Abstinence is the Way
08.12.02

Oh, the government is at it again. In the grand form of all that is Republican, the US government is playing with a provision to offer states $50 Million to replace any/all sex education with information on abstinence as the only way to deal with sex. According to our all-knowing leaders, abstinence is the way.

But the way to what?

The government sees sex as the problem. Sex leads to disease and pregnancy. Disease leads to death. Simple enough. Pregnancy leads to teen mothers, welfare, and the granddaddy of the world's horrors, abortion. Please note the grand tone of sarcasm with which that last part was written. So, the easiest way to avoid all those nasty things is to stop sex. In theory, this is brilliant. This might be the first time the US government is actually trying to remove the problem instead of treating the symptoms. Unfortunately, nothing less than the hand of God is going to stop teen sex. And therein lies the problem.

Ask yourself if you can remember anyone ever telling you to have sex when you grew up? Other than your friends, of course. Did your parents ever once tell you to go have sex? Did your teachers ever tell you that it would advance your life to have sex? That it was safe and without consequence?

My point is simple. Abstinence is taught to kids every day. There isn't a parent out there that gets into "the talk" and doesn't suggest "waiting for that special one" or "waiting for marriage" or even "just don't have sex." Every school that attempts sexual education teaches abstinence as part of it. None of us were devoid of people pushing abstinence as the way to deal with sex. And most of us did it anyway, didn't we?

But the advantage we all had, that kids coming up today won't (if this all goes through), is that we knew about ways to keep from getting pregnant and to keep from spreading (or getting) diseases. And that is a HUGE advantage.

We all knew about sex before our parents talked to us about it, if they did at all. My parents never sat me down for that talk. The closest we came was an argument where my father yelled, "you've got condoms in the car, going out, getting laid every other night!" My response was simply "Where's the downside?" That was our "talk." And that was when I was 17.

So now the plan is to take kids younger than that... well, HOPEFULLY younger than that... and send them out into their social worlds only with the knowledge that abstinence is 100% effective at preventing pregnancy and disease. There's been a lot of bitching and moaning about how young kids are being taught about sex in school. And the truth is, like I said earlier, most kids know about sex long before their parents think they do. More than half of 15-19 year olds have had sex. 70% of 18 year olds have had sex.

So the government's solution is an attempt to do what morality taught in our churches and temples, and rules taught by our parents haven't been able to do yet. In other words kids, "Just say NO." Does that's sound familiar? It should. Nancy Reagan tried that one in regards to drugs. And we can all see how well that worked out. The biggest effect that phrase had becoming this country's new punchline. And a lot of us laughed simply because we were too high at the time NOT to.

And if you don't think this is the absolute bottom of the logic barrel, allow me to strip that one last illusion of faith...

Lois Capps, a mother and former nurse, offered an amendment to their abstinence program. She asked that everything taught by the school be 100% medically and scientifically true. While this doesn't seem like an unreasonable request, the amendment was turned down by a 31-19 vote. So it seems that the truth has no place in this program. Depriving kids of information that may save their lives isn't enough. Teachers have free reign to lie to kids to drive the point home. Teen pregnancy and infection isn't enough, let's add a complete distrust of teachers to the problem.

It's blatantly obvious that American kids don't really have a clue about sex. We have the highest abortion rates and highest teen childbearing rates (22%) in the world. So, between the teens who terminate unwanted pregnancies, and those who deliver, the numbers are outright astounding. And disturbing. Obviously, these are the same numbers driving the government to these measures. I just think they've got anal vision... the result of having your head up your ass.

Kids, as a whole, are not going to stop having sex. Granted, there has been a recent movement involving kids signing contracts agreeing to abstain from sex until marriage. And that is great for the very small percentage of the nation's kids that are participating. But for the most part, kids are NOT going to stop having sex. Even if you remove every sexually enticing visual from every medium available to kids... Even if you remove the social status accompanied by having sex... Even if you remove every ounce of peer pressure regarding sex... You still have to contend with biology.

For simplicity's sake, I'll deal with sexual maturity as the point when a person can reproduce. For men, that age is around 13 or 14. For women, that age is around 11 or 12. Biologically speaking, that's when people would start having sex, barring the social structure we're in. That's when the natural sex drive begins. Worse than that, the make sex drive comes to a peak between 17 and 18 years of age. For women it's much much later (around 35) so that's not much of a force here. But simply put, the government is trying to fight nature.

The US government believes that by promoting abstinence, they will be able to educate kids into fighting the natural instincts of their own bodies. By educating kids about that instinct ONLY with abstinence, they're left fighting nature with ignorance. What could be deadly ignorance. When a teenager gives in to her body, with no knowledge of how to protect herself from disease or pregnancy, she's one step closer to a life-changing event. If she's lucky, she might only catch herpes or crabs. And when the number of teen pregnancies, VD contractions, AIDS infections, and death rise up, it will be attributed to ignorance. But to whose?

Abstinence may be *A* way. But it's not the only way. And it may become a bigger problem than all our teens' problems combined.