In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
You want facts about sex, here's two: its icky, and god doesn't like it.
Fact-free teaching on sexThe 1938 government antimarijuana propaganda film Reefer Madness is still watched today for its campy excesses. Dr. Carroll, the moralizing high school principal, warns parents that marijuana is more dangerous than opium and heroin. Those who smoke the drug are depicted as instantly addicted and crazed.Who correctly noted there was a lot of energy and commerce involved in convincing someone to have sex with them and that they felt bad about themselves afterwards and that was about as "scientific" as anyone needed.
We laugh at these scare tactics today. But the government has not ended its efforts to modify behavior by using campaigns of exaggerations and lies. A new congressional report has found that the nation's most popular government-funded abstinence-only sex education programs are peppered with inaccuracies that misinform young people about the risks of sex, contraceptives and abortion. It's Reefer Madness all over again. Or, as one research group called it, "Scared Chaste."
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But unlike Bush's energetic concern over educational accountability and standards reflected in No Child Left Behind, the curricula for abstinence-only sex education programs are not vetted for accuracy. (There was an attempt by Democratic lawmakers in 2002 to require medical accuracy as a condition of receiving money for these programs, but that effort was voted down by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.)"We hear from kids all the time about the myths they've been fed," said Marilyn Anderson, director of education at Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida. "The whole idea is to scare kids and make them think they'll get HIV by having sex. But what's walking into our clinic says that kids are having sex, just without condoms."Yeah, and lying to teens about one of God's gifts (you know sex - orgasms - nudity - and other icky things) will make you really truly awesome in God's eyes. And I'm sorry a blastocyst is about as snuggly as the word. Its barely a gob of cells at that point. Humans kill more cells coughing.
Although the federal government has determinedly refused to study whether any correlation exists between teaching abstinence and actual abstinence, the social science that does exist demonstrates very little positive impact. The handful of states that have studied it found no long-term success in delaying sexual initiation. Instead, some state program evaluators said the programs' lack of information on pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases was leading to dangerous attitudes and behaviors.
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It's no surprise, then, that the curricula have also been found to mix religion and science in ways to promote an antiabortion agenda. One course described a blastocyst as a "tiny baby" that "snuggles" into the uterus. Another called a 43-day-old fetus a "thinking person."
In Louisiana, a state-sponsored Web site tells young people that withholding sex until marriage makes one "really, truly, "cool' in God's eyes."
- rob 3:02 PM - [PermaLink] -
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