Miseducation: the lowdown on abstinence-only sex-ed programs.

IN LATE OCTOBER 2006 New Jersey became the fourth state to reject federal funding for sex education programs. Thanks to Bush administration mandates, accepting the federal money would have required the state to abandon its existing comprehensive sex-ed curriculum, and instead rely exclusively on abstinence-only programs. But though New Jersey's decision and similar ones by California, Connecticut, and Maine are encouraging, not every state has the luxury of turning down federal dollars. And that's bad news for those concerned about reproductive health.

While the U.S. government will spend over $241 million in federal funding on abstinence-only programs in 2007, there's good reason to doubt the effectiveness of the Bush administration's preferred approach. A recent General Accountability Office study concluded that abstinence-only programs suffer from a lack of oversight and found little evidence that they succeed at preventing teen pregnancy. Another study, released in 2004 by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), found that over 80 percent of abstinence-only curricula supported by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) contained false, misleading, or distorted information about abortion, contraception, and gender roles, and routinely presented religious beliefs as scientific fact. The results of the Bush administration's promotion of abstinence-only curricula speak for themselves: the nation's teen birth rate, teen pregnancy rate, and abortion rate all remain the highest in the industrialized world.

A closer look at the abstinence-only programs that have received federal funding suggests further cause for concern. In 2004 the HHS Capital Compassion Fund announced over $58 million in grants to "grass-roots, faith-based" organizations, including groups like Catholic Charities of Kansas City and Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska. Among the many examples of abstinence-only programs being run with federal dollars by groups with explicitly religious missions is the Silver Ring Thing (SRT). SRT--which urges teens to pledge to refrain from sex until marriage and to make a public show of their commitment by wearing a symbolic silver ring--is the primary outreach of the John Guest Team, whose parent company, the John Guest Evangelistic Team, works, according to its website, "to communicate the message of Jesus Christ to the unchurched through creative, media-based and one-on-one evangelism."

A review of other abstinence-only sex-ed programs only further reinforces the religious undertones being utilized in public schools. The Why kNOw? program directly paraphrases 1 Corinthians 13:4 to describe the true meaning of love: "Real Love is patient; is kind; does not envy; does not boast; is not proud; is not rude; is not self-seeking; is not easily angered; keeps no record of wrongs; does not delight in evil; rejoices with the truth; always protects; always trusts; always hopes; always lasts; [and] never fails." Why kNOw? also quotes the Song of Songs as a "historical book" and states that "though the origin of the name 'French Kissing' is unknown, King Solomon should take credit for the act." The curriculum also places heavy emphasis on studying Judeo-Christian marriage ceremonies and encourages educators to have their middle-school students plan their own weddings, complete with details on which flowers they would use, who would be in their bridal party, and, of course, which (heterosexual, virginal) person they would wed. The program teaches youth that the traditional lifting of the veil shows that "the groom is the only man allowed to 'uncover' the bride" and demonstrates her respect for him by illustrating that she hasn't "allowed any other man to lay claim to her."

Promoting marriage and discouraging premarital sex through fear and false information remains a benchmark of abstinence-only sex education. The Heritage Keepers program repeatedly cites research suggesting that married people have better sex--and many of these statistics are attributed to Glenn T. Stanton, director of global insight for cultural and family renewal and senior analyst of marriage and sexuality at Focus on the Family.

The WAIT (Why Am I Tempted?) Training program also depends heavily on moralistic, pro-marriage information to promote abstinence. The WAIT curriculum includes a game in which students repeatedly place a transparent piece of tape, symbolizing a woman, on a man's arm to show that after several "uses" (sexual acts or partners) the tape is less clean and perfect. Finally, the teacher is instructed to attach the tape to another male volunteer and ask, "If this process gets repeated too many times, do you think it will affect this person's marriage?"

Such games aren't unique. Why kNOw? includes a game that compares a stuffed animal named "Speedy the Sperm," which represents a sperm cell, and a penny, used to symbolize HIV. By this reasoning, students are meant to see that if a condom fails 14 percent of the time with something as big as Speedy, it clearly cannot effectively prevent the spread of HIV--which is a thousandth of the size. Despite repeated and conclusive evidence showing that condoms available in the United States don't have holes (if they do, the entire batch is discarded), and that the real reason for error is improper use, not product defect, Why kNOw? continues to teach youth that condoms are useless, apparently believing that this will discourage them from having sex. Predictably, research suggests that young people who believe condoms don't work simply use protection less often--they don't engage in sex at a lesser rate.

Clearly, we do our young people a great disservice by continuing to use such misleading and dangerous curricula. The Bush administration's reliance on abstinence-only sex ed confronts advocates of a more comprehensive (and effective) approach with a strategic challenge: How can we promote healthy sex education without being viewed as morally deficient? Like it or not, many parents remain anxious that comprehensive sex ed takes what they view as one of their most sensitive parenting tasks out of their hands, and puts it into those of teachers and administrators whom they may not trust. Even the most widely effective and highly promoted comprehensive sex-ed programs, such as "Making Proud Choices" and "Draw the Line/Respect the Line;' still include decision-making skills that stress personal choice and limit-setting--topics parents may prefer to teach their children themselves. Public health educators must find a way to maintain or at least respect parental control and personal choice while stressing the need to provide effective factual information to teens.

RELATED ARTICLE: Given the evidence.

Promiscuity may be getting a bad rap.

According to the first-ever global analysis of sexual behavior, married couples have the most sex. And while more people are having sex before marriage, they aren't doing so at increasingly younger ages. The study, conducted by researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and published in The Lancet on November 2, 2006, gathered data from fifty-nine countries worldwide and concluded that a shift towards later marriage accounts for an increase in premarital sex. Surprisingly, the study showed no correlation between multiple partnerships and higher incidence of sexually transmitted disease; that is, developed nations reported higher rates of multiple partnerships, not those parts of the world which tend to have higher rates of HIV and AIDS, such as African countries. This led the authors to suggest that poverty, immobility, and gender inequality may be a stronger factor in sexual ill-health than promiscuity.

The researchers concluded that no general approach to promoting sexual-health will work everywhere and no single-component intervention is likely to work anywhere. Moreover, public health messages must be guided by epidemiological evidence rather than by myths and moral stances.

We are not alone. A Harris poll conducted in October 2006 found that 42 percent of U.S. adults say they are not "absolutely certain" there is a God, including 15 percent who are "somewhat certain," 11 percent who think there probably isn't a God, and 16 percent who aren't sure. The number of people who professed their uncertainty rose 8 percent since an identical survey taken three years ago.

Less than one-third of all respondents (29 percent) believe that God "controls what happens on Earth" (this includes 57 percent of Christians who define themselves as "born again"). A plurality (44 percent) believes that God "observes but does not control what happens on Earth." Fifty-one percent of the adults surveyed, including a majority of Catholics (63 percent), believe that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God.

(Incidentally, the poll of 2,010 people was conducted online. It has been found that more people admit to potentially embarrassing beliefs or behaviors when answering online surveys than admit to these behaviors when talking to pollsters on the telephone.)

The fifth annual Reporters Without Borders Worldwide Press Freedom Index was issued October 24, 2006, ranking the level of freedom enjoyed by the press in 168 nations. The good news is that very poor countries can still be very observant of freedom of expression. The bad news is that the most repressive countries remain so, and certain Western democracies are experiencing a steady erosion of press freedom.

The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in seventeenth position in the first year of the Index, in 2002.

War, welcome changes of regime, and the fallout from the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed were all cited as factors affecting the scores this year. For a complete list of rankings go to: www.rsf.org.

Heidi Bruggink holds a B.A. from Harvard University and is the legal coordinator for the Appignani Humanist Legal Center in Washington DC.

2006                                           2005
Ranking                                      Ranking

1 (tied)           Finland/Iceland/             1
                  Ireland/Netherlands

5                   Czech Republic              9

6                       Estonia                 11

--                      Norway                  1

8                      Slovakia                 8

--                    Switzerland               1

10                      Hungary                 12

16                      Bolivia                 45

19                      Denmark                 1

--                Bosnia-Herzegovina            33

34                       Ghana                  66

51                       Japan                  37

53                   United States              44

50                      Israel                  47

133                      Sudan                 139

134              Palestinian Authority         132

141                    Sri Lanka               115

154                      Iraq                  157

159                      Nepal                 160

160                    Ethiopia                131

161                  Saudi Arabia              154

162                      Iran                  164

163                      China                 159

164                      Burma                 163

165                      Cuba                  161

166                     Eritrea                166

167                  Turkmenistan              165

168 (of 168)          North Korea          167 (of 167)