Some highly amusing stuff is popping out of Bush’s “Community-Based Abstinence Education” program.
The new ACF guidelines require programs receiving funds to teach that abstinence before marriage guarantees a happier life, complete with greater wealth, healthy children, longevity, freedom from psychological problems, and better educational opportunities. The guidelines fail to provide evidence to support this guarantee.
The ACF also now requires that programs receiving funds define abstinence in the strictest terms: “voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage.” Sexual activity is defined as “any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse.” Suggestions for staying abstinent include avoiding television and not staying out late.
Marriage is defined as “a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife.” This implies that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) teens have no choice but to embrace a lifetime of abstinence. Sexually active teens are also marginalized, as the ACF associates depression and suicide with premarital sex — again providing no evidence to back up its claim.
As one blog suggested, clearly the proper reaction is to interrogate every one of the not-married Bush administration officials about their sex life - do they support and implement Bush’s policy?
Yeah. Abstinence didn’t cause me to jump around in uncontrollable glee. And who is Jr. to be talking about this anywho? I figure he had better availability of all kinds of vices at a much younger age.
Not to belabor the obvious, but there is a big difference psychologically between choosing to be abstinent and being abstinent by circumstance or against your will/hopes.
Abstinence as implemented in the Bush policy is certainly stupid, but not for reasons having to do with the relative sexual mores of the people putting it into place.
Rhetorically, sure. But I think it would bring a great deal more useful compromise to the table if planned parenthood stopped acting like abstinence was actually wrong instead of just somewhat unlikely, and if the other side started recognizing that giving children alternatives to the abstinence/illegal abortion spectrum they seem to favour by default is common sense. One of the two has to take the first step…forgive me if I place a little more responsibility on the secular folk for their actions, for they know damned well what they do.
You don’t think the unwillingness of the people responsible for developing the policy to abide by it is an issue?
Sure, it can be. But do as I say, not as I do is not an invention of the Bush administrations or Republicans. It’s not even all that wrong as a control mechanism so long as it can be shown to work in the aggregate, as it did for thousands of years of organized religions for instance. The particular problem of Bush policies like this one is not that they are so horribly wrong to begin with, it’s that they are immediately turned over to zealots with seemingly no political penalty. Need something controversial done, Mr Bush? WHY NOT PUT A LUNATIC IN CHARGE?
Really, those people’s sexual predilections or private lives generally are secondary in anything but a pr sense (still important, but not so much for material discussions of the issue).
Actually, I’m not sure all secular folk really believe abstinence isn’t wrong. I’ve known more than a few people who preached that abstinence was bad because it’s unnatural, and that it stunted natural emotional development. As someone who abstained all through my teens, I think that’s crap, but it seemed to be accepted by a number of my more liberal peers.
But I think it would bring a great deal more useful compromise to the table if planned parenthood stopped acting like abstinence was actually wrong instead of just somewhat unlikely
Somewhat unlikely? Unless they start putting estrogen in the mashed potatoes IMPOSSIBLE. There is no way you can govern biological imperatives. I wouldn’t starve to death even if the school health teacher said “No eating before marriage”.
Then why do their press releases re: Bush’s plans sound like they are addressing schematics for a Martian invasion?
Are you on some sort of program to unleash the worst analogy possible in every thread? There is nothing IMPOSSIBLE about abstaining from sex. People do it every day. Starving yourself by choice, on the other hand, is a pretty widely recognized medical disorded.
But it must be fun to pretend to be enslaved to your penis. Beats being responsible for your actions, I’m sure.
Ben’s biological imperative argument almost made me switch to the abstainment side of the discussion.
The biological imperative is the weakest excuse for anything ever. There is nothing so detailed controlling us.
Anders- Yeah, but your beliefs about sexuality are pretty much a fanciful dream.
The only reason boys have grow hair on their chests is because they were told to have hair, right?
LK- And there’s nothing IMPOSSIBLE about starving to death.
To make teenage abstinence remotely plausible as a policy, you’d have to completely reshape our society. Ties back in with McCullough’s point. Why should some 17 year old HS kid abstain when his teacher is hitting singles’ bars after work? It’s more than a cheap political gotcha, it speaks to a very real flaw. If the people who(in theory) truly believe abstinence is good can’t keep out of each other’s pants, how can you possibly expect Joe Public to wait for marriage?
Also, I don’t understand your anti-Planned Parenthood argument. They advocate using methods that actually prevent teen pregnancy and STDs and such, while the other side uses flat out lies and distortions to push an agenda that they pretty much invented out of whole cloth in the 1980s. An agenda, mind you, that’s primary benefit to society is ___________. Seriously, I don’t know. Make naive religious folks feel better about those damn city kids?
What do you want PP to do? Agree with absolute falsehoods?
