The Blowfish Blog

No Sex Please, We’re Democrats

Let’s have a little exercise in cognitive dissonance.

A recent study commissioned by Congress—just one of many—shows that abstinence-only sex education is completely ineffective in either preventing or delaying sex among teenagers.

A new study published in the American Journal of Sociology shows that, among older teenagers at any rate (those 16 and older), sex doesn’t actually do any harm to their mental health. (Via Feministing—thanks, ladies!)

And yet a House subcommittee just voted, not only to continue funding abstinence-only sex education, but to increase funding for it by $27.8 million.

Let’s go over that in regular English, shall we?

Abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work. It doesn’t do what it sets out to do—keep teenagers from having sex.

And the goal of abstinence-only sex ed—keeping teenagers from having sex—isn’t a particularly useful one. Even if it did what it set out to do, it wouldn’t help anybody.

But we’re going to keep spending money on it anyway. In fact, we’re going to spend even more.

Why?

Well, according to much of the analysis I’ve read, the increase in funding involves a complicated deal to get other domestic programs funded. And I’m sure that’s true.

But I think there’s something else going on as well.

I think that politicians are afraid of seeming to endorse teenage sex. Especially in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal. Nobody wants to seem like they’re saying, “Teenage sex? Sure! No problem!” When it comes to teenage sex, nobody wants to seem like a callous libertine—or worse, like a chickenhawk pervert.

What this reminds me of, unfortunately, is our laws and policies on sex offenders.

According to Benjamin Radford of the Skeptical Inquirer, laws and restrictions on convicted sex offenders have pretty much nothing to do with who actually commits sex crimes and how. An immense amount of commonly-repeated information on sex offenders turns out to be mis-information—ranging from how many children are approached by online predators, to how many sex offenders repeat their crimes. And as a result, funding goes to preventing the kinds of crimes against children that are relatively rare (sexual assault by strangers), instead of the ones that are all too common (abuse by parents, family, friends of the family, and clergy).

But, as Radford’s article points out, “Nobody really wants to go on the record saying, ‘It turns out this really isn’t a big problem.’”

And I think the exact same thing is going on with abstinence-only sex education. Very few people—and even fewer politicians—are willing to look at teenage sex and say in public, “It turns out this really isn’t a big problem.” Very few politicians are willing to say, “We have bigger issues to worry about than 16-year-olds having sex.” Very, very, very few politicians are willing to say, “You know, I had sex when I was 16, and it didn’t do me any harm.”

(BTW, I’d like to go on the record right here as saying, “I had sex when I was 16, and it didn’t do me any harm.”)

So when it comes time to try to get a domestic spending bill passed, and the negotiations and compromises and back-room deals are being made, a sane sex-education program is the first thing to go. Very few politicians are willing to make it their issue and take a stand on it. They might vote to drop the abstinence-only programs if everyone else did it too—but when it comes time to make a deal, a sex-ed policy that’s based in reality is what gets dumped.

And you wanna know the really crazy part? Abstinence-only sex ed programs aren’t just ineffective. They’re actually harmful. They provide false, misleading, and distorted information to teenagers about their sexuality and their bodies, from how people get pregnant to how HIV is spread.

In other words, in order to preserve the appearance of protecting teenagers, Congress is willing to sell them out and fund a program that actually harms them.

Congress: Making our children safer, one empty gesture at a time.

To take action on this issue, visit the Advocates for Youth website.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2007. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, 14 June 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.