the messiah spotted in governement-subsidized laboratories!

part two: "you got an iud? that sucks! did you lose your license?"

sex education. so i know this has gotten some publicity lately, but i'm just not entirely convinced that people truly grasp exactly what is being taught — and not taught — to this nation's youth. i also will say that i'm also not convinced that i can easily convince people that some of what is being taught — and not taught — is actually being taught (and not taught); it's just that outrageous. the issue here is, as most people know, whether kids should be getting comprehensive sex education, which is what one would think of as a basic "sex ed" class, or if schools should be teaching abstinence-only curriculae, which often do not include any information on contraception — reasonable, right, because if no one's having sex, then there's no need for birth control. this is actually a lovely thought; i mean, if no one needs to have sex, then this is great: our tax dollars go to teach kids that they shouldn't have sex, they don't, we all save a fortune in medical expenses, no one gets pregnant or stis and everyone's happy. however, that would classify as anti-sex lala land, or something to that effect. the fact is that people — teens, everyone — are having sex and there is a need for birth control. a dire one, in fact. and yet kids in these programs are taught that abstinence is the only way to keep them safe; that's it and that's all. they are taught that other methods of protecting themselves are not effective and encouraged to do things like make virginity pledges — actually signing things swearing not to engage in sex until they are married [who's tick is that? a scientist's] in front of peers and evangelicals — oops, i meant educators. hey, they both start with an e... (interestingly enough, a recent study found that teens who made public pledges to abstain from all premarital sex did have fewer sex partners than teens who didn't take the pledge; however, when the virginity pledgers did have sex, they were less likely to protect themselves than those who hadn't. effectively looking out for young people's health, those pledges).

now, in my mind, the whole abstinence-only sex "education" (i put education is quotations because i hesitate to even call it that) issue is really and truly ridiculous. i guess i just don't see the argument for consciously chooing to deprive people of information they need — and deserve — to make decisions regarding their physical and mental well-being. i mean, wouldn't this be synonomous with the government saying, "we think drinking and drug use is bad and therefore we will no longer sponsor programs that teach young people about the hazards of engaging in those behavior." seriously, what's the difference? young people having sex can be dangerous (they get pregnant with children they can't support maybe causing them to drop out of school, etc., or say they contract hiv, whatever the case may be); alcohol and/or drug use can be dangerous. but we continue to teach children about these dangers — through school programs, all kinds of federally-funded organizations, tv ads, and more — because we realize it's going to happen anyway, and we need to educate young people about it so they can make informed decisions. take the infamous "just say no" campaign. don't you think they wanted america's youth to know what they were "just saying no" to? now, don't get me wrong, i — personally — do not think that sex and drug abuse, say, are really that comparable in terms of (and i hesitate to use this word at all) moral contexts in our society. i think it can be perfectly safe and healthy for young people to engage in sexual behaviors. but i do think the example above holds up; the people funding these abstinence-only programs do think that it is morally reprehensible for young people to have sex. they do equate it with illegal behaviors like underaged drinking and drug use. so much so that they're taking that issue to the state legislators, too. i don't think many people realize that family planning clinic workers in texas, for example, are legally required to notify the police if they treat a minor for a condition that indicates they have had sexual intercourse (this includes birth control requests). and if you think it's only for statuatory rape purposes, think again; minors who have concensual sex with other minors fall into that category, as well.

anyway, my point is that there's just no logic here. as stated in regards to ec, if the "pro-lifers" really want to stop abortion, isn't teaching people about birth control a good way to start?

as to specifics, rep. henry waxman from california released a report on abstinence-only education last december that contained some pretty outerageous findings. and it's not just that the programs have a fundamentalist agenda, waxman's report also found that approximately two-thirds of these programs are telling kids things that are just plain wrong. i mean, we can argue over the philosopical and ethical implications of these issues until the cows come home, but what about sheer misinformation? hell-o. just to point out a few of the unbelievable errors and some of teh just ridiculous "information" that these federally funded programs include — and i'll come back to that later:



the claim that 'condoms help prevent the spread of stds,' is not supported by data
[yes, you read that correctly]

condoms fail to prevent hiv approximately 31 percent of the time [blatantly untrue]

chances of giving birth prematurely is increased if a woman has had an abortion [umm, nope]

"twenty-four chromosomes from the mother and twenty-four chromosomes from the father join to create [a] new individual." [humans take 23 chromosomes from each parent, not 24. and not that i care, but it's just wrong!]

a pregnancy occurs one out of every seven times that couples use condoms [striking out]

forty-one percent of heterosexual teen girls and 50 percent of homosexual teen boys have hiv [in the dugout]

a 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person" [there's an objective thing to teach in a classroom]

five to 10 percent of women who have legal abortions will become sterile [i mean, really]

women need "financial support," while men need "admiration" [sexist much?]



so now that we've digested that, i will tell you that these kinds of programs received $170 million dollars from the bush administration. programs actually teaching kids about sex — and everything that goes a long with it — received nothing.

look at the things we are teaching and those that we're not: condoms don't actually offer protection from infection or pregnancy, cell clusters are thinking people and if a woman aborts one she will probably end up sterile which could greatly interfere with her vocation of securing "financial support" and "admiring" her husband. this is not information; this is not education. these are strategically designed programs. who knows where the "facts" of these curriculae are coming from? but i do have a fair guess at where they're not coming from: science. i hesitate to overuse the pjf term. but this is a "moral" agenda, and somehow it's ended up in our classrooms. funded by our government.

i will end on a slightly positive note. very slightly positive. one of the most outrageous curriculae has recently lost its federal funding. the aclu finally won its suit against "the silver ring thing" which was a government-funded organization that "taught sex ed" and also preached the virginity pledge, providing pledgers with a silver ring as a token of their pledge. anyway, that curriculum — financed by the bush administration until very, very recently and only having lost that funding because the aclu went through a grueling process to oppose it — and also by no means the only of its kind left out there — contained the following sentence in its coursework materials; as in its textbook, one might say:

"in hell non-believers will be doomed in unending torment with the devil and his demons. ... [n]on-believers will spend eternity in agony."

man, i'd hate to get a question wrong on one of their tests.

[stay tuned for part three: vaccines shmaccines]