WASHINGTON ? Students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not, according to a study ordered by Congress.Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes that were reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes. And they first had sex at about the same age as other students _ 14.9 years, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc.The federal government now spends about $176 million annually on abstinence-until-marriage education. Critics have repeatedly said they don’t believe the programs are working, and the study will give them reinforcement.However, Bush administration officials cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions from the study. They said the four programs reviewed _ among several hundred across the nation _ were some of the very first established after Congress overhauled the nation’s welfare laws in 1996.Officials said one lesson they learned from the study is that the abstinence message should be reinforced in subsequent years to truly affect behavior.
These guys just won’t admit they’re wrong! If they were going to ignore the findings, why do the tests? What? All the tests showed us to be wrong? Let’s blame the liberals and throw more money at it!
Oh, no, it can’t be wrong because god is on their side. They are sure that any second now it will start to work-god is just testing them. (Sarcasm in case you missed it.)
Abstinence education is faith based. To admit that it is not working would be to admit that their faith is wrong about this and if their faith is wrong about this, what else is it wrong about?
With the news from the Supreme court, this thread was predictable…
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/print/CTVNews/20070414/abstinence_study_070414/20070414/?hub=Health&subhub=PrintStory
Sure…let’s make a major decision based upon 1% of the program…
Kind of reminds me of how an atheist justifies their lack of belief…
There’s a joke where the jokester sayd, “Don’t think about elephants!” So of course the victim who may have been thinking of ice-cream or video-games will end up thinking, “Elephants? Why would I think about them? They’re big and grey, and wrinkley…”
So let’s get a bunch of boys and girls together and tell them not to think about sex.
Great idea for a mixer, eh?
(Gah… early-morning typos.)
Admit you’re wrong because the evidence says so? How reality-based of you.
Hey all,
I figured I’d stop lurking and actually contribute to the conversations. This is a little off topic but I wasn’t sure how to let you all know about this otherwise:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11663-flagellation-ritual-exposes-filipinos-to-rabies.html
On topic: Understandable that we should jump to major conclusions with a study of 1% of a program, but I think its a relatively safe hypothesis that given the culture of the day a similar trend will be found throughout the entire program. But I’ve been wrong before, time will tell.
This horse has been beat enough, just like intercessory prayer.
Chalk this waste of money up there with the war on drugs.
I have no problem with educating kids that abstinence is the only proven way to avoid pregnancy and/or std’s.
Why in the world do we need TWO PROGRAMS. I want to stand up and scream!!!!
What we need is to educate our kids. Yes, abstinence works. It’s absolutely true. OK. If you can’t, or don’t want to stay celibate, there’s other ways that have proven to be effective most of the time. Condoms. The Pill. IUD’s.
Why do we continue to insist that our children are stupid? What are these “abstinence only” programs designed to do? What is the arguement against comprehensive sexual education? Who thinks it’s not needed? and WHY IN THE WORLD ARE WE ‘TEACHING’ OUR KIDS ONLY HALF OF AN ISSUE?
What a waste of money. $176,000,000 could go a long way.
When we make knowledge a crime, only the criminals will have knowledge.
Lubbock ISD has been teaching abstinence only for more than a decade and year after year their std/pregnancy rates are double or triple the Texas average.
Abstinence goes against our biology completely. We all have sexual desires and drives. To pretend they aren’t there is to pretend that our blood is not red but in fact fairy magic dust. I always thought this was the stupidest shit.
Even here in Alabama they taught us reality. Sure, they said abstinence was the best way to avoid pregnancy/STDs, but they still confronted reality and told us about condoms and even where to get free ones and where to get free testing for HIV. They even told us where we could get a free pack of birth control.
And yes, abstinence only education is completely faith-based. I find it disgusting that these people are willing to throw their children’s lives away by not teaching them how to use a condom so they end up getting pregnant or worse.
I’ve had some friends drop out of high school because they got pregnant, or drop out and then get pregnant and it always depresses me. Yet, I’ve also met some very determined and intelligent girls that stayed in school even though they were pregnant and even went on to college, kept the baby too surprisingly. But I imagine they had huge support networks. Very few people are that lucky.
Let’s start teaching people reality. I know parents don’t want to admit that their kids are having sex, but it’s happening anyways. Wouldn’t you rather know they are safe?
My parents always had this rule that if we were living with them and having sex they would rather we did it in their own house than somewhere else where we could get caught by the police or murdered. My mother also never had a problem with us girls getting birth control.
What if they never get married? Are they supposed to never have sex? I say just let them have sex whenever they’re ready, as long as they do it responsibly.
suttsteve
No. No. NO! You no marry, you no have s-e-x!
If you marry you may have s-e-x, preferably on Sunday after you have cannibalilzed the body and blood of Jesus Christ in church. (Wait 1/2 hour after eating to prevent cramping and potential drowning if the s-e-x- is in water.)
Not only shouldn’t umarried people have sex but the abstinence only programs are not allowed BY LAW to mention homosexuality. Gay kids get left out once again.
Europeans get early and realistic sexual education and they have rates of STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and abortions that are a fraction of what we have here. Pull your heads out of the sand and deal with the reality of human sexuality already.
alex,
My high school’s sex ed didn’t exclude anyone to my knowledge and that was 5 years ago now. We had someone from our local AIDS Support Services come and talk to us and he talked about homosexuality. He said condom usage was the same no matter what your sexual preference was. He specifically mentioned homosexual men. He also said that anytime a man or a woman was giving oral to a woman they should use a plastic sheath too. Now that I think about it, the sex ed I got in high school was pretty liberal, especially considering it was in Alabama.
EAC,
In order to receive federal funding abstinence only programmes must meet eight criteria set in 1996. Among these is the stipulation that abstinence until marriage be taught as the “expected standard of human sexual activity” and since gay people do not yet have the federal right to marry there is no mention of homosexuality. Once more gay kids are left out.
Perhaps your AL school district wasn’t receiving federal money for it’s health programmes or maybe you had a progressive teacher.
alex,
It was a public school so it was definitely getting federal money. I’m not sure about the teacher being so progressive, but I guess she was compared to some. I’d probably guess though that it was just that the guy who spoke to us about it (the one from our local AIDS Support Services center) didn’t give a shit about what the school thought and wanted to make sure we heard the truth from someone.
I don’t get this abstinance crap. I was taught about sex ed in 6th grade and felt armed with information about std’s and prepared for stages of puberty my body was about to experience. Sure there was some giddyness, but when you’re 12 it’s normal. As a gay man, the pregnancy part didn’t do me much good and it was a subject that was barely touched on back in 1990. But still, having this knowledge about human sexuality was a step in the right direction.
Going to catholic high school years later was a different story. You could cut the sexual tension with a knife. We were taught to “pray” in order to suppress sexual urges whenever they came about. Why the hell do we have them, then? What if we can’t or don’t want to get married and are still responsible adults? Can we still have sex? Not according to abstinance ed.
We should be spending $176,000,000 creating laws and programs regarding who can reproduce. Only smart people with a proven track record should be allowed to reproduce if they choose to. I mean, why not? Everything else we do in life requires us to pass some kind of test, reproduction should be no different. Our society is getting dumber by the minute due mostly in part by victims of abstinance-only education and the like who don’t know how they got pregnant or what to do with their kids.
Bush administration officials cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions
For some reason this rings hollow for me. I dunno, something about WMD’s and Sadd…I had it there for a second.
My thoughts exactly. My sex ed courses, in the sixth grade, armed me very well. I was more knowledgeable about std’s, birth control and the biology of sex and puberty at 12 than anyone else in my family.
As for drawing conclusion from 1% of the entire program, well, doesn’t it beg the question whether that was a representative 1%? If it was, then of course we can draw a conclusion. It would be a gross misunderstanding of common survey practices to assume that a small percentage indicates a poor sample, since even a small percentage can be a representative one. Further, this isn’t the only study of its kind. It just happens to be the one ordered by congress. Others have shown similar findings.
phreedumb
Atheists justify their lack of belief (you meant ‘faith’) thru abstinence, er sorry, I mean absence of evidence
My mom, good catholic that she is, refused to allow me to go on the birth control pill when I was a teenager. Her reasoning, apparently, was that I wouldn’t have sex if I didn’t have the pill. Of course, Mom (gotta love her) was pregnant when she married my dad, AND was preggers again when she married my step-dad. Good catholic that she was though, she took us to church each sunday, enrolled us in catholic school, and we were all confirmed by the time we reached 15. Of course, mom was ex-communicated from the church, because she had the nerve to divorce a man that she simply wasn’t meant to be with. Damn that place has some asinine rules. Mom is NOW allowed to “marry” the man she’s been married to since 1969, since dad died a few years ago. Thankfully, my awesome step-dad refused (yeah, dad!)
Only one of us kids are catholic now.
I still have trouble understanding how a fairly intelligent woman like my mom can fall for the BS handed to her. I guess it’s because she was never allowed to know anything different. Brainwashed? I think so.
Bones,
Your mother was the victim of an early and systematic fear-based indoctrination. Once religion has dug it’s claws into a person’s psyche at a young age even the most persuasive use of reason and logic can hardly dislodge it since faith is an effective immunisation against reality.
why not just teach what the laws are that regulate sex in the district students live in.my sex ed was my dad telling me if i got a girl knocked up he would kill me, boy those were the good old days.
LOL.
A good catholic education means you never speak of it, so I got nothing. We had to 1. try and figure it out ourselves, and 2. get info on the schoolyard. Of course, it was a good catholic schoolyard, so no one else knew either. You would crack up if I told you some of the ideas my sister and I would whisper to each other giggling.
I wonder if it’s still like that? I’d ask my good catholic sister, whose kids now go to a good catholic school, but she would be horrified if I did.
bones learning is fun.
Bones,
I don’t know about catholics. My father is one, but we didn’t grow up as catholics. I had much older siblings so I found out everything I needed to know from them, and t.v. My best friend growing up was southern baptist and I found out that her mom never even told her what a period was. That was such a huge shock to me because my mom always talked to me about it and my oldest sister even gave me a book about it. Of course, my mom was a labor and delivery nurse. I can’t imagine growing up in such a stifling atmosphere where you can’t even talk openly with your parents about what’s going on with your body. I think that was the point where I became thoroughly disgusted with religion in general and its oppressive ideas.
EAC them alabama women don’t need a book.i hope the folks in enterprise are doing better now.you got alot of nice people down there in alabama.
I remember a year after arriving here some girl in one of my school classes jumped up in class and started screaming hysterically. Apparently she just had her first period and thought the blood meant she was hurt because no one had ever explained that fact of biology to her. Scared the fuck out of me when she went crazy.
alex its more scary when they look at you and scream i missed my period.
My girl friend’s mom works with chemical dependent kids. She mentioned it’s not uncommon for teenagers to not know how their bodies work. You wouldn’t believe how many girls think their uterus and mouth are connected somehow, that you can get pregnant through oral sex. Just like kids can get pushed through the education system without knowing how to read, we pass people through who don’t know anything about how their bodies work.
I had sex ed starting in 5th grade, and almost every year after that. Each year I had a health class, there was some sex education involved. each sex section was always prefaced with, abstinence is the only sure way to prevent STD’s, pregnancy, yadda yadda, but if you choose to have sex, here’s what you should know.
Yesterday, I read articles about the Mormon’s take on sex. No one is allowed to masturbate, so it drives teenage Mormon’s into guilt ridden depression, associating the nice feelings of sex, to guilt. Some have killed themselves then deal with the guilt. The same goes for homosexuality. Even married couples should not perform any sex act which is not intended for procreation. This means no mouth lovin’. It’s so close to celibacy. But, if every Mormon were celibate, how could they spread their message of intolerance?
I think all Christian’s should refrain from procreating. Then you don’t have to dirty yourself with that awful act. And I won’t have to deal with your children later.
back to subject- guys&gals why not teach the law, what you can and cannot do and leave it at that.
alex,
It could have been possible that she was very aware of what it was but was still freaked out. Wouldn’t you freak out if blood started running down your legs in the middle of class in front of all your classmates?
Bjorn,
My mom actually had a teenage girl come in once who told her mother she had gotten pregnant because her boyfriend had “licked” her. The girl’s mother was actually stupid enough to believe her.
She’s gotten a lot of pregnant teens in. Some weren’t even twenty years old and were already having their 4th kid.
Reason “alex its more scary when they look at you and scream i missed my period.”
TOO FUNNY! However due to my faggottry I wouldn’t really know.
aussieatheist,
When your son asked you “if God is eternal then who created Him?”, did you also tell him the universe was eternal? And you have no idea what created the universe…?
Alex good grief but i am not suprised.
Quite true. I think I’ve ended up with the equivalent of a Ph.D.
what is the law in your state,nation.
in virginia only intercourse between husband and wife is legal but the laws aren’t enforced.
Actually phreedm we have a fairly good understanding of what created the universe which is in fact not eternal but about 13.7 billion years old +/- 200 million years yielding a margin of error of less than 1 percent.
Here in Minnesota, it is illegal for any man to have sexual intercourse
with a live fish. (Apparently it’s OK for woman.)
I think this is so funny. Abstinence has failed in every culture that has tried it. The folks just don’t get it. They fear the facts of human sexual reproduction, and the social implications. It is sad to see our culture ran by cowards. Our biology is what it is, get over it and educate. That is the best tool to slow down the sometimes negative social effects of our biology. You can not expect positive results by sticking your head in the sand. It does not work for any other health issue, it won’t help here.
These folks could save themselves and their children some mental issues if they just face up to their own sexual issues and let education take the fear away. I have no issue with telling children not to have sex, but doing that instead of the teaching the facts is asking for physical and mental health issues. Not a good thing to do to your children.
Bjorn
What about dead fish?
Well, I think I have a way that abstinence only sex ed would work. We start getting married when we’re 14 again rather than in later on in life. We’d have to rearrange a lot of things so that our primary education will be finished by the time we are 14, but it’ll be done. All for the sake of religious mind control.
Hmm, I guess if it’s for the sake of religious mind control we can scrap education entirely. Makes the brainwashing a bit more difficult.
Comment from: alexatheist
OK…what created the universe?
Dead fish, why do you think ice fishing is so popular in Minnesota? A bunch of repressed guys huddled around the ice, waiting to bash a fish good. Dead fish tell no lies.
Wow, it’s worse than I imagined. You’d think only 2nd graders believe you can get pregnant by licking someone.
digital-eyes,
It’s the south. People here aren’t exactly known for their vast knowledge and intellectually stimulating conversation.
Phreedm asked aussieatheist:
Try Googling “The Ultimate Boeing 747 “
Now for a personal question:
How many Christians here were virgins on their wedding night? Speak up.
r4d
I hear that Ultimate 747s are whipped up all the time, but then disappear just as quickly in the Bermuda Triangle.
I wonder if they have red, or blue seats? Maybe the aliens know.
What is Wrong with sex?