Post a Comment On: Vigilance

The Washington Times this morning has one of those forgettable editorials that ... you just have to comment on.

I'll quote some of it so you see what's up:
Yearly, more than 3 million teenagers contract a sexually transmitted disease. In addition to the risk of disease and pregnancy, sexually active teens are 3 times likelier than the sexually inactive to become depressed and attempt suicide.

Clearly, it's in society's interest to discourage teen sex. Teens themselves realize this: According to a Zogby poll, more than 90 percent of teens say society should teach kids to abstain from sex until they have, at least, finished high school. Parents want a stronger message: Almost 9 in 10 want schools to teach youth to abstain from sex until they're married or in an adult relationship that is close to marriage.

Given the almost universal popularity of abstinence education, it seems strange Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat, soon will introduce legislation that would effectively abolish federal abstinence education programs. These programs supply nearly all the governmental support for teaching abstinence... The war against abstinence
OK, that's enough, if you've read one of these things, you've read 'em all. Their bright idea is "universally popular," while people who believe differently from them only want all children to become gay prostitutes and have abortions and stuff.

One little comment near the end caught my eye.
If contraception is already taught in nearly every school, and condom promotion gets nearly all the government funds, why the push to kill the limited funds for abstinence?

The answer lies with certain interest groups that often heavily influence decisions of key lawmakers. The two main groups leading the crusade for the Baucus plan and against abstinence are Advocates for Youth and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. (SIECUS).
Now this rings a bell. Only a couple of weeks ago, a reporter who had been talking with some Ex-Recall members (the CRC people opposing the MCPS sex ed curriculum) very seriously asked me to comment on these very two groups. There was something about a link to to Kinsey or something, and some far-out beliefs Kinsey had, and didn't Kinsey start all this?

And I was at a loss for words.

I had looked at the Advocates for Youth web site last year, when the conservative minority members of the citizens advisory committee -- the group that later evolved into the Recall group and now Ex-Recall -- said some things about them in a letter to the school board. I looked around the site a little bit and saw that the Advocates for Youth are nothing like these guys said they are. I sure didn't see anything weird or radical.

I have also seen SIECUS' web site. I can't remember what was there, but I remember thinking that I mostly agreed with what I saw there.

But the thing is, putting together the reporter's questions and these comments in The Times, it looks like the, I don't know, what do you call them? It looks like the "conservatives," the ones who think government should control every detail of our personal lives, think that Advocates for Youth and SIECUS are behind the opposition to abstinence education.

Or, if this is like other things, they just want the public to believe that's who's behind it. I can never tell, do these guys believe their conspiracy theories, or do they just try to get other people to believe them (it's the old "fools or liars" question again, isn't it?).

Listen, I'm just one guy, but let me say -- almost all parents want their teenagers to remain abstinent through their teen years. And they have good reasons for it. Besides the pregnancy-and-disease worries, they want them to experience the profoundness of sexual communion with someone they love, when they are mature enough to appreciate it. They don't want them to feel used, to treat their innocence, their spirituality, like a playing-field to be trampled on. Love is a tough game, and we don't want our innocent ones to be hurt for life.

But, see, most of us think it would be best if they were really abstinent. Not this anal-sex, oral-sex stuff that the born-again kids are doing. We want our kids to understand why it makes sense to be abstinent. We want them to know what sex is about, so they'll understand how to deal with rude strangers and pushy boyfriends, peer pressure and influences from music, movies, magazines. We want our kids to have the facts so they can make good decisions, so they'll know what they're getting into.

And that's another thing. Nearly everybody ends up having sexual intercourse eventually, and it looks like about ninety-nine percent of Americans (less, if like our pledge-signing "abstinent" youth, you don't count anal and oral sex as "sex") do it before they get married. And so, y'know what? We don't want our daughters to live lives they didn't choose as single mothers, we don't want our sons paying child support to some woman they dated years ago. We don't want them suffering from diseases that are spread sexually.

So we want them to know what to do. We want the schools to teach them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Teach them about contraception --- when they're ready, they'll make a decision and they'll know what the choices are. Teach them about homosexuality -- when they meet gay people, or if they find they are gay themselves, they need to understand what's happening. We haven't been recruited by Advocates for Youth, SIECUS didn't have anything to do with it, this is just common sense to most of us, at least here in Montgomery County.