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Abstinence education takes guts in government PDF Print E-mail
by William Murchison    Sat, Jul 19, 2008, 12:27 PM

So we’re back to the eternal debate over sex education. We can’t escape the media’s fascination with such refined topics as condoms, illegitimacy, and abstinence education. This week it was the story about Texas’ having spent $17 million enjoining students not to “do it,” while 52.9 percent of 9th through 12th graders did it anyway. The figure compares with 47.8 percent nationally.

Cheerleaders for the prophylactic approach to pregnancy control wag their heads wisely. Of course! Abstinence Ed — the counsel to keep from premarital sexual activity — gets you only so far in These Modern Times. Better, supposedly, to teach protection and let it go.

That still-conservative Texas doesn’t buy officially into this line of reasoning drives pro-condomites to distraction.

Texas law requires public schools that offer Sex Ed to focus the presentation on the need for non-sexual contact before marriage. It’s OK to mention condoms — a word not in general discourse until about 20 years ago — but chiefly by way of showing their non-dependability as pregnancy-prevention devices. Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Houston), a co-author of the Sex Ed legislation now in force, says he fears there’s too much emphasis on abstinence. Why, out in California, say others, teachers equipped with bananas may legally demonstrate condom use! Poor Texas, where the Puritans and blue-noses roam, depriving modern kids of basic knowledge they could appropriate to general benefit.

Poor Texas, nothing! About all the Legislature — including Rep. Garnet Coleman — has done in providing for emphasis on abstinence from sex is undertake to remind young people that gratification isn’t the be-all and end-all of existence. Which is the least you might expect of a governmental body charged with the oversight of education.

You don’t educate people by telling them, in essence, there aren’t any rules you have to follow any more, our culture having done away with silly restrictions on human desire. You educate people, rather, by reminding them not just of opportunities and possibilities but of limitations known and understood throughout the entirety of civilization. Such as the one that says — against scoffing and railing and heckling — that the relationship between man and woman is of a magnitude and urgency so large as to falter and suffer when reduced to a matter of momentary gratification.

Everybody with a pulse and at least one functioning brain cell knows the human track record with respect to sexual temptation. No one thinks reasoned repetition of the arguments against premarital sex will miraculously persuade all hot-blooded youth of the need, at crucial instances, for a cold shower. No way.

You don’t try, though? You ridicule or write off the very attempt as stupid, prissy, and backwards? You cave in to the call of the condom? And you call it “education”?

It’s anything but education. It’s dereliction, and don’t let the Austin American-Statesman, or the Texas Observer, or Planned Parenthood, or any other entity associated with the cause of individual autonomy tell you differently. That ole dog simply and plainly won’t hunt.

The State of Texas is right to pursue abstinence education inasmuch as no good is accomplished by signaling citizens of their right to obey such laws as they choose to obey. Which is pretty much the thrust of Sex Ed, a la Planned Parenthood.

The condom cultists say, abstinence, blah, blah, might work here and there, won’t work most of the time, so pay attention, class, this marvelous piece of prophylactic engineering is called a condom, and to use it, you simply…

Reductionist rubbish is the kindest name for this kind of non-teaching — as indeed younger students seem to know seem to fathom. Up to the ninth grade, the statistics say, they sort of get it. Then sexual awakening occurs. They lose it.

The lesson here? Surely it’s to plumb a little deeper the sources of youthful awe for the true and figure out what it takes to make that sense of awe last longer than sixth period on the last day of eighth grade.

A sensible, not to say a brave, government understands this priority and presses it. The kind of government that doesn’t understand the trouble it lays up for the future by winking at moral defiance is — brave might be the unlikeliest description.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry says of Abstinence Ed that the Governor “is comfortable with,” and “supports,” it. That’s more like it.

Comments (8)add comment
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written by Big Fat Phil , July 21, 2008

False debate. Abstinence Ed won't get us there by itself, and neither will teaching use of protection. You need both.


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written by James WHITE , July 21, 2008

woo Hoo!
You say,"while 52.9 percent of 9th through 12th graders did it anyway. The figure compares with 47.8 percent nationally." at the very, very, beginning of what I think is supposed to be a reasoned logic supporting some conclusion. Except that your first piece of information kinda/sorta doesn't really help does it?

Man, I haven't seen writing this poor since Rob Allyn's, "Front Runner" and I still have need of dialysis when I see THAT on my shelf.

"our culture having done away with silly restrictions on human desire." Really? No one's being prosecuted for rape, spousal abuse, workplace fallufas (sic)?

Your lie - and it is a lie - about condom effectiveness is a crime though. What is it with republicans? They think that if they repeat it long enough people will believe it - No oil spill from Katrina, Iraq caused 9/11, Tom Delay made a fortune killing bugs, condoms don't work...Really, this is why the GOP must be SO anti education....An educated electorate would greatly diminish the gullible. (Look! Over there! Gays are getting married at an antigun rally! And they're using condoms!OMG!)

Besides, the GOP sees the value in condoms too. Wasn't it a DC high priced hooker who said that republicans use hookers too (some of them FEMALE prostitutes, Mark Foley aside). She went on that there wasn't any difference between the two parties except that the GOP members used TWO condoms instead of one. You might think it's because they're paranoid about diseases and want double protection. Me? Slogging through your logical morass makes me think that Republicans need two condoms to make things fit...

I'm just sayin.






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written by Old Red , July 21, 2008

If there is a more discreted theory than Abstinence Education I don't know what it is. Every study has shown that it is at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive. And an immense waste of money in all cases.

However, If Rick Perry thinks abstinence is such a good idea he won't mind telling everyone about how HE practiced abstinence until marriage. That will be fun to watch....



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written by Paul Barnes , July 21, 2008

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office made a statement:

"It’s hard to imagine a good reason why, in these tight economic times, Congress would intentionally flush taxpayer dollars down the drain by spending them on disproven, ineffective abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. We are floored that they continue to ignore study after study, and the consensus of the pubic health community, all concluding that these programs censor vital health care information, teach gender stereotypes, discriminate against lesbian and gay teens, and in some cases promote religion in the classroom in violation of the Constitution."



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written by la vox , July 21, 2008

As usual Bill hits the nail on the head. Teens want desperately for the adults in their lives to affirm that sex is, in fact, a very big deal. It's something they know in their core, but find scant cultural messages that echo this lived truth. As parents, as adult guides, our job is to point our children toward the light, no matter how many are stampeding toward the darkness. With all that we know about the emotional, physical and economic devastation that stems from promiscuous behavior, we owe it to our kids to come clean and urge a return to virtue.
Does anybody seriously think that teens aren't inundated with information about "safe sex?" If we're not teaching them to govern their impulses -- virtue -- then it's unlikely they're going to go to the trouble to reach for a condom when "the moment" strikes. That's what's reflected in the rising statistics of std's and teen pregnancy. A fourth of teen girls now carry an STD. A fourth! Do you seriously think these kids have never heard of condoms? Helloooo--they're kids. They're not using them. They're kids. They're not ready for sexual activity. We need to help them. Stuffing taxpayer-subsidized condoms in every backpack is not going to do the trick.



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written by ElHombre , July 22, 2008

Anyone else sense the pattern of Mr. Murchison's columns? Take an idea which has been proven not to work, say it works anyway, then whine why don't people keep trying the bad idea?

It's like we're reading a Colbert Report transcript and waiting for the puchline.



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written by RelicMM , July 23, 2008

Unbridled licentiousness is no panacea for self control.


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written by HSH , July 24, 2008

This is a nonsensical column. Abstinence is taught as a part of the health education curriculum. To preclude education of other means of preventing STD transmission and/or unwanted pregnancy is to fail to provide good fact-based health education.



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