abstinece-only sex education

He's saying he knows how to fornicate. Why he feels the need to tell you that is beyond me.You can use MSM chat and the like if you two want to have that sort of conversation.

Must be a Britishism.

So, you suggest that we should keep on with abstinence-only programs even though they result in teens having sex at an younger age, engaging in more anal and oral sex, and them being less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control?

I haven't said ONE THING about abstinence "programs." I simply abhor this "scientific" mechanical manipulative instrumentalistic way you all talk about this stuff, it's dehumanizing. Abstinence IS what should be taught, but HOW it is taught is a big subject I haven't investigated enough to be able to advocate anything in particular.Again, this self righteous carrying on about how there's something wrong with teaching abstinence simply because young people in our sex-saturated culture ignore it is just mindlessness.

D'ya remember when the teacher asked a question and you knew the answer. You'd put up your hand and call out"Miss, Miss!"or "Ma'am, Ma'am"or "Sir, Sir"

Irish-ism to you...woman

Uh, OK, but CK is a Brit and he got it and I didn't.Maybe Americans don't try to get the teacher's attention the way Irish/Brits do. We're more self-centered maybe. "Me me" or "I know I know" or "Call on me, Teach" are more our style.So you get an A in fornication... I mean, in knowing what fornication is and how it leads to syphilis. Funny it escapes others here.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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I haven't said ONE THING about abstinence "programs."

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Then you have been off-topic for this entire thread?

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I simply abhor this "scientific" mechanical manipulative instrumentalistic way you all talk about this stuff, it's dehumanizing.

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Educating young people about the mechanics of how babies are made and disease is spread is the most humanity-enforcing thing I think we can possibly do for them.Remember, in the ideal sex education program, the emotional aspects of relationships are going to be stressed. Love, coersion, feelings, and all the rest of it need to be discussed, most of all the importance of respect, both for oneself and one's partner.

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Abstinence IS what should be taught, but HOW it is taught is a big subject I haven't investigated enough to be able to advocate anything in particular.

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Well, the Christian Right has been funding these programs for long enough for there to be fairly long-term data to collect about the results, and it isn't favorable.Clearly, the good Christian folks advocating, developing, and teaching this stuff are doing something wrong.

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Again, this self righteous carrying on about how there's something wrong with teaching abstinence simply because young people in our sex-saturated culture ignore it is just mindlessness.

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Nobody said there was anything wrong with teaching kids that abstinence is a perfectly valid option, with the very best track record for preventing all sorts of consequences. What little sex-ed I got in school definitely taught about it along with the facts of what to do if one wasn't going to abstain.However, I have been criticizing abstinence ONLY programs since the OP.They do not work, and in fact seem to lead to more dangerous and, in your eyes, immoral, sexual deviant behavior.

Said so myself I believe, but you seldom read through a thread before answering so you wouldn't know that. I said I'd probably propose another thread later on to address the general point that interests me more.I would think it's not totally off topic, however, to be criticizing the topic itself and the terms it's being cast in.Anyway, must go. Maybe you'll luck out and get another abstinence-only advocate to misrepresent. Have fun.Edited by Faith, : typo correction "abstinence"

The problem is that Faith is approaching this from an exclusively moral standpoint as the christian right is prone to do, and refusing to recognize the problem as a public health issue.While teen promiscuity certainly has 'moral implications' for the christian doctrine regarding human sexuality, it is very much a public health-and-wellbeing issue for society at large. The negative consequences of teen pregnancy and spread of STD's have ramifications that extend far beyond a threat to a single view of morality.Publicly funded programs have to be held to higher standard than simply appealling to some moral priniciple, even if that might be a prinicple currently espoused by the majority. The have to be shown to produce the desired results to be worthy of public funding. In this case, the desired results are fewer teen pregancies and lower rates of STD transmission, something the abstinence-only program is failing miserably to achieve. It's time to revert to a broader base of sex education in the schools, and begin it in earlier grades.How can continued use of public funds for 'faith-based' abstinence programs be justified without results?
And how can the program be evaluated without resorting to all the scientific, quantitative and mechanistic language that Faith abhors?Sex education is a public health issue that has currently been high-jacked by the christian right at the expense of the rights of all taxpayers in this country.

No, I haven't been ignoring it as a public health issue and I don't separate the morality issue from the public health issue as you claim. The only way to deal with the public health issue in the long run is to deal with it as a moral issue. That has been part of what I've been saying.But in order for it to work, it would require a sea change in the culture at large back to the moral perspective. Abstinence-only fails because of the current amoral worldview that dominates the discussion.The sea change isn't going to happen (short of God's having mercy on us in the form of a miraculous revival) because science has the terms of the problem all sewed up in their amoral instrumentalist terminology. The abstinence-only failure only confirms the instrumentalist worldview which will fail in the long run.Edited by Faith, : Added first sentence.

I understand your desire to deal with it that way, but as you yourself recognize, short of a miracle, the whole country isn't going to adopt strict christian morality. So we need to seek a practical solution for the shorter term. No, it fails because sooner or later, kids are going to have sex, regardless of their religion or what anyone has told them is right or wrong. There you go, lashing out at science again, simply because you don't like how it works, what it tells us, or want to play by its rules.But I fail to see how science has any relevance to whether kids should or should not receive some practical instruction into the mechanics of sexuality as they approach maturity.
It's very much a social and political issue, but it's not an issue that science takes a stand on. You seem to be mounting a very circuitous argument that because people are influenced by scientific reasoning, ergo they lack morality, ergo abstinence isn't working, ergo science is to blame. That dog won't hunt.Edited by EZscience, : No reason given.

Actually, as pointed out way back in Message 40 and repeated at times throughout this thread, Abstinence Only has been shown to INCREASE kids turning to sex.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Don't you get it? The problem is not in the word "abstinence". The problem is in the word "only". That means witholding information that can potentially save their lives. THAT is hurting young people. Yes indeed. And my point is: Even by taking a moral stance to the program, the only right thing to do is to drop it. A government program that hurts young people is an imoral program.

The claim is that the abstinence-only position INCREASES the incidence of sexual behavior. How is that the result of withholding information? Obviously the accusation is that the philosophy of abstinence is to blame for this result. Again, the only proof that young people are being hurt is that they ignore the teaching of the program. I find this accusation absurd that it's the program's fault that they do so.HOW the program is set up I really don't know. Nobody has bothered to give the outlines on this thread. All that's been said on this thread is that it doesn't work, therefore it's evil, and the way it doesn't work is by the kids doing the opposite of what the program advocates.In other words, its advocacy of abstinence-only is why it doesn't work, and this is because the kids ignore it. But that's the PROGRAM's fault.I get from this the impression that the whole idea here is to ridicule the idea of abstinence. There is no serious effort being made to discuss the actualities involved. Edited by Faith, : to correct a few grammatical problemsEdited by Faith, : No reason given.