Just in case you were wondering why so many science bloggers devote so much keystrokes to criticizing religion, the Washington Post's Rob Stein has this convenient reminder of the danger of letting faith inform public policy:
The long decline in sexual activity among U.S. teenagers, hailed as one of the nation's most important social and public health successes, appears to have stalled.After decreasing steadily and significantly for more than a decade, the percentage of teenagers having intercourse began to plateau in 2001 and has failed to budge since then, despite the intensified focus in recent years on encouraging sexual abstinence, according to new analyses of data from a large federal survey.
2001 is, of course, the year in which executive power in D.C. was transferred from a man of faith who respects the wall of separation between church and state to another man of faith whose first acts in office constituted a coordinated attempt to tear down that very same wall.
The halt in the downward trend coincided with an increase in federal spending on programs focused exclusively on encouraging sexual abstinence until marriage, several experts noted.
...
"It is alarming," said Susan Philliber of Philliber Research Associates, a private firm that studies teen sexuality. "We've had such a wonderful decade's run of getting the rate down. For it to level out causes everyone to go, 'Uh-oh.' "
The campaign by Mssrs. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Myers, et al. is not an philosophical indulgence. Allowing religious morality to determine how public tax dollars are spent has real consequences for actual human beings. It is fundamentalist doctrine that occupies the abstract plane of existence.
Curiously, the data involved are not new. It's just the interpretation. When released last year, abstinence-only proponents championed significant declines in the percentage of teens have sex between 1991 and 2005. They conveniently forgot to note that the decline ended in 2001. Funny that. The only reason we're being alerted to the flat-lining is the Washington Post asked the Center for Disease Control and Preventation to reanalyze the data. Thanks WaPo.
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And yet the House is still funding abstinence "to win Republican support for the annual health and education funding bill."
Would it be to perverse to say amen?
When will these morons learn that scare tactics don't work? They don't work for keeping kids from using drugs, they certainly don't work for keeping them from having the sex. Open and honest is the only way to reach kids and teens. When the message is prefaced with an honest assessment of the risks involved with various behaviors kids tend to take it far more seriously, than a big, don't do it or bad things will happen!!!
Of course it helps a lot if we actually help them to develop the self-confidence they need to make reasonable decisions and trust them to make them. Overblown scare tactics are easy for them to disprove. When they know your full of crap, the whole message is thrown out. When they get an honest assessment, they have a much harder time discounting the message. The more information they're given the far easier it becomes to make informed decisions. It really shouldn't take a study to figure that one out, common sense should make that pretty clear. . .
While I'm against abstinence only sex ed, I am in favor of teaching abstinence as an option (and I would even go as far as to say the preferred one), along with everything else.
The AbsOnly is a religion-based political public policy. The 'targets' for reduction are unintended pregnancy and STDs. Clinton had to drop a Surgeon General because she suggested that teaching the harmlessness of masturbation was a tool to hit the billseye.
The AbsOnly program really does work- sort of. The Round Rock School Dist. "broke" an "oral sex club" in their Middle School.
You can fool politicians, postulants, priests, prelates & popes about sex easier than you can fool teenagers. These primates avoided pregnancy and their suburban setting lucked out on the STDs.
Joe Biden says:
Oh, I believe him.