Bush's Sex Scandal ("abstinence only")

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/opinion/16kristof.html?hp

Bush's Sex Scandal
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

I'm sorry to report a sex scandal in the heart of the Bush administration. Worse, it doesn't involve private behavior, but public conduct.

You see, for all the carnage in President Bush's budget, one program is being showered with additional cash - almost three times as much as it got in 2001. It's "abstinence only" sex education, and the best research suggests that it will cost far more lives than the Clinton administration's much more notorious sex scandal.

Mr. Bush means well. But "abstinence only" is a misnomer that in practice is an assault on sex education itself. There's a good deal of evidence that the result will not be more young rosy-cheeked virgins - it will be more pregnancies, abortions, gonorrhea and deaths from AIDS.

Look, I'm all for abstinence education. I support the booming abstinence industry as it peddles panties and boxers decorated with stop signs (at www.abstinence.net), and "Pet Your Dog, Not Your Date" T-shirts.<snip>

[Wright Patman]

1. They're advocating bestiality now?

Who will save the virgin bitches from predatory humans involved in NAMBLA (North American Man-Bitch Love Association)?

[Goldmund]

2. "Mr. Bush means well."

No he doesn't. He wants to please his fundie base so they will continue to vote themselves into poverty.

[rodeodance]

4. geesh, at first I thought you were serious till I looked past your heading

I agree!!

[Goldmund]

5. quotes, dude, quotes!

:)

[CPschem]

3. I've always said

that Bush's unabashed support for abstinence-only programs is DEVASTATING to this generation of teenagers.

Bush is a sick bastard who is too drunk on religion to realize the harm he's causing.

[Goldmund]

6. I disagree

He's a shrewdly calculating bastard (or rather, Rove is) who found a way to get their fundie parents' votes.

[MaineYooper]

7. a paragraph with some *damning* numbers

"Other developed countries focus much more on contraception. The upshot is that while teenagers in the U.S. have about as much sexual activity as teenagers in Canada or Europe, Americans girls are four times as likely as German girls to become pregnant, almost five times as likely as French girls to have a baby, and more than seven times as likely as Dutch girls to have an abortion. Young Americans are five times as likely to have H.I.V. as young Germans, and teenagers' gonorrhea rate is 70 times higher in the U.S. than in the Netherlands or France."

But there I go again, living in the reality (and evidence)-based world.

If it didn't matter so much, the stupidity of the people driving this country would be truly comical.