We’ve known for a long while that [tag]abstinence[/tag]-only policies, promoted and funded through the Bush administration towards America’s teens, are costly, inaccurate, and ineffective. So, given the Bush gang’s record, it should come as no surprise that these same policies are now being directed towards adults.
Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007. […]
Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the revision is aimed at 19- to 29-year-olds because more unmarried women in that age group are having children.
Government data released last month show that 998,262 births in 2004 were to unmarried women 19-29, the ages with the most births to unmarried women.
“The message is ‘It’s better to wait until you’re married to bear or father children,’ ” Horn said. “The only 100% effective way of getting there is abstinence.”
Remember, this isn’t just about the federal government believing it should help shape families, it’s also about giving tax dollars to groups that share the administration’s worldview.
“They’ve stepped over the line of common sense,” said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. “To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It’s an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health.”
Go ahead, libertarians, keep voting GOP.
It’s worth noting, of course, that this isn’t an entirely new problem. We learned back in April that the Bush administration’s HHS also established guidelines that effectively call for celibacy for everyone except straight married couples.
Earlier this year, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced new guidelines for organizations applying for grants for abstinence-only education programs.
In addition to being costly, inaccurate, and ineffective, the programs must now operate under a strict new definition of abstinence:
Abstinence curricula must have a clear definition of sexual abstinence which must be consistent with the following: “Abstinence means voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage. Sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse.”
And, of course, the same guidelines define marriage as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife.” The result, as Nico explained, is that the Bush administration has decided that gays “should be taught to never, ever engage in ‘any type’ of ‘sexual stimulation’ — ever.”
Remember when conservatives used to rail against “social engineering“?