Posted on Evans Liberal Politics, May 19, 2010, with commentary by Paul Evans.
Here we examine sex education, concentrating on "abstinence-only" sex education, and examining programs, funding in the new health care bill, and such evaluators as the teen pregnancy rate. We start from a Christian and also a scientific perspective, and try to evaluate the evidence fairly and objectively. The fact that I am a strong Christian yet was trained as a scientist gives me the tools to look at both sides of the debate fairly.
More after the break.
From the Wikipedia article on abstinence only sex education:
Abstinence-only sex education is a form of sex education that emphasizes abstinence from sex, and often excludes many other types of sexual and reproductive health education, particularly regarding birth control and safe sex. This type of sex education promotes sexual abstinence until marriage and avoids discussion of use of contraceptives.
Comprehensive sex education covers the use of contraceptives as well as abstinence. Proponents of abstinence-only education argue that comprehensive education encourages premarital sexual activity, while critics argue that abstinence-only education constitutes religious interference in education, distorts information about contraceptive methods, and does not provide adequate information to protect the health of youths.
Proponents of abstinence-only sex education argue that this approach is superior to comprehensive sex education because it emphasizes the teaching of morality that limits sex to that within the bounds of marriage, and that sex before marriage and at a young age has heavy physical and emotional costs. [1] They suggest that comprehensive sex education encourages premarital sexual activity among teenagers, which should be discouraged in an era when HIV and other incurable sexually transmitted infections are widespread and when teen pregnancy is an ongoing concern.
Opponents and critics, which include prominent professional associations in the fields of medicine, public health, adolescent health, and psychology, argue that such programs fail to provide adequate information to protect the health of adolescents. Some critics also argue that such programs verge on religious interference in secular education. Opponents of abstinence-only education dispute the claim that comprehensive sex education encourages teens to have premarital sex. [2] The idea that sexual intercourse should only occur within marriage also has serious implications for people for whom marriage is not valued or desired, or is unavailable as an option, particularly homosexuals living in places where same-sex marriage is not legal or socially acceptable. Abstinence-only sex education has also been accused of distorting information about contraceptives, including only revealing failure rates associated with their use, and ignoring discussion of their benefits.
Paul Evans: This topic took on special significance when Obama's health care reform bill included $250 million over five years for state programs teaching abstinence only sex education. I don't quite see how you can even say you're teaching a program in sex education when there is nothing in the program for teenagers about safe sex, how to use a condom, avoiding STD's or anything like that. I DO understand the moral questions involved, the sanctity of marriage.
The Bible, Context and Interpretation
Evans Liberal Politics is for equal or near equal rights for homosexuals. On that topic we feel that a citizen of the United States deserves to have the right to inherit, or visit their partner in a hospital, and yes, to be parents -- basic things like that which in most states gays and lesbians do not have a right to. Give homosexuals civil unions, or give them marriage, but give them equal protection under the law: they are citizens of the United States too.
As a Christian man, I feel people's concerns about the sanctity of marriage. I do NOT however understand the hatred of gays and lesbians. And I don't care if the Bible talks pejoratively about homosexuality. To me, as with many liberal Christian theologians, the Old Testament shoud be viewed as wonderful testimony of God's love, but not anything near literally true. So I don't hold with socially right wing positions which are "backed up" in the Bible. The Old Testament was originally the oral history of the Jewish people, and it was handed down orally for 800 years before it was ever put down in writing. There is plenty of reason to believe it is more of a cultural and historical document, if divinely inspired, than a literally true one.
Just as one example, in Genesis, each day ends with "morning came and evening came, an #th day." But the sun and moon were not created until the third day. So what's all this talk about morning and evening coming on days one and two? The Creation story seems to me a wonderful and poetic story, and one which, for its time (or insofar as the people of that time were capable of understanding such an event as the creation of the world), had quite a lot of general accuracy. The science of that time was practically nonexistent. But it just goes against common sense to think that the Genesis creation story and many other passages in the Old Testament are literally true. Morning and evening before there was a sun???
The earliest parts of the Bible were written down some 3,500 years ago. However many passages are traceable to pagan myths which had previously existed in Mesopotamia. Knowing that, and being trained as a scientist (geologist) as I am, it is hard to believe that it could literally be the exact word of God. God speaks to each of us, if only we are ready to listen. But the different writers of the Bible were inspired in different ways by God, and were of course capable of understanding such spiritual communications only with the understanding of their time. They could not know of fossils or radioactive dating, and the extent to which God could be heard by them had a lot to do with the cultural level and understanding of the times they lived in.
Do not think that someone who believes in science cannot be a Christian either. Ninety percent of astronomers believe in God.
I love the Bible, but I am not a slave to it. It is far more my personal relationship with the Holy Spirit and God which matters to me, not words put down on paper. And I respectfully disagree with those who would base government and law upon passages in the Bible. I will be called a secularist because of this, but I do not think the framers of the consitution thought the United States should be run as a theocracy, much less a Bible based one.... and yet I consider myelf a very Christian man.
Context and interpretation are everything in reading. One cannot read a given word without understanding it in terms of other words and knowledge you already have about that word. And isolated Bible passages lack clarity without an understanding of the whole, it's history, it's cultural context and and its context in terms of what you already know about what you are reading. To speak of literal truth is an astonishing oversimplification, and leads to gross errors in understanding. To say, "the more I know, the less I understand" is a glib truism these days, but still, the more you understand, the more you are capable of understanding. That's why when I read the editorials and pronouncements of Tea Party people, I cannot help but be dismayed by the basic lack of understanding I see. I GET the basic positions, but I usually find them to be terrible oversimplifications which strongly point to ignorance of the state of government in modern times, and sometimes, just simple ignorance and parroting of what their heroes on Fox news have been peddling.
The Old Testament was written down at different times in Jewish history. It is said that the Pentateuch (the first five Books of the Bible) was written down at the direct command of God about 1,500 B.C. However the Bible had been a part of a pastoral society's oral tradition for 800 years before it had ever been written down. I am not going to argue with anyone about the literal truth of the Bible, I am simply stating my own position on this. I am living testimony to the fact that one can indeed be both progressive and Christian.
I am not alone in my positions over the literal truth of the Bible either. A lot of Christians believe that the Bible could not be literally true, including former President Bush. Even the Catholic Church no longer swears by the literal truth of the Bible. Look, God gave you a brain people, I suggest that reading practices which do not involve evaluation of context and interpretation are a poor way to read. In fact I would assert that reading is impossible without personal interpretation of what is read. Words and phrases and sentences are necessarily interpreted on the basis of other prior knowledge about their meaning that we have or acquire. One cannot read a given sentence without understanding the context of what you are reading and without interpreting it with your mind and its experiences. Not that the Bible isn't inspired by God, but is sure isn't all literally true. IMHO.
The Old Testament has a LOT of passages which teach sex as only between a man and a woman in a marriage and basically, just for the purpose of procreation. Any desire involved is looked at as sinful and even Satanically inspired, at least that's the way some fundamentalists teach it. I don't buy any of that at all. To the extent that the Bible says enjoying sex is sinful, the Bible is simply a representation of an ancient nomadic people's view on sexuality, and I'm having none of it. If you don't like that, sorry but I make no apology.
OK, to get back to the point of this article, abstinence-only sex education.... Here are some good resources I have found around the web which may help you to see that the teaching about sex (or actually, NOT teaching about sex), in such programs, is basically misguided and is in fact a failure and the wrong way to proceed. I know this is a big deal for fundamentalists. I respectfully disagree, and this is still a free country.
See Thanks Health Bill for the $250 Million Back to Abstinence-Only Education, AlterNet, March 30, 2010, by Ellen Friedrichs, excerpt quoted verbatim:
No, not to real health care reform–though that would have been nice– but to the end of abstinence-only-until-heterosexual-marriage education.
This is the federally funded program that since 1996 has been teaching kids in schools across the country that the only way to avoid teen pregnancy, STDs and emotional ruin, is to just say no to any sex that isn’t maritally sanctioned. To further this goal, programs were barred from discussing everything from birth control and condoms to abortions and non-hetero sexual orientations–except to stress the dangers of such things.
Countless studies, not to mention our recent rise in teen pregnancies and STDs, demonstrated that this tactic didn’t work. In light of this mounting evidence of failure, the number of states accepting abstinence funding had been steadily decreasing over the past few years. Another sign that abstinence was on it’s way out? The Obama administration cut federal funding for such programs, set to go into effect September 2010.
Looks like things have changed.
Within the thousands of pages that make up the health bill, is nestled a $50 million a year line item for, yes, those very abstinence-only programs.
As the Washington Post reports,
"The bill restores $250 million over five years for states to sponsor programs aimed at preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases by focusing exclusively on encouraging children and adolescents to avoid sex. The funding provides at least a partial reprieve for the approach, which faced losing all federal support under President Obama’s first two budgets."
I guess that parents across the country can breath a sign of relief that their teens won’t be learning about condoms and birth control, because apparently, despite legitimate science proving otherwise, these things don’t work. And the unplanned pregnancy option that isn’t parenting or adoption? Why would a country with a teen pregnancy rate twice as high as Canada’s, and seven times as high as the Netherlands need to tell teens about that?
See Unprotected Sex: Abstinence Education's Main Accomplishment, AlterNet, July 2, 2009, by Marie Cocco, excerpt quoted verbatim:
July 2, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- It hardly seems worth mentioning that the search for role models of sexual rectitude has gone pretty badly lately. That famous poster of Farrah Fawcett -- her golden locks tumbling around her shoulders and her gleaming smile offering a girl-next-door counterpoint to the suggestiveness of her red swimsuit -- sure makes it look as though, by comparison, the 1970s were an era of wholesomeness. They weren't.
It was about then that social conservatives -- fed up with sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, divorce, Roe v. Wade, women surging into the work force and who knows what else -- began organizing politically to stamp out all this threatening change. They failed. But eventually they did succeed in imposing their prescription -- abstinence-only sex education that studies have repeatedly shown doesn't work -- on the one group of sexually active people most in need of hard information and least likely to respond to harangues: teenagers.
It is widely known that teenage birth and pregnancy rates, which dropped dramatically between 1991 and 2005, are now climbing. By tracking changes in reported contraceptive use among sexually active high-school students, researchers at Columbia University and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies sexual health, have identified as the leading culprit a drop in the use of birth control -- specifically condoms. The team studied trends in teen sexual activity and contraceptive use between 1991 and 2007. During most of this period, the level of sexual activity reported by teenagers in routine surveys overseen by the Centers for Disease Control remained largely unchanged. But during a crucial period -- identified in the study as between 1991 and 2003 -- the use of condoms rose dramatically, climbing from 46.2 percent in 1991 to 63.0 percent in 2003. Then a perceptible decline in the use of condoms began, with 61.5 percent of students reporting condom use in 2007. "These behavioral trends are consistent with the 2006 and 2007 increases in the teen birth rate," the study published in the July issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health says. "They may well portend further increases in 2008."
The decline in contraceptive use may cheer those who have promoted faith-inspired school curriculums that refuse to even mention birth control and, in some cases, specifically emphasize that condoms can fail. True enough.
But now we have sad and clear evidence that political foolishness among adults is leading to foolish and harmful behavior among kids. Who could reasonably want more teen pregnancies, more abortions among teenagers, more unmarried mothers, more babies born with greater health risks and with the sorely limited economic prospects that burden the children of young, single mothers? No one would dare promote such a policy. Yet these are the results of our recent national sex-education policy, which was based on religious faith, not science, and put political gamesmanship ahead of public health.
See Rise in teenage pregnancy rate spurs new debate on arresting it, The Washington Post, January 26, 2010, by Rob Stein.
See Mississippi: More Abstinence Education Proposed for the State With the Highest Teen Pregnancy Rates, AlterNet, March 3, 2010, by Ellen Friedrichs.
See Bristol Palin Speaks the Truth on Fox: Abstinence 'Is Not Realistic at All', AlterNet, February 2, 2009, by Ali Frick, excerpt quoted verbatim:
In 2006, as a gubernatorial candidate, Sarah Palin filled out a questionnaire emphasizing her support for abstinence education. She wrote that "the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support." Alaska does not require sex ed to be taught in schools; Anchorage schools teach "Abstinence Plus," which emphasizes abstaining from sex.
Palin's views came under fire when it was revealed that her then-17-year-old daughter Bristol was pregnant. In her first public interview, Bristol told Fox News' chief Palin cheerleader Greta Van Susteren last night that abstinence is "not realistic at all".
Of course, now, Mummy Dearest has got her hooks into Bristol and she is a touring spokesperson for abstinence, charging $30,000 for one of her talks on abstinence. She had it right when she spoke the truth on Fox. For teenagers, abstinence is not a terribly realistic goal. It is an attempt to impose fundamentalist Christian morality on all of society. And I doubt that two teenagers in a car on a Friday night are thinking all that much about what actions constitute Christian morality. Thus the recent increase in teen pregnancy rates. ~ Paul Evans
See Michelle Gillett Abstinence-only is only a failure, The Berkshire Eagle quoted on All Business, May 17, 2010, by Michelle Gillett.
My own position as a dedicated Christian, in the final analysis, resembles that of Goshin over at DebatePolitics.com:
Probably the best results will be had when you teach both abstinence, as the preferred solution to teen sex and STDs, and the use of protection as the "backup plan", as in "if despite everything we've told you about how you ought to wait, you decide to do this anyway, here's how you put a condom on a cucumber..."
See Impacts of Four Title V, Section 510 Abstinence Education Programs,Final Report, Department of Health and Human Services, April, 2007, by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.
For an opposing view and study, see Study: Teaching Abstinence Works Better Than Sex Ed, AOL.com, February 2, 2010, by Mara Gay.
Would YOU place much credence in the fair-mindedness of conclusions coming out of a conservatively owned entity such as AOL, or for example on of Rupert Murdoch's mouthpieces such as Fox News? I approached the question of abstinence only (sex) education without any preconceptions, but AOL, FOX News and Rupert Murdoch's news outlets START OUT from a religious position which has already begun by their being in favor of this kind of so-called sex education. Abstinence only sex education in reality is not true sex education at all. That is to say, if most scientific studies I had found on the web proved the efficacy of abstinence only sex education, Evans Liberal Politics would have come out in support of it. That simply isn't the case.
See What's wrong with abstinence education?, American Journal of Health Studies, Summer, 2004, excerpt quoted verbatim:
To summarize the results of the abstinence education research, there are some published evaluations which show that certain abstinence education programs have produced positive behavioral results. For the most part, however, there is little evidence that abstinence education programs, especially some of the more popular programs for which the a-h definition was designed, help young people postpone sexual involvement or reduce sexual risk-taking behavior.