The Fallacy of Abstinence

Humm, it is rather spurious that some group called the National Abstinence Clearinghouse, located in Sioux Falls, S.D is being given federal dollars to support their work (read: tax payer bux), when abstinance doesn't actually lead to the holy grail of chaste lives until "marriage."

This cherished "christian" result is misleading and again been poven a lofty, unobtainable goal. In fact, yet another emperical study shows that those who pledge abstinence are more likely to have anal sex. Hummm, is that what they Clearinghouse wants?

Of course, they say, these folks who pledge abstinence had not pledged "true" abstinence. So, now there are qualifications to the term abstinence?

Slice from the article:

Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are more likely to take chances with other kinds of sex that increase the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, a study of 12,000 adolescents suggests.

The report by Yale and Columbia University researchers could help explain their earlier findings that teens who pledged abstinence are just as likely to have STDs as their peers.

The latest study, published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that teens pledging virginity until marriage are more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens who have not had intercourse. That behavior, however, "puts you at risk," said Hannah Brueckner, assistant professor of sociology at Yale and one of the study's authors.

Among virgins, boys who have pledged abstinence were four times more likely to have had anal sex, according to the study. Overall, pledgers were six times more likely to have oral sex than teens who have remained abstinent but not as part of a pledge.

...Millions of teens have signed written pledges or verbally promised to abstain from sex, part of a church-led effort to discourage premarital sex and the spread of disease.

President Bush has boosted funding for abstinence-only education in schools. Critics say that education needs to be coupled with safe-sex education to be effective.

"If adolescents only had sex in monogamous, married relationships, by definition there would be no STDs," Brueckner said, echoing President Bush's remarks in last year's State of the Union address. "

But the majority of adolescents don't live like that. They do have sex." Last year, the same research team found that 88 percent of teens who pledge abstinence end up having sex before marriage, compared with 99 percent of teens who do not make a pledge.

End slice:

Sounds like another Spend and Spend program (the kind that grows the National Debt) sponsored by W, Rove and Co. that doesn't work, and in fact, would actually work better if it didn't exist.