Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Can't Touch This....Or, Maybe You Can


So it seems the President's Abstinence Only Sex Education Program has overlooked a fundamental parental truism: You tell kids not to do something and that's the first thing they do.

According to the study director:

"We didn't see any strong indications that these programs were having an impact in the direction desired," said Dr. Buzz Pruitt.

First of all, what's a guy named "Buzz" doing telling anybody to do (or not do) something? Second, is it such a good idea to use a word like "desire" in this context?

The report states the the federal government is set to spend about 130 million dollars to fund abstinence only programs across the country this year. Let's ask the Buzz man if that's a good idea:

"The jury is still out, but most of what we've discovered shows there's no evidence the large amount of money spent is having an effect," he said.

Hmmmm...as the Bard would say, Methinks the jury is not "out." Yea, verily they have passed a verdict and gone home to watch a rerun of Sex in the City.

Ok. Let's be fair here. So the program isn't working as "desired." It's got to be doing some good, don't you think?:

The study showed about 23 percent of ninth-grade girls, typically 13 to 14 years old, had sex before receiving abstinence education. After taking the course, 29 percent of the girls in the same group said they had had sex.

Boys in the tenth grade, about 14 to 15 years old, showed a more marked increase, from 24 percent to 39 percent, after receiving abstinence education.

Right. So the porn stars as guest speakers wasn't such a good idea after all. And Letters To Penthouse as examples of activities to avoid didn't work out really well. We can fix that:

Abstinence-only programs, which have sprouted up in schools across the nation, cannot offer information about birth control and must promote the social and health benefits of abstaining from sex.

Or maybe we can't. Saltpeter anyone?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

yeah, those religious nuts are stupid as a warm jar of pee.

It is really laughable, so long as they don't get too much power. The good news is, when they do, they always blow it by revealing their extremeism in stupid ways.

mr strauss
pop goes lethal