peter DeRosas book Explanation about current sex ethics according to the official stance of the church, the only acceptable method of birth control is the calendar method - that is, measuring your temp. to find when the egg is fertile, and abstaining on those days.
Outside the Vatican, this is called “Vatican roulette” because in real life, it has a high failure rate. Condoms are not allowed, (which many priests in Africa subvert by handing them out to stop AIDS*) and pill is not allowed (unless the woman is taking it to “control her cycle” or other medical reasons not related to Family planning, which led to a surge in women needing their cycles regulated in more catholic countries.
The only other method of Family planning, if a Family decides they have enough Kids, is abstinence in marriage, the so-called “Josefs marriage” (According to the RCC Interpretation that Joseph was an older guy, and once Jesus was Born, he virtuously abstained from having any sex with her, so Jesus doesn’t have Brothers, but Cousins. Pope Ratzinger was Born to a couple who abstained before and after their children and used that as shining example).
It’s true that Joe average catholic doesn’t much care about the official stance and uses Family planning - in Germany about 70% of Catholics asked openly admit they ignore the church’s teachings and prevent; but they know that officially the Church is against it.
Several years back, I think still under Woytila, the Pope visited Africa and re-iterated that even under circumstances of AIDS, condoms were not allowed - even if a husband was infected and would therefore infect his wife, and potentially their next Baby - causing an uproar in the press for being callous to the suffering.
I left it out because it was speculation not data. The study was about whether sex education worked and did not include any data on sex education plus free condoms and contraceptives available to young people.
Abstinence education is a form of sex education. It attempts to teach kids the dangers of sex and convince them to be abstinent. Comprehensive sex education attempts to teach kids the dangers of unprotected sex and convince them to use condoms everytime. They are both equally effective.
There is this myth that abstinence education was the dominant paradigm in many states and was imposed because of the takeover of education by religious nut jobs. The truth is that comprehensive sex education had been failing for over thirty years when in the late 1900s some small abstinence only education programs seemed to get good results and so some states and counties tried to implement them on a larger scale. The problem with all social outreach programs is that they almost never scale. Abstinence education at scale has not had any success and is a failure. However abstinence only educations failure does not make comprehensive sex education any less of a failure.
The problem is that people tend to think social sciences are like other sciences. Many sciences are involved in a replication crisis but social psychology has been particularly hard hit. A replication attempt of 100 psychological studies found that in the field of social psychology 75% of the studies did not replicate. That means that a study result in social psychology is twice as likely to be false as it is to be true.
This means that you should be extremely skeptical of any social psychology research findings. Doubly so when that research is about something political or involves funding. Sex education is very political and involves who gets funding to teach sex education.
Because of this there is simply no substitute for looking at the studies yourself and deciding if they are correctly done and if the results are true. The studies that have the largest number of subjects, don’t data mine, and don’t mess with the results all show that sex education does not work.
sex should be meaningful with a loving Partner, not some horny guy who will Forget you in a week" is a statement of values not a fact. “If you practice abstinence then you can’t get pregnant or get an STI” is a statement of fact.
In what used to be East Germany the teen pregnancy rate since 1995 went up 85% while in the US it declined 50% in the same period. It seems that either your government is only trying in half of the country or teen pregnancy rates are not driven by government policy.
You’re mixing two methods there: calendar, which is based on assumptions about a woman’s cycle which are highly unlikely to be true, and basal-temp, which actually works but many people find it “too clinical”. There’s several others along similar lines, some of which work better than others.
There are also situations which are, in principle, “banned”, but which are considered ok in specific circumstances. In theory people are supposed to obtain exemptions; in reality that part gets skipped or is so routine that it amounts to the priest in charge adding another form “sign here please” to the rest of the paperwork. For example: my sister in law would die if she got pregnant. While I haven’t asked the details of what method or methods she uses, I’m sure she’s gone for something with better success rates than The Pill and that she isn’t getting any shit from the Church about getting a “church marriage” (the ceremony will take place June 10th). She’s adopted a child; the co-adoption process has already started. In the eyes of the Church, that makes their marriage fertile. A marriage can be fertile without the spouses themselves being. It can even be fertile without either spouse being (for example, because one spouse had children from previous relationships), and weddings in which the wife is infertile due to advanced age take place routinely(1).
That bishop you mentioned was misapplying the law. “Inability to have children” is a possible cause for annulment, but it’s never been used by anybody by kings and the thing about annulment is that, like divorce, it can only take place after the wedding.
(1) Story told before. Spain’s Socialist Party, back when it was in government with Felipe González as president, decreed that RCC priests were not valid marriage registrars any more. Their hope was that this would lead to people opting for civil marriages only. Instead, there was a wave of retirees getting church-only marriages: since they weren’t recognized by the civil authorities, their retirement pensions did not get reduced.
I hope what you’re calling “comprehensive” includes information about the Pill, morning-after pill, IUDs, implants, etc. as well, because otherwise it’s not what I’d call comprehensive.
Basically, if the numbers are very small to start with, but you only express in percentages, you quickly run into “100% of students failed High School leaving exam” fallacy (It’s a small village, and 2 students took the exam. Next year, 4 students take the exam and pass, and the Headline reads “100% pass”).
And as the Abstract notes, strong factors are … education Level of the mother/ Teenager.
I don’t know if you know, but since re-unifcation, the composition of Eastern Germany Population has changed quite a lot. The Exodus of skilled Young People to the West that was slowed when the wall was built started again, because more Jobs (and apprenticeships) were available in the West, along with better living Standards and cultural modernity. At the same time, a lot of factories and companies in Eastern Germany were closed because they were no longer profitable outside the closed DDR System. So what’s left today are many old People, and unskilled, less educated, often hopeless, Young People, many on the dole. (This lack of education and hope likely also Plays a part in the strong right-wing extremism, hate of foreigners/ racism, and violence).
People with Turkish roots, even 2nd or 3rd Generation, are simply the largest Immigrant Group in Germany at all, several millions now (depending on how you Count). And most 1st Generation Turks came from rural places and thus low-education, very traditional patriarchal Backgrounds.
Getting pregnant might be Young Girls from that Group perceive as a way to raise their Status to mother, or to get their parents to accept a marriage.
Values that the parents try to instill is not listed as Major factor from the data.
Or in other words: once we account for the greater poverty and lesser opportunities in East Germany, the data is not longer unusual. This means that the education does its Job because Overall, teen pregnancy is still very low; the rest of the Problem can be adressed by raising chances, employment etc.
It’s what’s been observed both in Western and developing countries every time education in General for Girls who became women increased: the more education women (not Teens) have, the less children they have - because they have better Job chances themselves; and because they understand that providing for 3 Kids is easier than for 8, and know how to actually Limit the number of Kids.
But if a teen leaves School at 15, has no apprenticeship or Job open, has not learned what to do with her life other than hang around with her friends, has no dreams or interest or hope for the future - then she will have sex and might welcome pregnancy as finally having to do something, being a mother.
Actually, no. Talking about abstinence without going into Details leads to Teens believing that coitus interruptus can not get you pregnant (which is false) or that everything that is not full sex = vaginal Penetration is okay (but making out can also, if not done carefully, transmit bodily fluids).
The Fixation on vaginal Penetration has also lead to the interesting results of a study among college students in the US: compared to normal Colleges, those Colleges attended by students from very strict Fundamentalist Backgrounds, often with strict behaviour rules or Dress codes on Campus, … have a much higher rate of anal and oral sex. Because only vaginal is bad, the rest is not talked about, because sex in General is not talked about, and the Kids have Internet, and Experiment.