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The Obama Watch
Abstinence Phobia
Count on President-elect Barack Obama's vow to trim unnecessary spending from the federal budget to include gutting abstinence-until-marriage programs in public schools. Yes, legislative pork abounds (the government's $4 billion foray into the house-flipping business, to name one), but abstinence funding will be deemed more worthy of the axe. That's because the programs invade the domain of abortion advocacy groups, one of Obama's core constituencies.
Abstinence education block grants are a microbe on the federal budget juggernaut -- just $50 million per year divided between participating states. School districts must use the funds to teach students that abstinence is the "expected standard for all school age children" and that a "mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity." Two generations ago, that would have been called common sense. Today, it's called a radical right-wing agenda.
That the funds are a pin drop compared with contraception-based sex education spending hasn't stopped liberal members of Congress from waging a holy war against it. Rep. Henry Waxman of California (soon to be chairman of the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce) has led the charge. In 2004, Waxman directed his staff to write a report attempting to discredit the content of abstinence education programs. More recently, he conducted hearings in the House Oversight Committee that were stacked with supporters of a comprehensive sex-ed approach.
Congressional liberals have been unable to secure enough support to end funding outright. Since taking control of Congress in 2007, Democrats have failed to stop several reauthorizations of the block grants. To judge by their rhetoric, abstinence education opponents think teens are dying in the gutters as a result of the program. Yet they haven't mounted an effective effort to eliminate the funding.
Look for that to end next year. With hefty majorities in both chambers and a sympathetic president in the White House, federal dollars for abstinence could be a thing of the past by mid-2009, when the current authorization period ends. Bet on this: Obama will push for it.
The president-elect tended to put his foot in his mouth whenever cultural issues cropped up during the general election campaign, and sex education was no exception. But he didn't shy away from voicing his support, either. "I've got two daughters: nine years old and six years old," Obama said at a Pennsylvania rally in March. "I'm going to teach them first of all about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby, I don't want them punished with an STD at the age of 16."
At a Planned Parenthood fundraiser last year, Obama pledged to eliminate abstinence-until-marriage education programs. He said that sex education for kindergarteners "is the right thing to do," then qualified the statement with the terms "age-appropriate" and "science-based."
In the Senate, he co-sponsored the Prevention First Act, which would appropriate $700 million for contraception-based sex education programs each year. That pales in comparison to the abstinence block grants, but it would do much to feed abortion advocacy groups and their curricula in public schools. Since the election, Obama has taken official action to cement his commitment to this cause, too. He hired Ellen Moran, executive director of the pro-abortion Emily's List, as his White House communications director.
Opponents of abstinence-until-marriage will replace the block grants with more funding for so-called "abstinence-plus" programs that encourage students to abstain from sex while instructing them in contraception techniques, alternative sexual lifestyles, and the like. But let's be frank. Given a choice between unfettered sex (provided a condom is used) and abstinence, hormone-driven teens will almost always choose the latter. That's why a mixed approach to sex-ed doesn't work. Encouraging the kiddos to abstain from sex while providing them with every tool and reason to engage in sex does not a successful program make. Public schools don't encourage teens to shoot up heroin as long as they use clean needles (at least not officially). Neither should they encourage teens to be sexually promiscuous as long as protection is used.
Research also indicates that abstinence-plus programs focus far more on the plus than the abstinence. A study by the Heritage Foundation found that on average, abstinence-plus curricula devoted "only 4.7 percent of their page content to the topic of abstinence and zero percent to healthy relationships and marriage." In contrast, the primary focus was "on encouraging young people to use contraception."
Obama and his congressional allies might wait a few months before erasing the funding, but the move will come eventually. It will be part of a multi-pronged approach to roll back the Bush administration's cultural policies and will probably be done under the guise of cutting wasteful government spending. Ironic in an age of trillion dollar bailouts.
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dgdc| 12.8.08 @ 6:55AM
"I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,"
frost| 12.8.08 @ 7:40AM
$50-million to combat hormones? Pffffft...
Bob| 12.8.08 @ 10:17AM
Here is another "anti-intelligent" blog. The whole concept of a public program is that it gets results for the money invested. So the issue is not of religious right or secular reasoning, it is of results. The studies that I've seen say that the abstinence only programs do not provide results. Why run programs that don't work unless you are doing it for religious reasons?
Your argument is again an indication of the so-con influence having a negative influence on the Republican party. Policy that voters pay for should deliver results. If it does not, it should be stopped. If it is only a religious argument, it should be propounded only by churches.
In the case of teen sex or abortion, we should be looking for how to reduce these things irregardless of political frame of the method.
Here's a summary the Washington post did of the research:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/13/AR2007041301003.html
tony| 12.8.08 @ 10:28AM
Bob:
Putting aside your use of a non-word (irregardless), perhaps the reason abstinence programs have less than stellar results is the mixed messages young people receive today from mass media and government. The attitude seems to be if it feels good, do it.
I am 42 years old. Why is it that when I was in high school, it was rare to have a classmate pregnant? Could it be because the culture wasn't yet degraded? I don't think it's because we were smarter. We simply weren't exposed to all the crap that's out there now. That's progressivism for you.
My question to you is if abstinence isn't the answer, and since everyone is aware of the availability of birth control and condoms, then what do you propose?
Bob| 12.8.08 @ 10:53AM
"Irregardless" is a word, but the better word is obviously "regardless".
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irregardless
The culture clearly has become coarser over the years as the divorce rate has increased, the increase in number of single parents, the need for both parents to work, and the stimulus of cable and the internet. My children are about your age and in our neighborhood the pregnancy rate was quite high when they were in high school.
To answer your question, I am after results. I believe the solutions must be local tied to the culture, socio-economic levels, and depth of the problem in each community. If I were going to provide a national program, I'd give funds based on results. There may well be some communities, especially in the bible belt, where abstinence only programs work. If so, fund them. There may be some areas when detailed sex education works. If so, fund them. I have absolutely no problem with abstinence education as part of the solution. I do have a problem with mandated abstinence only funding.
One of the great things about our country is our ability to innovate at the local level. We should be stimulating innovation to solve our problems, not taking a "big brother" approach to community and family issues.
Michael Roush| 12.8.08 @ 10:57AM
Why shouldn't funding for abstinence only education be cut when:
1. the Bush Administration has consistently distorted the scientific evidence about what works in sex education.
2. administration officials have never acknowledged that abstinence-only programs have not been proven to reduce sexual activity, teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease.
3. HHS has changed performance measures for abstinence-only education to make the programs appear successful, censored information on effective sex education programs, and appointed to a key panel an abstinence-only proponent with dubious credentials.
Obama Rules| 12.8.08 @ 11:08AM
Abstinence really worked in the Palin household. Preach not...
Jeremiah| 12.8.08 @ 11:38AM
I believe that children should be taught that waiting to have sex is best, and they should be taught that consequences for teenage pregnancy are extremely negative for both child and mother. (They include health and psychological problems for the child; developmental and psychological problems as well as economic and educational disadvantages for the mother.)
There is good, hard, sociological evidence about this issue that can be taught, just as we teach civics and history.
However, we must never believe that teenage pregnancy is the result of sex education. There is nothing more stupid than falling for this logical fallacy (post hoc ergo propter hoc).
Nature or the universe or God or whatever hath decreed it: teenagers want to have sex. They want to have sex more than they want to go to Sunday school, even if they're the most pious kids on earth.
Conservatives: your teenagers want to have sex. They may sign pledges and raise their hands and church and proclaim themselves free from sin.
I promise you: their devotion to the dark gods that have found them now is more powerful than your fantasies of contriving the perfect abstinence only educational program will ever be.
What to do? Is all lost?
No. Here's what you do:
1. Teach the consequences of teenage pregnancy, as outlined above.
2. Target girls for specialized education in this issue.
3. Keep them BUSY. Girls especially. Want you girls to keep from being pregnant? Get them on a sports team, in a science club -- anything that keeps their hands busy (you know the old saying) and builds their self-esteem.
4. Work for doubling, tripling, quadrupling the tax and spend liberal programs in your local school district. Buy new instruments for the school orchestra, fully fund the arts program, get money for educational trips abroad or to the nation's capital.
Sunday school won't do it alone. The figures are in. Girls of conservative evangelical families are statistically as likely to get pregnant while still in high school as ANY other demographic.
Keep them busy, and you'll keep them out of the back seats of cars.
karl| 12.8.08 @ 11:44AM
the war on sex is about as helpful as the war on drugs. blowjobs and bong-rips for jesus!
tony| 12.8.08 @ 12:09PM
Obamarules:
What is up with the left's pathetic obsession with the Palin household? Perhaps her daughter actually wanted to get pregnant. Perhaps not. But how about a little of that open-minded compassion liberals are always telling us about?
Bob:
While "irregardless" may be in the dictionary, it is listed as "incorrect" or "nonstandard." It's just poor English. As for the rest, you make some good points, but you must have lived in a really horny neighborhood.
Michael:
Again, the problem is mixed messages. There was a time before the easy availability of contraception that teen pregnancy rates were low. I just wonder if this is a mere coincidence.
Jeremiah| 12.8.08 @ 12:24PM
tony --
There's a danger of looking back at the time "before the easy availability of contraception" when teen pregnancy rates were low and identifying some attribute of that time as the cause of those low rates.
Let's look back at pre-60s America as the time you allude to.
In the 40s and 50s, there was more emphasis on morality and abstinence not only in how children were taught but in the rules adults held themselves to. But we have no reason to believe that emphasis on "rules" was what kept those pregnancy rates as low as (supposedly) they were.
In fact, we find now that abstinence only education and "rules" based education is not working as well as some other approaches.
More likely, in those days young people spent less time unsupervised by adults. People didn't need to work as much. Teachers and other adults spent more time with young people. Old people were more likely to live with families rather than in the holding facilities we encase them in now. Instead of watching television, young people talked with grown ups for longer periods or time, or read.
Go ahead and wag your finger in their faces.
It wont' work, unless a lot of other things are going right.
Katelyn| 12.8.08 @ 12:26PM
Abstinence is for ugly people. Face it--sex is enjoyable and healthy!
tony| 12.8.08 @ 12:40PM
Jeremiah:
Who said anything about wagging a finger in someone's face?
Much of what you said about the past is right. I am not advocating a return to the 50's. That's clearly not possible. But let's learn from what has worked in the past and update it to modern times.
tony| 12.8.08 @ 12:42PM
Katelyn:
Sex is enjoyable and healthy, but are you saying teenagers should be having sex?
Katelyn| 12.8.08 @ 12:52PM
I am saying that each person can make that determination based on his/her level of maturity. Someone may be ready for a sexual relationship in their teenage years, and prepared to take responsibility and face the consequences. Not all teenage sex ends in disease and preganancy. I think most of us had sexual relationships before marrige that did end, but we look back at them as just one of life's experiences.
hdn| 12.8.08 @ 1:17PM
yes teenagers should be having sex. One of the biggest regrets of my life is waiting till I was thirty and married to have some fun. I should never have listened to "moral authorities." By evolution or design clearly people should be having consensual sex as early and ofter as possible
Shooter| 12.8.08 @ 1:25PM
Abstinence or the lack thereof is no more the business of the Nanny State than is smoking, transfats, helmet laws, or controlling the amount of water we are permitted to use when flushing our toilets (1.6gals).
Eliminate the program and the thousands like it.
Stan Redmond| 12.8.08 @ 1:33PM
I find it ironic that the Obama and a few Bush bashers here are calling for funding cuts or elimination for a program that don't [sic] work. While I am all for cutting government waste and am all for a small government, your arguments lack consistency. Why, when a Bush policy with a relatively TINY budget (absitinence only), is shown not to work it must be eliminated and / or cut? YET the miserable and expensive failures carried on by liberal politicians like public education must always demand an INCREASE of funding which politicians admit are failures. Year after year I hear our schools are failing from the very same politicians that want MORE money for schools and welfare programs while at the same time decry abstinence only education be eliminated. It would be rhetorical to ask why that is.
What we really need to do is allow the morality choices to go UNREWARDED. STOP supporting and glorifying single teen motherhood at public schools for one. Stop the public funds to support children and families people can't afford. Stop the welfare. We are furious about bailing out, hence rewarding, failed banking institutions and automobile factories. Why should they change their behavious and practices that fail when Uncle Sam will just write them a check. We ought to be furious bailing out and rewarding individuals who make bad decisions as well. Painful? Yes, and we have seen these social programs for the failures they are and they need to stop.
Jeremiah| 12.8.08 @ 2:10PM
Stan-
re: "stop the welfare"
One of the oddest illusions propounded on conservative sites like this is the idea that there are still whole sub-classes of people (usually not complected like the Bush twins or Bristol Palin) getting pregant as teenagers and going on welfare.
Maybe if you guys READ newspapers the newspapers you hate so much you'd know that welfare programs of the kind you're so terrified of a largely a phenomenon of the past. States have individual programs offering differing levels of support, but aid is short lived.
There is no "welfare" as it existed in the 70s and 80s.
As a tax and spend liberal (proud and free), I am forced to admit on this issue conservatives were right. The federal welfare programs were bad for recipients and their communities. (They were not, however, a significant waste of tax dollars in my view, since the amounts were so small.)
Social programs on behalf of pregnant teen mothers are often all that stands in the way of their children growing up to get pregnant as teens. I'd hold on to the measley level of funding granted those kinds of programs, no matter what.
Dai Alanye| 12.8.08 @ 2:14PM
There are many foolish statements from the pro-teenage-sex people among these postings, but I think I'll pick out this one as one of the more thoughtless:
"I am saying that each person can make that determination based on his/her level of maturity."
Isn't the exact problem that teen-agers *don't* have maturity? Are they not the ones most susceptible to peer pressure, to the continual advertising and propaganda favoring sexual activity, and the least in control of hormonal urges?
It's the job of responsible parents to counter these influences to whatever extent possible. On the other hand, programs that teach sexual techniques (abstinence plus) do little beyond lending official approval to the theoretically illicit acts.
Back in the days when youths could leave school and work at fourteen, and when responsibility rather than license was encouraged on all sides, young people grew up earlier, and we didn't have the problems we do today. Instead we now encourage juvenility well into what used to be considered adulthood.
Whether abstinence-only programs work is an arguable matter, but I wouldn't simply pick my favorite analysis out of blind faith in the Washington Post. On the other hand, we know that plenty of other formal social programs are failures, including DARE and Head Start, despite the expenditure of tons of money and oceans of sincere effort. It shouldn't surprise us if any particular government social program does little good.
tony| 12.8.08 @ 2:28PM
Katelyn:
Are you by any chance a teenager yourself, because you sure sound like one.
I wonder if you could possibly find me a teenager who is willing to admit that he or she is immature and not capable of making adult decisions. It is precisely because teenagers are in general immature and incapable of recognizing this fact that we as adults need to maintain a certain level of control over their activities. Of course, teenagers and kids of all ages need to make mistakes and learn from them, but not necessarily these kinds of mistakes.
Shooter:
You're confusing programs designed to promote abstinence as opposed to government prohibitions on certain activities. No one is suggesting that we outlaw teen sex. Who the hell is going to enforce that?
Bob| 12.8.08 @ 3:06PM
Dai -- the answer is easy. If public funds are used for a program, the program must work or the funds should be cut. Most analyses I've seen say that the abstinence only program does not work but Head Start does in specific types of communities. The problem with Head Start is that if it is not followed up by a reasonable public school education program, the benefits eventually are erased. When it is followed up with good schooling, it works really well. I haven't seen any data that shows that DARE works.
You say that parents should be there. That would be great except that the divorce rate is over 50% and the percentage of families where both parents have to work is high. Many lower socio-economic families have parents working multiple jobs. If parents are not there because they have to eat and put a roof over their heads, then where will the kids learn these things? I've got an idea -- why don't you go to a disadvantaged community and teach abstinence only....
Jeremiah| 12.8.08 @ 5:15PM
Sometimes I think conservatives think the way they do because they grew up watching The Waltons and Little House and (understandably) wish they lived in those insular relatively safe little worlds.
Pa and Ma never had to worry that little Laura would make friends with an internet predator, nor was their television to pump 24 hours of junk into their leaky but loving little cabin on the prairie.
It would be nice. But I'm not so sure that teaching "traditional values" was what made the world safer for children and teenagers decades ago. I think it was more direct involvement of adults in young people's lives.
And there's the rub. There's the worm in the capitalist apple, because while week after week, month after month, you all gather here to cheer and celebrate the glories of a consumerist late-capitalist society, in which the value of a thing is inseparable from the price it will bear on the open market -- now, now you slow down and hold up and start thinking -- when it comes to the health and well being of your daughters and children -- maybe this isn't the best way.
Maybe there's a better way to organize society, so the shopping mall is NOT the cathedral, and buying and selling does not account for all that is holy, and there is something else to be done in the world than exploit labor: now and only know does it become possible to imagine that if children and adults could spend more easy and extended time together, maybe Britney Spears and Marilyn Manson and God knows who else wouldn't be the primary spiritual advisors and sex educators of our children. Because careful now. If you come this far, you're a socialist.
Jermiah| 12.8.08 @ 5:17PM
The two best symbols of capitalism:
Madonna and Las Vegas. If it feels good, do it.
Stan Redmond| 12.8.08 @ 7:02PM
re: Jermiah [sic]
What planet are you on? There's no subclass of welfare dependents? Visit any urban center in a large liberal controlled city and tell me there is no subclass of welfare recipients. It was clearly demonstrated after Katrina what welfare has done for self reliance and is a failure. Democrats and Republicans have all admitted Medicare, Social Security, Project housing, are ALL FAILURES YET, we here no calls from liberals to eliminate funding for these programs. Heck, open up the Wall street Journal, which (I obviously hate since I'm one of "you people") and you'll see the most massive federal welfare programever called a bailout program. Both in business and in society welfare has failed. Before the welfare state Rather then punishing BAD CHOICES and BAD BEHAVIOUR our welfare system has rewarded these and eliminated the live and learn lessons in failure. Before the New Deal socialism charities cared for the destitute and businesses were allowed to fail.
If we really want to prove the abstinence based education program is a failure do one of three things. Eliminate BOTH programs, equal funding for both, OR cut the funding to sex-ed to that of absitinence based education.
And for the capitalism bashers!!! Capitalism has been corrupted by government interference and government rewards for failures, regulations, and subsidies for goods and services that would NEVER make it in the market place. Now that there is no punishment for failure, there's no reason to run a profitable business.
Jeremiah| 12.8.08 @ 7:13PM
Stan --
My only point is that Madonna and Britney Spears -- who coach are daughters on proper sexual morality every day over the air waves -- are products of the capitalist market.
They are what the market wants. The logic of capitalism does not necessarily lead to moral purity or down-home values. If we lived in a completely free market, I'm sure prime time would be T and A, more than anything else.
There are many government programs that HELP reduce teen pregnancy. In fact, during the 90s, teen pregnancy dropped precipitously in well funded school districts, largely because teen girls had stuff to do.
Is it that simple? You bet. It's not Jesus, it's soccer.
I know that sounds horrible, but religious teaching is good for adults facing their mortality. For teenagers, who can't reason well or reality-test, firm rules and discipline, a sound education based on SCIENCE and available evidence, a rigorous schedule filled with all kinds of activities, and more books than television in their off- campus hours are the best remedies.
I can't emphasize enough the importance of all those bleeding heart liberal tax and spend programs at your local schools on this issue: if you want your girls to go to college instead of getting pregnant, support every after school program, every theatre group, every sports league, every crazy starry eyed idealistic craziness they send your way.
You can spend taxes on school orchestras or food stamps for single young mothers. I'd take the orchestra.
Jeremiah| 12.8.08 @ 7:43PM
erratum: "who coach our daughters"
Osamas Pajamas| 12.8.08 @ 10:42PM
So lemme see. The public schools teach my two young daughters all about sex, provide free condoms, and can get them free, secret abortions, as may be desired. Why would I think that public education is infested with dirty old men and a bunch of twisted sisters who just can't wait to "educate" my kids?
Overthrow public "education."
Nommin| 12.8.08 @ 11:38PM
Unfortunately, the big secret is out: Sex feels good. Also, the fearsome myths and legends surrounding sex in past decades are gone. As long as this remains true, there will be public health consequences - and expenses! Preaching like it's 1899 will not counter our present day instant-gratification culture. Teaching teenagers how not to become the next herpes case or abortion statistic is money better spent than telling them no more about sex than not to do it.
Michael L. Hauschild| 12.9.08 @ 7:19AM
This debate of the merits of chastity, abstinence and age of consent is relative at best. Do not cut the liberals short. One of the left’s darlings, a famous actor, is renowned for his demanding criteria for selecting a wife. His standard of “no more than two previous sexual encounters” was finally met by another, equally famous, singer and diva. Turns out, however, during the divorce proceedings that the two aforementioned incidents were the Screen Actors Guild and the NBA.
JamesJ| 12.9.08 @ 10:27AM
Gee Katelyn, now I see why there's been 40 million abortions since 1973, why AIDs has taken millions, etc
Shooter| 12.9.08 @ 10:38AM
Shooter:
You're confusing programs designed to promote abstinence as opposed to government prohibitions on certain activities. No one is suggesting that we outlaw teen sex. Who the hell is going to enforce that?
Katelyn:
I am not confusing anything. What I am saying is that it is not the job of the Nanny State to use my money to pay for programs that support the merits of abstinence, abortion, apple pie or any of the myriad intrusions that fester in the pot of government regulation.
Dai Alanye| 12.9.08 @ 2:12PM
Deere Bob Trollworthy:
When the MacArthur Foundation initiates its new Genius Award for selective data mining, I suspect you will be well into contention. I state this merely in a spirit of cordial criticism.
You suggest I "…go to a disadvantaged community [read 'slum'] and teach abstinence only…" Presumably you hereby fault the community for its attitudes. Yet you blame the failure of Head Start not on the community but the public school system--which is, of course, a part of the community.
Lemme 'splain something to you, Bob. If everything comes back to "the community," then none of these government social programs will work. A pessimistic view, but one with which I largely concur. It would be, none-the-less, incredibly stupid to give any appearance of public approval to harmful behavior such as teenage sexual activity, even by forbearance. Acquiescence in this matter translates to connivance.
You further state, "You say that parents should be there. That would be great except that the divorce rate is over 50% and the percentage of families where both parents have to work is high." Kudos for parroting another statistic. It appears more and more as if you have few ideas but what you pick up from the analyses of others.
But even children of divorce have parents who sometimes care for them, and almost all of them have at least one parent available. Shall the state step in as surrogate instead of depending on these wretched parents whom you seemingly denigrate?
As far as both parents working, I and my siblings were raised by such a family, and we've turned out not only successful and law-abiding but highly intelligent and remarkably good-looking. Although that might have been just random chance, of course.
Sarah| 12.10.08 @ 10:15AM
I really wish people would stop using terms like "abortion-advocacy groups" and "pro-abortion." Just because someone supports legalizing abortion to a certain extent in order to make it regulated and therefore safer when it does happen (as a LAST resort), does not make him or her "anti-life" or someone who thinks everyone and their mother should be having abortions like the latest fad. All this biased language falsely turns a multi-layered issue into black-and-white.
In my opinion the ideal is to target the root issues that completely obviate choice of whether or not to have an abortion, which are making people-especially adolescents--more informed not only about about abstinence being the only 100% guarantee and arming them with up-to-date knowledge on STIs, protection against them, and the consequences of not doing so, but also addressing the characteristics of healthy relationships--marriage or not--and how they depend on healthy self-esteem/self-concept.
Teddy| 12.10.08 @ 5:44PM
2. Target girls for specialized education in this issue.
3. Keep them BUSY. Girls especially.
------------------------------------------
Why target girls "especially"? Because women are evil minions of the Devil (as was preached in times gone by), and men can't control themselves? I guess we know it's always the woman's fault when she gets knocked up.
As for Palin's daughter -- sorry, but if you're preaching abstinence while your daughter's out screwing around -- even if she meant to get pregnant, she was having sex outside of marriage -- it's fair game, just as NY's governor Eliot Spitzer was for going after prostitutes and their johns while patronizing whores himself.
SarahPan| 12.16.08 @ 10:20AM
Sex ed or no sex ed, parents need to talk to their kids about sex at home. Kids, especially teens, need good information from a reliable source (not tv, friends, magazines, etc). For parents looking for advice on what to say and how to say it, books by Dr. Meg Meeker really helped me before I talked to my two teens. The most recent one I read was Your Kids At Risk: How Teen Sex Threatens Our Sons and Daughters. I highly highly recommend it. Good luck parents!
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