Celibacy, a well-funded government policy

April 17, 2006

At first glance, this seems too bizarre to be true, but it’s unfortunately real: the Bush administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has 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.”

It’s one thing for Bush administration officials to believe this. It’s another for them to make it official government policy. It’s something else still when they insist service providers agree with these ideas a pre-condition to receiving a federal grant (that’s our money) through the Department of Health and Human Services.

One of the rules:

(B) teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school age children;

So its good for school age children who want to have sex to get married?

Boy, that’ll do wonders for the divorce rate.

  • Okay, let’s try to parse this:

    People are not going to stop having sex outside of marriage,

    Having sex outside of marriage is ‘bad’,

    We must make sure everybody knows that sex outside of marriage is ‘bad’,

    Anything tax money is used to fund is ‘endorsed’ by the tax payers,

    Therefore the only tax money funded policy that is acceptable is abstinence policy and abstinence training.

    Now, the fact that abstinence training has a 50% failure rate is unimportant, because the tax payers ‘endorsed’ abstinence and it was the rotten students who couldn’t be chaste until marriage.

    You see, the question of effectiveness here is not how many kids avoid desease or pregnacy or just stupid hearbreak. Effectiveness here is calculated by the amount of GUILT generated when kids don’t do what the Theocratic Reactionaries want. If the kids DIE from sex, well, all the better.

    The Bushites are going to have a lot to answer for in hell.

  • How many thousands of years of data are required to prove that people are going to have sex before marriage?

    No series of semiars from any number of bible thumpers dressed as educators is going to change that.

  • What about masterbation? What if one party isn’t “stimulated”? If I fantisize about sex with someone are they guilty of simulating me? There are many unanswered questions here.

  • Guys, the only thing being proved here is the principle that the government can legally broadcast dogma (primarily religious in origin) to dictate how we live our lives. Scientific validity is beside the point–if it works, great; if not, so what? The whole point of this exercise is to get people habituated with government control of even the most intimate aspects of their lives. This is already happening, and many people are comfortable with a paternal and moralistic government rather than a government that is supposed to represent their interests. The underlying purpose here is not “education,” but conditioning their thinking processes. I suspect that the point is also not so much to empower the religious right, even though they think that will happen (which is why they support the GOP), but rather to use religious dogma as a tool to expand government control.

    There is no way to argue this point with them–the people pushing abstinence want power to tell you how to live. No less. And this power will not be limited to abstinence. The only way they’ll listen is if you were to convince them that abstinence education does not further their power or wealth.

    The only way to defeat these people is to show those who are yet open-minded how their interests are ultimately being neglected even as government (through such policies as abstinence) place greater demands upon them. Ask the people what they are getting in return for their loyalty and taxes, except a government that wants to tell them what to do and insult them for not having the same interests as a wealthy white heterosexual male.

  • Effectiveness here is calculated by the amount of GUILT generated when kids don’t do what the Theocratic Reactionaries want.

    Sounds exactly like a Catholic high school’s approach to sex ed. Ah, the memories…

  • We need to start using this phrase: The Republican War on Sex.

    Because that’s really what it is. I’m usually wary of “1984” analogies, because they always strike the lay person as overblown and reinforce the “overwrought lefty” stereotype… but I wish I had a copy handy, to revisit the lines where Julia explains to Winston about how sex and the aims of a martially inclined State are ultimately opposed.

    For Democrats to push this “Republican War on Sex” meme would be high-risk/high-reward in the extreme. It would fire up the base on the right–the people who really *would* like to ban sex–but I think it would also tap into the deep anti-authoritarian streak in the national psyche. If “we” don’t trust the government to closely regulate gun ownership or industrial pollution, it’s a pretty good bet that we don’t want them getting into our pants.

  • I predict that this will work just as well as Just Say No from the 1980s.

    I wonder what noted Republican and XXX actress, Mary Carey, would have to say about that?

    I guess there is going to be a lot of hairy palmed, blind teenagers in the coming years…

  • The Republican War on Sex

    Exactly. Why are the Republicans trying to stop people from having hot, hot sex?

    “1984” analogies, because they always strike the lay person as overblown and reinforce the “overwrought lefty” stereotype

    I don’t think that’s true at all. And I think it depends on who you talk to- and especially on what the issue is.

  • I can hear the kids now……
    “Please Mr. President, can you tell us what you did to help abstain from having sex before marriage? And you too Mr. Senator. Did it involve a lot of cold showers?”

  • When will the GOP get out of people’s bedrooms? I am thinking they are a bunch of peeping-tom perverts……

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