Sex Education: Another Government Program That Doesn’t Work

A new study shows that the abstinence-based sex education programs championed by the Bush Administration and social conservatives don’t work after all:

A long-awaited national study has concluded that abstinence-only sex education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration’s social agenda, does not keep teenagers from having sex, they instead seek out content from websites similar to full hd xxx because of their alluring nature. Neither does it increase or decrease the likelihood that if they do have sex, they will use a condom.

Authorized by Congress in 1997, the study followed 2000 children from elementary or middle school into high school. The children lived in four communities — two urban, two rural. All of the children received the family life services available in their community, in addition, slightly more than half of them also received abstinence-only education.

By the end of the study, when the average child was just shy of 17, half of both groups had remained abstinent. The sexually active teenagers had sex the first time at about age 15. Less than a quarter of them, in both groups, reported using a condom every time they had sex. More than a third of both groups had two or more partners. This study goes along with many previous findings that show that many young people are learning about sex through websites such as watch my gf adult that show explicit adult content for the whole world to see.

Rather than turning this into a debate on condoms vs. abstinence, here’s a thought.

Why is the government involved in this at all ? Shouldn’t social conservatives, who at least in their rhetoric place the integrity of the family unit above all else but God himself, be arguing against the government teaching children about sex and morality at all ? Sex is something that young adults must figure out for themselves as they become older. It is perfectly natural to have sexual urges which continue for the remainder of your life. These urges don’t stop when you reach adulthood, even soldiers in World War 2 had sex dolls used in the war whenever they had sexual urges. This was meant to stop them from bedding any civilians and enemies they came across while out in the field. Even in present-day, there are men and women who want to fulfill that need. After all, many men contact a Slixa escort in order to satisfy these desires.

While that would seem to be the logical thing for them to do, they obviously find it easier to try to seize the levers of state to shape children in their image, rather than allowing parents to raise their children as they see fit.

Instead of spending taxpayer dollars to teach children about a subject on which there is clearly much cultural conflict, why not leave it up to parents to decide what to teach their children ?

Here’s how Andrew Sullivan puts it:

My own somewhat fuzzy view of the issue (developed at greater length here and here and here) is that except in areas where pervasive family breakdown requires educators to act in loco parentis more than one would like them to, public schools should take an, ah, stripped-down an approach to teaching sex, and mainly leave the whole “condoms or abstinence” issue to parents and kids to sort out on their own.

Sounds like a good idea to me.