Taxpayer Millions Down the Abstinence-Only Drain
Cross-posted at the ACLU Blog of Rights
Most people don’t wait until marriage to have sex, but abstinence-only-until-marriage education programs tell teens they should…and not much else (hence the “only” part). Despite mountains of evidence showing these programs work as well as magical thinking, stubborn anti-sex ed moralists continue to insist we ignore reality and throw millions more taxpayer dollars at the problem.
The latest Civil Discourse comic examines some further ways taxpayer money can be wasted trying to keep teens in the dark about sex.
Abstinence-only programs are actually worse than teaching teens nothing at all— at least then LGBT youth wouldn’t be marginalized, and misleading information about STDs and gender stereotypes wouldn’t be spread. Thankfully, some states are starting to turn down the money.
Also, be sure to check out another ACLU cartoon I did on abstinence-only programs here.
posted by Matt Bors at
12:06 PM
5 Comments:
mountains of evidence showing these programs work as well as magical thinking
For reasons which are hopefully self-apparent.
In the Netherlands, the very first sexual education takes place in kindergarten (no, it's not very serious, and only teaches kids about the differences between boys and girl and how to say "no"), and people are generally older when they first have intercourse as a result of this. People there are also better at practicing safe sex and planning parenthood.
I graduated in 2000 and there was a heavy emphasis on condom usage in school wellness/health classes. In church we had a women from triple A womens' services, a Christian pro-life group, tell us the failure rates of condoms and birth-control and how she had seen birth-techniques troubled and tippled up and still failed.
The condom education was better in my opinion and the idea that birth control doesn't work is mostly an incorrect usage problem. In additional to condoms, kids should be taught some basics in school like how antibiotics and reduce the effectiveness of birth control and how no pill or patch can prevent STDs.
But instead we went backwards. Instead of adding birth-control we removed the most basic education. It's really sad.
Eirik--Obama was hit in a McCain ad for supporting a similar thing in regards to kindergartners. In an attack ad they made it sound as if Obama wants to teach small children how to have great sex.
Yes, I think you blogged about it, or I saw it somewhere else. That's why I felt so strongly about saying it. We don't have sexual education that early in Norway (we wait until 5th grade to teach the very simple stuff, which is a wee bit late).
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