The Bush Administration is censoring contraceptive education?!?!?!?!

In My Humble Opinion
21

Silly me, I thought being a teenager was about getting a good education and trying to learn to be a responsible, productive member of society in the process. :rolleyes:

Sure, it’s not like this topic hasn’t been done to death, but I think that you’re oversimplifying things to state that all teenagers are going to have sex, regardless of what their parents / teachers / role models say.

I’m not so far out of my teen years myself, and I can tell you that despite popular belief, sex is not the most important thing in the world at that age. Sure, it’s an issue, but being a teenager does not automatically reduce you to being a mindless zombie with no control over physical impulses. Jeez, give the kids some credit, will ya?

My personal opinion is that parents have the ultimate responsibility to teach their children in whatever manner they deem appropriate.

If you’re sending your kids to a private school, then sure, go ahead and let them determine the agenda, but I don’t feel comfortable having my tax dollars spent on an issue that is too personal in nature to trust to the government system.

Yeah, you can argue that not all parents will bother to teach their kids, etc. etc. but the fact of the matter remains that it’s still their responsibility. Just because they choose to shirk that responsibility doesn’t mean that the public system should take up the slack.

I’m not necessarily of the mindset that advocating sex eduation leads to promiscuity, but I do believe that each child is different as to what kind of information they’re able to handle based on their maturity and level of responsibility. I’ve known 12 year olds who were more knowledgeable about their bodies than most adults, and I’ve known 17 year olds who used the ‘facts’ and ‘statistics’ taught to them in sex ed to justify their taking risks with their bodies.

Sexuality and sex ed is very much a moral issue as well as a health issue. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable trusting any stranger to teach my kids something of this nature.

22

What exactly is there to teach about abstinence?

“Here’s how not to have sex – see, you take your penis, and don’t put it anywhere near this vagina.”

Abstinence-only “education” is ideology, not education. If public school are going to give kids information about sex, they should just give them all the facts available, and leave the ideology to the kids and their parents.

And I think public schools should teach some sex education – we currently teach kids about history and government, so they can better function in our society with some awareness of their place in it. Allowing kids to walk around ignorant of the basic facts of the most basic impulse is dangerous and foolish. You can teach sex education without getting into morality – just stick to the facts.

23

I’ve read your article, Reinhold, but I don’t understand why you think it deserves such inflammatory words. It doesn’t say that the government is planning to remove the teaching of contraceptive education. All it’s saying is that they are increasing the spending for abstinance education. And I don’t think that the youth of America is woefully ignorant of their contraceptive options. They may be a) too embarassed to buy it, or b) too impulsive to use it, but that doesn’t mean that most young people aren’t aware of the existance of condoms.

The groups to be angry with are those that are seeking to block this funding. They want to further their own pro-contraceptive (and perhaps pro-sex) agenda. Why should they be so threatened because someone dares mention abstinance? And why shouldn’t children be encouraged until they’re mature enough to handle the physical and emotional consequences of sex? It’s those groups who oppose this funding that want to consider sex a natural experience, a healthy aerobic exercise, rather than placing some emotional value to it. Perhaps that’s not what most adults want their children to learn.

Give them enough information to be safe, but also give them the encouragement to wait, as Edlyn did. As JetGirl siad, teens are more than a raging bundle of hormones.

StG

24

Why is the act of two late teens shagging each other ragged using protection negative social behavior? Ok being an asshole about it may push it over the edge but two young people enjoying their youth and each other is perfectly natural. I had a great time in my late teens and came out of it fine and so did my girlfriends BTW.

25

As I previously said, perhaps it’s my fault for not providing a sufficient cite. The NPR story made it clear that the concept is Abstinence Only, and the schools will lose the additional funding if they’re found to be teaching contraception.

From Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: 1on·ly
Pronunciation: 'On-lE
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English AnlIc, from An one – more at ONE
Date: before 12th century
1 : unquestionably the best : PEERLESS
2 : alone in its class or kind : SOLE <an only child>

It’s a fallacy to think that the feds will say, “Here, have this money for ONLY teaching abstinence and eliminating contraception. But wait . . . we also have another pile of money here if you decide to continue teaching contraception.”

Therefore, they are working to eliminate contraceptive education in public schools; the latter concept is what I’m refuting. This is not a thread debating the merits of public school sex education . . . it’s an established curriculum in many areas. The debate is whether or not it is a complete sexual EDUCATION. Omitting contraception renders it incomplete.

I repeat: abstinence must be removed from the curriculum if the school wants the money. It is not a matter of “mentioning abstinence,” and I have repeatedly made that clear. As for the adults who don’t want their children to learn that sex is a natural experience: they had better pull their kids out of all biology classes, in addition to sex education. If you are saying that teaching kids about contraception removes “emotional value” from the concept of sex . . . I’m not really sure how to respond to such a statement, other than to say it’s simply a non-truth.

And those of us against the “abstinence ONLY” concept have a “pro-sex” agenda? Do you really think that there are people huddled in a room somewhere, planning and scheming in order to force pleasures of the flesh on our teenagers (and I’m not referring to the porn industry)? You are the one underestimating the intelligence of youngsters, by inferring that they will be driven into a sex-crazed frenzy through learning about contraception. If you’ll read my previous posts you’ll see that I haven’t even implied that teenagers are “a raging bundle of hormones.”

Might I add that I’m glad to see this thread has escaped the “Republican v. Democrat” debate, even though some have tried to make it so. Thank you all for not allowing it to be hijacked.

26

That’s the ideal, not necessarily the reality.

27

Okay, I wrote this really nice impassioned and thought-provoking response to this last night, and of-freaking-course it was promptly swallowed by the hamsters and I lost it. So here’s my attempt to recreate it. It may not be as good as the original

The issue is not teaching abstinence. The issue is teaching only abstinence. The link given in the OP doesn’t really give the best picture of the issue. I wish I could find a better source, but I’m unable to right now.

The “abstinence-only” programs in use in a large number of schools throughout the country today teach just that, only abstinence. They tell students nothing of condoms, nothing of birth control. They often use scare tactics and misinformation to pound home the message that “you must not have sex, because it’s dangerous and dirty and wrong.” In the Human Sexuality course I took last semester, we watched a video that is actually used in a popular ab-only curriculum. Part of it was a section of students asking questions of their sex-ed teacher (actors, I’m sure). One of the boys raised his hand and asked, “But what if I want to have sex before I’m married?” The teacher’s response was, “Then you’d better be prepared to die! And for your future spouse to die, and your children to die.” This scares the crap out of me. These abstinence-only curriculums teach teens that sex is dangerous and bad and that the only way to protect themselves is not to do it. They teach that condoms don’t work, sometimes giving statistics that are outright wrong. They prey on students’ fears and ignorance, and then actively propagate that ignorance by deliberately withholding information. And it’s dangerous, because these teens are going to go out in the world and have no idea how to protect themselves when they do have sex.

And let’s face it. Teenagers are going to have sex. You can extoll the virtues of abstinence and go on until the cows come home, but some kids are going to fuck. And no, it’s not the central focus of our lives, and not everyone is going to do it. Abstinence education may sway some of the fence-sitters who were wondering if they should or shouldn’t have sex. But still, there are teens who are going to want to do it, and they are going to do it, no matter how much they’re told about how they should wait. This is not a defeatist attitude, this is realism. But if all they’re taught is abstinence, then when it comes to the time that they do have sex (and yes, a lot of them will), they will have no idea how to use a condom, how birth control even works, and so forth, thus putting them at a terrible risk.

Yes, parents should have the responsibility of teaching their children about sex. But a lot of parents just don’t care enough, or they’re too embarrassed, or even they don’t know all the facts. They might be woefully ignorant themselves about many STDs and other issues. I was lucky. My parents were very open about sexual issues with me. My mother taught me that abstinence was a good idea, was the safest and best route, the one she would prefer that I take, but she also recognized that it was highly unlikely. But she was open about that, even when it was the furthest thing from my mind. My freshman year of college, whenver I’d come home for a weekend, on the drive back to school she’d give me the talk, “Now, Tara, you know that if you ever want to have sex, you think there’s a chance you might, you should come to me, I’ll get you condoms, show you how to use them, birth control, whatever, I’ll help, I want you to be safe.” Meanwhile I cringed in my seat and went “Mo-om… I haven’t even been kissed yet, I’m not having sex anytime soon.” Unfortunately, by the time I did lose my virginity about a year later, she had passed away, so I never did get to go to her with that issue. But the point is, not everyone has parents like that. Not everyone’s parents will be open with them and teach them what they need to know. If the parents have an objection to the schools teaching their kids a comprehensive sex-ed program, for moral reasons or whatever other reason, then they need to talk to the school about removing their child from that class. They don’t need to remove the program from the schools. Parents should have first responsibility, but the sad fact is that a lot of teens get most of their sex-ed information from schools. So if the school doesn’t tell them about safer sex, no one will.

The religious issue is only a small part of this issue to me. Yes, whether you like it or not abstinence-until-marriage is a religious value, simply because marriage is a religious institution that has been turned into normal civil custom. But what about the gay kids? What about the kids who don’t believe in marriage? They don’t get to have sex ever?

But the religion issue is not what I’m really worried about here. I’m worried about educating our students. That’s what this is about, giving teens the information they need to protect themselves in the real world. Abstinence-only education fosters the attitude that if we just tell them it’s wrong then they won’t do it. But they will do it, and if they haven’t been told how to do it safely, then they will do it without protection, or using the protection wrongly, and possibly end up pregnant or with a disease. As for the attitude that “oh, well if we tell them about sex, then that’s just encouraging them to go out and do it.” It’s not. It’s giving them information, educating them. Would you say that we can’t teach kids about the Holocaust because that will just make them want to go out and commit genocide? Ignorance is bad. Isn’t that what this board is about?

There is nothing wrong with teaching abstinence, as long as it is a part (a central part, to be sure) of a comprehensive program that includes safer sex techniques. Give teens the information, and trust them to make up their own minds. We do have them, you know. These are my peers, my cousins (I have three cousins who had children before the age of 18), my friends, who will be going out and possibly getting themselves hurt and pregnant and sick because people don’t trust them to make up their own minds. That’s what worries me. Educate kids, don’t preach at them. Abstinence-only education does them a great disservice, by keeping them in the dark about the things they need to know to protect themselves. That’s the real issue here – keeping your kids safe and healthy, instead of ignorant and scared.

[/end impassioned speech mode]
A lot of the (admittedly generalized) information came from my Human Sexuality course last semester. I don’t have a cite for the videos we watched, and I gave my textbook to a 16-year-old friend in hopes of removing some of her ignorance about the subject.

Also, MTV is making this a central part of this year’s Fight For Your Rights campaign, Protect Yourself. Their website for that is http://fightforyourrights.mtv.com/ They’ve had several very good and informative programs about it, if anyone can catch one of them, it’s good.

28

Some members of society, not others. The fact that this doxa of the moral majority is so selectively enforced makes it so dangerous and so morally bankrupt. This is social correction by any means necessary.

I think evaluating the data poses its own problems. The increase in education has led to a drastically improved awareness of individual problems, and the lifting of the crushing social stigmas has increased the number of cases reported.

If you are going to submit that these programs haven’t worked because they have not eradicated the problem, then perhaps we should compare our control of AIDS, unwed mothers, and STDs to countries that lack the same educational amenities that we have.

I believe that we do have an ongoing battle to contain disease and ignorance. Do we then throw up our hands and give in simply because the battle is not already won?

29

Evidently I forgot what forum I was in. Apologies to NaSultainne and to the mods.

30

Nobody’s suggesting that parents aren’t allowed to tell their kids about contraception. But the schools should as well, because it’s a major public health and welfare issue.

31

Anteres,

Great post, leaves nothing left to be said, really.

32

For those of you argueing that abstinance is a secular value:

Abstinance until when? Marriage is inappropriate. Although it has secular appeal and legal recognition, marriage is a fundamentally religious institution. Many people will not marry, or will not marry until a later age (like when they are planning to have kids). Secularly, there is no moral problem with that. So “No sex until marriage” is out of the question. Many abstinance sites I look at never mention when it’s okay not to be abstinant. Perpetual abstinance sounds even more off-the-wall. So what is it? No sex until your eighteen?

Even that has it’s problems. Lets try this again…

From a non-religious viewpoint, there is nothing wrong with two teenagers who understand the risks and use proper precautions, and who have a degree of emotional maturity (which I assume at least some of them do- if you have the maturity to sign away four years of your life to the miltiary when you are seventeen, you can also handle a bit of nookie) having sex.

33

Thanks, lezlers. The one I wrote last night was more eloquent, I think, but those darn hamsters… anyways, I forgot to mention that I am a 19-year-old college junior. When I was in high school just 3 years ago, the only form of sex ed we got was “Anatomy of the Reproductive System” in 9th grade health class. We also had one girl in my class who had two kids by the time we graduated, another with one, one with one on the way, and one who missed the graduation ceremony because she was in labor. There were also at least three girls in some of the lower grades who were pregnant when I graduated, and one eighth grader, who was overjoyed to be having a baby. And my graduating class was 77 people. This is a small, conservative town that tries to pretend these problems don’t exist instead of educating people and trying to fix them. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have been blessed with such wonderful parents who taught me the things I needed to know, but other kids aren’t so lucky, and it hurts to see my peers, my friends, and my family dealing with this stuff, which is why I feel so strongly about the issue.