Bush*s Sex Fantasies (Just Say No)

[kskiska]

The White House is pouring money into programs that tell teens to just say no to sex. Most experts say the programs don't work -- except to enrich the religious right.

By Michelle Goldberg

George Bush's proposed 2005 budget cuts funding for veterans' healthcare and public housing. It freezes funding for after-school programs and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families grants. It provides less than one-sixth of the increase needed to close the budget shortfall in the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which helps low-income HIV patients access medical care and lifesaving drugs. It cuts state Medicaid funding by $1.5 billion.

Yet when it comes to abstinence education, money seems to be no object. Bush's budget recommends $270 million for programs that try to dissuade teenagers from having sex, double the amount spent last year. Much of that money would be given in grants to Christian organizations such as Youth for Christ and to anti-abortion groups operating so-called crisis pregnancy centers, outfits that masquerade as women's health clinics but deliver a strongly anti-abortion message and often medically inaccurate information. It would pay for school programs that teach kids that premarital sex leads to psychological maladies and that sex with condoms is a kind of viral Russian roulette.

Experts in sex education and AIDS prevention say that in a country where the vast majority of people lose their virginity before their wedding night, these lessons aren't just distorted, they're dangerous. "To promote abstinence-only in the era of AIDS is to promote ignorance. It's inexplicable," says James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit organization devoted to sex education. Some abstinence-only programs, like more comprehensive sex education, have been shown to delay the age at which teenagers first have sex -- which almost everyone agrees is a good thing. Yet studies also show that when teenagers from abstinence-only programs do have sex, they're less likely than others to use protection. Perhaps that's why the teen pregnancy rate in Texas remains one of the highest in the country, despite the abstinence-only policies Bush pushed as governor.

(snip)

Bush's involvement with the abstinence-only movement stretches back over a decade and is about more than just electoral politics. It's a case study in the right's subversion of science. Their ideas rejected by mainstream scientists, conservatives have built their own scientific infrastructure, which then buttresses once-derided theories in the political arena. This administration recruits its scientists from that right-wing counterintelligentsia, which has been funded by some of the same groups that are now collecting taxpayer money to teach abstinence-only programs instead of traditional sex education.

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/02/24/abstinence/index.html

[depakid]

1. Yet another assualt in the war on science

I'm too angry to even comment on this-

here's another link to a similar story in today's NY Times:

Science or Politics at the F.D.A.?