Mariner
Active Member
I looked up the study on the web to clarify the meaning of the numbers. The pledgers were 6 * more likely to have oral sex than other teens who were NOT having intercourse, not than those who were. So it's not that they were just substituting oral sex for intercourse. It's more like they were so uneducated about the risks, based on their schools' "ignorance is the best policy" abstinence-type education, that they were having much more oral sex than teens who didn't formally abstain.
Like lots of other policies that have their origin in the Christian wing of the right wing, abstinence-style sex-ed seems ready for the trash heap of history. It's time we distribute condoms and real sex ed not just at home but worldwide, where epidemics of AIDS and other STDs, along with overpopulation, need to be addressed. It's time we stop funding faith-based social initiatives (Do you want a Muslim charity coming to help you when you're down andout?). It's time we accept that evolution is science and I.D. is baloney. It's time to get religion out of government, and back in our private lives, where it belongs. It's time we give up the idea of "dominion" over the ecosystem and recognize that every breath and step we take makes us part of that ecosystem. Some of us would like those breaths to have less soot and a more normal percentage of carbon dioxide in them.
Mariner.
Like lots of other policies that have their origin in the Christian wing of the right wing, abstinence-style sex-ed seems ready for the trash heap of history. It's time we distribute condoms and real sex ed not just at home but worldwide, where epidemics of AIDS and other STDs, along with overpopulation, need to be addressed. It's time we stop funding faith-based social initiatives (Do you want a Muslim charity coming to help you when you're down andout?). It's time we accept that evolution is science and I.D. is baloney. It's time to get religion out of government, and back in our private lives, where it belongs. It's time we give up the idea of "dominion" over the ecosystem and recognize that every breath and step we take makes us part of that ecosystem. Some of us would like those breaths to have less soot and a more normal percentage of carbon dioxide in them.
Mariner.