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Georgie’s other war
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I must admit that I am amazed by George W. Bush’s ability
to multi-task. He can fight a war on (for) drugs, on (non-Saudi and
non-Israeli) terrorism, on non-white immigration, on civil
liberties, on poor people, on the English language, and, yes, even
on sex. Conservatives alike have expressed their relief to finally
have a pro-abstinence president: “You cannot begin to
describe how immensely helpful it has been to have a president who
backs the abstinence cause,” says Richard Ross, a spokesman
for True Love Waits.
It was actually a Democrat, Bill Clinton, who signed the act
that called for the expansion of abstinence-only education (he also
signed the nefariously retrogressive Welfare Reform Bill), but it
wasn’t until George W. was selected by those happy-go-lucky
Supreme Court justices to be president that schools began taking
the initiative. This year the U.S. government spent $117 million to
reward schools that pushed abstinence-only “sex
education”, trying to keep in line with the Republican notion
of “Family Values”. (It should be noted that two of the
most zealous proponents of ‘family values.’ Newt
Gingrich and Pat Robertson, are themselves fond of extramarital sex
and prostitutes, respectively). The aptly named, faith-based
abstinence group, Silver Ring Thing (are they serious?), alone
received a grant of $700,000 from the government to expand its
promotion of abstinence throughout the country.
Bush and others advocate abstinence as the only 100 percent
reliable preventative for pregnancy and, for all intents and
purposes, it is. However, while teen pregnancy is a concern, it
only serves as a vehicle for religious-moral absolutism. Moreover,
the idea of premarital abstinence is premised on the false
presumption that teenagers aren’t intellectually, physically,
or emotionally ready for sex, so it’s therefore unnecessary
to educate them about contraception; teenagers should just avoid
sex, even discourse, altogether. Bush also believes that minors
should not be exempt from the death penalty (our country in fact is
the only developed country that still sentences minors to death).
In other words, minors can make adult criminal decisions, just not
decisions concerning sex.
Teenagers go through confusing transitions, including an
accelerated sex drive, during their high school years, so when they
are told to ignore their sexual tendencies, they are left even more
confused and inclined to experiment (without protection). Sex is
very natural and very healthy, when practiced intelligently.
“Researchers at the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive
health think-tank, found in their comparison of teenage pregnancy
rates between five developed countries that there was no relation
between the amount of sexual activity and frequency of
pregnancies” according to the BBC. “Young people in
Sweden, which had the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy, are more
sexually active than their U.S. counterparts, but the rate of
teenage pregnancy is nearly four times lower.” The United
States has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy, behind
Russia, and is coincidentally the only developed country that tends
to avoid the subject of sex in schools.
Abstinence-only programs teach teenagers to view single parents
and homosexual couples as unnatural, because they are told that,
morally, only (legally) married people should be having sex. As
single and gay-parent households multiply, which they are, this
unfounded perception could have dangerous implications.
Abstinence is a choice, not a moral obligation, and its
ineffectiveness (like that of Bush’s), if not counter
productivity, at curbing teen pregnancy rates and creating a
general understanding of sex has become increasingly clear.
Justin Hurst
Columnist
The Arbiter