{"id":13157,"date":"2007-10-08T12:47:33","date_gmt":"2007-10-08T16:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13157.html"},"modified":"2007-10-08T12:47:33","modified_gmt":"2007-10-08T16:47:33","slug":"bushs-new-abstinence-campaign-your-tax-dollars-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bushs-new-abstinence-campaign-your-tax-dollars-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush’s new abstinence campaign — your tax-dollars at work"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last we heard from the Bush administration’s abstinence-only program, there was a definitive, congressionally-authorized report issued in April*, showing that the initiative doesn’t work<\/a>. The federal government has spent nearly a decade, and billions of dollars, giving minors inaccurate information about sexual health, all in the hopes of convincing them not to have sex. It’s been a complete bust<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Naturally, therefore, the Bush administration is launching a new public-service campaign<\/a> promoting — you guessed it — the same abstinence-only policy that administration officials know doesn’t work.<\/p>\n

4parents.gov is a government website run by the Department of Health and Human Services that is meant to provide parents with “information” to help “teens make healthy choices.”<\/p>\n

But this “information” is not grounded in science. A recent federal report concluded that abstinence-only programs have had “no impacts on rates of sexual abstinence.” Yet the latest public service announcement by 4parents.gov “encourages parents to talk with their kids about waiting to have sex.”<\/p>\n

In the ad, various children say that they want their parents to talk to them about sex and tell them to “wait.” Near the end, the narrator says, “Tell your kids you want them to wait ’til they’re married to have sex.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If the 4parents.gov website promoted in the ads (without our money) sounds familiar, there’s a good reason.
\n
\nIt’s the same site that’s been providing parents with bogus information<\/a> for years.<\/p>\n

A government Web site intended to help parents and teenagers make “smart choices about their health and future” includes inaccurate or misleading information that may alienate some families or prompt riskier behavior, according to a team of medical experts who reviewed the material.<\/p>\n

Three physicians and a child psychologist analyzed the Bush administration’s 4Parents.gov Web site and concluded it made many incorrect assertions about condoms, sexual orientation, single-parent households and the dangers of oral sex. […]<\/p>\n

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a frequent administration critic who solicited the analyses, said the site is the latest example of “the distortion of scientific information” in favor of a conservative ideology focused predominantly on promoting abstinence-until-marriage programs.<\/p>\n

“A federally-funded website should present the facts as they are, not as you might wish them to be,” Waxman wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. “It is wrong — and ultimately self-defeating — to sacrifice scientific accuracy in an effort to frighten teens and their parents.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know we’re talking about the gang that creates their own reality, but this is ridiculous.<\/p>\n

* When the administration “released” the congressionally-authorized report on abstinence in April, they didn’t actually disseminate it. Officials posted the results of the comprehensive study on an administration website late on a Friday afternoon, with no press release and no press advisory.<\/p>\n

The administration, in other words, wants to hide the truth about sex ed from students, and then hide the truth about the administration’s failed social experiment from their parents.<\/p>\n

And then, six months later, it’s time for a public-service campaign that touts the policy we know doesn’t work. It’s the Bush administration’s approach to public policy in a nutshell, isn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last we heard from the Bush administration’s abstinence-only program, there was a definitive, congressionally-authorized report issued in April*, showing that the initiative doesn’t work. The federal government has spent nearly a decade, and billions of dollars, giving minors inaccurate information about sexual health, all in the hopes of convincing them not to have sex. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}