SB 327, introduced by Sen. Breaux, is a fun little bill. Basically, it requires schools that provide abstinence-only education to send notices to parents informing them that their children are receiving abstinence only sex education instead of useful, medically accurate education.
The text of the required notice:
“Your child is receiving abstinence-only human sexuality education.
Abstinence-only education does not teach students how to prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases other than by remaining abstinent.
Your child is not receiving the following:
(A) Information on methods, other than abstinence, for preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.
(B) Medically accurate instruction on the risks and benefits, including safety and efficacy, of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved methods for:
(i) reducing the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS; and
(ii) preventing pregnancy.
(C) Medically accurate instruction regarding the correct use of FDA approved methods for:
(i) reducing the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS; and
(ii) preventing pregnancy.
(D) Instruction that provides lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students with the necessary skills for making and implementing responsible decisions about relationships and sexuality, including the use of all effective methods to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.
(E) Instruction that provides sexually active students with the necessary skills for making and implementing responsible decisions about relationships and sexuality, including the use of all effective methods to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.
You have the right to review the abstinence-only curriculum in its entirety. Written and audiovisual educational materials used in abstinence-only education are available for inspection.
You have the right to excuse your child from all or parts of abstinence-only instruction. You have the right to be involved in your child’s education.”
Seems to be fairly written. Just the facts.
Brilliant Billie!
So let’s see if I understand this. This Legislator and some of his constituents abhor the simplicity of abstinence, therefore we need a “disclaimer” on the books to clarify.
Brilliant.
Following his logic, if the goal is to “teach” the items listed in the disclaimer (because it’s just inevitable kids won’t abstain) it seems the same would be practical for drug & alcohol education.
They’re going to do it anyway, right? Might as well make sure they know how to properly twist up a fatty and how to make the perfect martini while we’re at it.
Nope, I think you overlooked the “only” part of “abstinence only.” There’s nothing wrong with teaching kids (or adults, for that matter) that abstinence is the most effective way to avoid pregnancy and/or sexually transmitted diseases.
But, making that the end of the discussion, ends up being ineffective in avoiding pregnancy and/or STDs. It’s apparently not even effective in reducing the number of kids who actually go ahead and have sex.
It all depends on our goals. I don’t think we’ve found a technique that has the result of fewer sexually active kids. Teaching about birth control and disease prevention methods apparently reduces the numbers of pregnancy and STDS. Near as I can tell, the only thing abstinence-only education helps with is making kids feel ashamed about the sex they do have (probably both as kids and later as adults.)
So much of the abstinence only teaching is a part of religious catechism,living life from a rigid code,one size fits all situations. We don’t need to ‘know anything'( like Biology) as long as we walk the narrow plank of righteous living.If we fall from the plank we may be ruined and fall straight to Hell( death) or we may just be crippled for life.It’s all God’s will..I had my fill of this kind of c—-p from certain people when I was teaching and I didn’t tolerate them very well because I thought they were ignorant,destructive,and they made anyone like myself who was a believer to look like a fool ( for believing in God)).In this Masson’s blog people are generally intellectually astute ,but the world in general is not like that.So I apologize for, but will not edit my emotional outburst.I’m retired now but this attitude still ticks me off.We don’t play Russian Roulette with our youth.
It is true that abstinence is as effective as homosexuality in preventing pregnancy.
But there is absolutely no discussion about the downsides of adult virginity. Adult virginity leads to feelings of shame, rage, frustration, resentment, isolation, alienation, inadequacy, despair, depression, and suicide. Not only that, people are are adult virgins are labeled as freaks, weirdos, losers, and less of a man than other men. If we need to teach people about the downsides of sex (pregnancy, STD’s), then we should also teach the downsides of adult virginity.
Wow, the pornification of our youth certainly does bring out some interesting comments from far off places.
Tim Zank wrings his hands over adolescent sexual experimentation–a phenomenon as old as our species–as some newfangled “pornification of our youth”, and admires the simplicity of abstinence-only education, a policy of programmed ignorance.
The complexity of abstinence-only education lies not in its expression, but in its consequences.
As H. L. Mencken said, “There is always an easy solution to every human problem–neat,
plausible, and wrong.”
I just wish the proponents of abstinence-only education would work a little harder on their own moral perfection, and adhere rigidly to that doctrine themselves, unto death, and thereby do the entire gene pool a favor.
“It is true that abstinence is as effective as homosexuality in preventing pregnancy”.
In other words, not very effective. That’s why studying Biology is important.Pregancy is a result of whom you have sex with,not whether you are homosexual.
Lou,
C’mon, man. You can learn all the biology you need to know by reading Michael Behe.
meanwhile, DOCTOR KINSEY SAYS: go home, flip on the computer, and google:
“sex”, f@cking”, “masturbation” “anal sex”, oral sex, “69” “pregnant”, “teen”, and lets not forget “Lesbian”, “BDSM”, and “Gay”(GIRLS- THAT ONE HAS LOTS OF BUFF YOUNG MEN)
now mix and match those in any of a hundred ways, set your google Images to preferences: safe search off, and learn the kuma-sutra on your own (or with a partner)
and who needs doctor kinsey, when you’ve got the internet at your fingertips?
kinda renders sex education classes extremely subversive, now doesnt it?
giggle!
this isnt your fathers playboy/porno mags.
must be 18, void where prohibited
Good lord, roach. I can’t imagine the sorts of google hits that comment is going to get me.
Branden Robinson, I’m not wringing my hands over anything, but from a practical standpoint you must realize that since the dawn of time until about the mid 1960’s, abstinence was a pretty damn effective method (being the only method really) until the advent of the pill and and the accompanying “stick your dick wherever you want” school of thought became “normal”. Societies around the world had little incidence of “unwed” mothers. Sure it happened, but not very often and it wasn’t considered a badge of honor.
I’m gonna take a stab here and guess you are not a parent. Nothing wrong with that, but as the parent of a 12 year old daughter, I’d rather not have her “health” teacher expounding on the benefits of oral sex versus vaginal, anal etc. Call it a quirk of mine, but I’d rather she remain a kid just a few more minutes. I have no problem with kid’s learning biology, but I have a BIG problem with kid’s being forcefed “Billy Has Two Mommies” or “Bobbies Daddy Used To Be A Mommy” in the name of diversity and equality.
It’s crap.
Teach school not “lifestyle choices”.
Tim Zank,
I challenge you to support this assertion with research. My understanding is that the shame and ignominy of bastard status led to: abortions (even the ancient Egyptians applied abortifacents, which in an uncharacteristic spasm of decorum I will not detail on Doug’s blog); abandonment of children to orphanages, convents, or monasteries; or simple misrepresentation of the children as legitimate in times where documentation of such things as births and marriages was meager to nonexistent (particularly among the lower classes).
It may be worth reviewing where the concept of a common-law marriage comes from, and what motivated it even in that golden age before the god damned beatniks and hippies started growing their hair and beards.
Your “badge of honor” remark is a blatant straw man. Who touts the “illegitimacy” of their child’s birth as a “badge of honor”? We don’t honor that which we consider irrelevant, and that is the direction we’ve been taking culturally.
And by the way, you’re right. I’m not a parent–not yet. When I become one, though, I intend to deal with sex the same way my parents dealt with it with me…when I was old enough to formulate the question about where babies came from (I think I was in kindergarten), they calmly and matter-of-factly told me. While I was aware that the subject was–ahem–pregnant with import to other kids my age, my interest in the subject was pretty detached, and definitely took a back seat to progamming the TRS-80 in BASIC, for example.
Until I got older, that is, and the hormones of adolescence kicked in. Then my interest was less clinical. I have to admit that health class didn’t teach me anything about sex that I hadn’t already learned on my own (through reading), but they were a far cry from “abstinence-only” approaches, and I’m glad they were there for the children of parents who were less capable than my own.
As a rule, informed decisions exhibit better judgment than ones made in ignorance. A political conservative would trumpet this principle loudly when one is, say, investing in the stock market. Evidently sex is a matter of so little import to them that it fails to demand the same level of attention.
Branden,
Michael Behe is from Lehigh Univsersity,and I have walked around the slopes of the campus many times.What we would do well to teach in school is ‘what is a belief?’ and ‘what is a theory?’.If people understood these concepts there would be no controversy between Science and Religion.They certainly are in no way parallel and in no way threaten each other. The RCC had to come to terms with Science and survived and I don’t see why Evangelical Protestanism can’t do the same.
Lou,
You said it. I could almost stomach absintence-only sex education if we combined any such initiative with a deadly serious effort to teach critical thinking, complete with student-driven analysis of current events, at every grade from 3rd or 4th on up.
But I doubt I’ll ever have to make such a compromise, as most advocates of abstinence-only education would regard such as a truly Faustian bargain.
“But I doubt I’ll ever have to make such a compromise, as most advocates of abstinence-only education would regard such as a truly Faustian bargain.”
My guess is you’ll never have to make such a compromise because you’ll probably never have any kids.
*sigh* Branden, I can assure you that as another parent of a 12-year-old daughter, Tim does not speak for all of us. In addition to talks my wife & I have with her, I expect her school to give her full & accurate sex education. And any 12-year-old who is not being insulated through home-schooling is already being exposed to peer talk about sex, I can assure you.
Tim Zank,
I think the odds of my wife and I having kids are higher than the odds of you responding meaningfully to my request in post #15 for substantiating evidence to back your assertions about the prevalence of unwed motherhood prior to 1967 (Summer of Love), 1960 (birth control pill introduced), 1957 (Ginsberg’s Howl first published), or even 1932 (FDR elected)–whichever event constitutes your personal watershed for Western Culture’s irredeemable slide into damnation.
Lou,
Has anyone gotten pregnant from homosexual relations?
I agree that teen pregnancy has become a “badge of honor” in some circles. That is something that we as a society need to address. And no, teen pregnancy is not a new phenomena. When my great-aunt became pregnant during WWI, she and her mom made a lengthy trip to visit relatives. When they returned her mom (well beyond child-bearing age) was the mom of a bouncing baby boy.
I want my kids to have all the facts-from abstinence to forms of birth control; especially since every time we tried to have a child my wife would immediately get pregnant!
Rev. AJB,
You amaze me. Where is this the case? I’ve known a few teen/unwed mothers (no, I wasn’t responsible for getting any of them that way), and all of them had very mixed feelings. They experienced completely understandable feelings of love for and pride in their child, and much stress and worry of the economics of raising it.
Their (lack of) marital status was, as I understood it, something they refused to be ashamed of, but not something they held as a virtue per se. The unwed mothers I’ve known have simply resolved to “make it” without the benefit(?) of a husband.
(Given some of the guys these girls seemed to be attracted to, this was probably the wiser choice.)
Branden-I said “in some circles;” not in all instances. I know that the majority of girls have mixed feelings. But I have counseled girls who have the feeling of “oh well” or “my friend has one, so I thought I’d have one, too.” Of course these girls often have other family and personal issues that play into that apathy. Guess what I’m getting at, and maybe expressed myself wrongly, is that our nation is not doing a good job of discouraging teen pregnancy. And we’d be fooling ourselves to think that teaching abstinence only is going to work.
Michael Ejercito says:
January 15th, 2008 at 13:48 -06006
Lou,
Has anyone gotten pregnant from homosexual relations?
We should make a survey to see how many homosexual men pay child support.. Does the woman have to be a lesbian for the relationship to be homosexual? All depends on the critera for ‘homosexual relations’
Rev. AJB,
I think we agree on the policy approach; what I’m having trouble with is interpreting “oh well” and “my friend has one, so I thought I’d have one, too” as claims of bearing a “badge of honor”.
As I said, these sound more to me like indifference to marital status.
There’s a big difference between indifference in something and pride in it; for some folks, this distinction is much easier to see when the issue is, say, military service to one’s country, as opposed to unwed motherhood.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of single-parent homes because I think that, in most circumstances, the child is being deprived of loving custodial attention because that single parent has to work. The best day care in the world is no substitute for an attentive, loving, competent parent.
Where I differ with some people is in not finding a home environment with two parents working full-time to be much superior to a single parent working full-time. I think the marginal benefit to the child in that case is pretty meager.
What I want to see is somebody living with, loving, and teaching the child as close to a full-time activity. I’m much less concerned with whether this is mom, or dad, or an aunt, or mom’s domestic partner who’s in it for the long haul but whom she’s not going to marry for whatever reason. In my view, that you are a parent in the biological sense is vastly less important than the parenting you do.
I want children to have good parenting and I don’t much care who provides it. But it’s gotta be good, and it’s gotta be parenting.
With respect to the value of a stay-at-home parent, I agree whole-heartedly. My wife and I are fortunate to have that luxury. We had friends, one of whom was a teacher and one of whom stayed home with their 3 kids. As a teacher, the pay was so meager that they had to take advantage of certain welfare programs.
I’m not one to attribute the Collapse of Western Civilization to one thing or another, but to the extent society is in decline (I’m not conceding this, btw), I’d say it has more to do with the economic necessities requiring two working parents than with teaching kids medically accurate facts about pregnancy, birth control, and STDs.
Lou,
Name one woman who got pregnant as a result of a carpet cleaning session with her lesbian lover.
If abstinence-only worked, it might be worth a discussion. I recall recent studies showed it doesn’t reduce teen pregnancy.
Similarly, the girls taking abstinence pledges didn’t delay sexual activity compared to their peers, though on average they had more oral and anal sex.
I could image a man less virtuous than myself might ruefully wish these abstinence pledges and abstinence teachings had been around twenty years ago, when they might have been of use (to a man less virtuous than myself). But had they been, I might have missed out on fifteen-hour “Sid Meier’s Pirates!” sessions on the Commodore-64 with Doug, fueled by Pizza King pizza, liters of Coke, and Jethro Tull on the cassette deck.
Michael Ejercito,
When I read your last crude vulgar characterization which was intended as response to my post, I realize I had been duped.I hadn’t recognized your name so I thought you were maybe just uniformed.I, myself, didn’t know what LGBT meant til recent times ,but did recognize people made similar retorts as yours when they thought they were among sympathetic listeners.These people seemed to be staunch conservative supporters, even faithful church goers,and were patriotic-sounding,so a pattern emerged. I’ve been pushed more and more into liberal thinking as a result because there remains among liberals a respect for the rights of the individual human being,although both parties are mightily corruputed by well-funded special intrest advocacies.Liberals also see the need for government ( the peoples’) intervention to make our Constitution practice what it preaches.I see no other way. I would never accuse Ronald Reagan of being a bigot because he surely was not, but he didn’t recognize them in his own party,and they have become strong in republican politics, in some areas being in control. Republicans have paid the price for not remaining pure to economic and true family values,and respect for civil rights for everyone.I think this upcoming election will tell the price thay have paid for their vagaries. Any family defines itself as who they are,and we accept them as such, and is not a ‘textbook’ definition.No more of this excluding people by group and then redefining terms like ‘family’ so the family fits the party dogma..
Holy cow, we were nerds. I still am, I suppose. Now that you mention it, that seems like a fine way to spend a day.
Thank you, Lou.