guardian.co.uk — It's been a central plank of George Bush's social policy: to stop teenagers having sex. More than $1bn of federal money has been spent on promoting abstinence since 1998. The trouble is, new research suggests that it hasn't worked. At all.
Apr 16, 2007 View in Crawl 4
loplaApr 17, 2007
I saw something beyond hilarious. It was a raunchy rap video doing the usual highly successful promotion of hard core sex, materialism, thug life, etc. Then an ad for abstinence comes on...
malakinApr 17, 2007
Quote from the article: "Since his days as governor of Texas, George Bush has been a firm advocate of abstinence education programmes, which teach that...to deviate from the norms of human sexual activity is to risk harmful psychological and physical effects. "Abstinence hasn't been given a very good chance, but it's worked when it's tried. That's for certain," he said."Abstinence _is_ deviating from the norms of human sexual activity!
ub3rgeekApr 17, 2007
@Ub3rg33k you bastard you stole username :P
rarsonApr 17, 2007
@LastVisibleDog"it may seem like the purpose for which we are here. Banging whenever you can without restraint and pushing out unlimited numbers of litters of unwanted and unfunded children is not our sole purpose."You seem to suffer from the same lack of common sense as the people who are pushing these abstinence programs. The problem of unwanted pregnancies can be avoided without abstinence. It's called safe sex. Humans have evolved to the point where we can f**k for fun. Don't let archaic religious principles stop you from living life.You want to prevent unwanted pregnancies? Teach kids about birth control. Anything else is not only irresponsible, it's religious propaganda. People are going to have sex as long as they can get hard-ons, so it might be prudent to actually teach kids something instead of leaving them in the dark to make the same mistakes over and over again.Thank god for subsidies, huh? Otherwise, valuable programs like these might not have wasted our tax dollars!
penumbraApr 17, 2007
@dog:Them: a well vetted study (of admittedly small population) which demonstrates a clear lack of correlation between abstinence education and decreased teensex (and also between abst-ed and poor contraceptive skills). Population size: thousands of teens, four clusters, two controlled groups. p-value: didn't look, but it has to be relatively low for publication.You: a statement of (we'll assume for the moment) fact about decreases in teen pregnancy, along with the implication that increases in federal abstinence education are responsible. Population size: one sample, one cluster, one not-controlled group. p-value: as close to 1 as imaginable (that's bad!).I, for one, am going with them, for now. Not that I want to encourage the blind following of statistics.
mecki78Apr 17, 2007
Teenagers have sex, because they want to have sex. And what is wrong about it? Is it bad to have sex? No, it's not bad at all. It's only bad if they get pregnant to early or catch themselves certain illnesses, but both can be prevented. A tiny, thin condom can be a life-safer here. So shall they f**** their brains out, I have absolutely no problem with that, as long as they protect themselves, they have my boon.
odjnApr 17, 2007
I bet if priests and ministers brought back ye ol' fire and brimstone back to religion, this stuff would work out.
NexgenATLJul 18, 2011
http://www.nga-radio.com/2011/07/plank-this.html