The Abstinance Only Education People are getting old...

Let's give it up for Amanda Marcotte over at Pandagon for what you are about to read.

May 12, 2005

News from the world of abstinence-only

Every news item I read about abstinence-only education, the more I think it's not the brainchild of misguided idealogues with low regard for the truth and actually a conspiracy to trick an entire generation into early marriage and child-bearing. The latest news from Feministing doesn't help my paranoia. Apparently, a school in Bozeman, Montana hired a woman from a organization called (I shit you not) True Lies to give a brief presentation and she threatened them with their lives if they dare use contraception.

Wells demanded the school give equal time to rebut the "misinformation" his son heard: that condoms lead to cancer, that birth control pills are only 20 percent effective, that sexually transmitted diseases are spread by skin contact alone, that third-trimester fetuses can be aborted, that video games lead to homicide, that human papilloma virus can be transferred through condoms and that teens can achieve "second virginity" through abstinence.

I wonder if that second virginity cures the condom-induced cancer.

Abstinence-only educators who actively promote the idea that using contraceptives in and of themselves is harmful to someone's health have crossed the line from wanting to keep kids abstinent until marriage and into the territory of actively discouraging people to use contraception--ever. If condoms cause cancer in unmarried people, they cause it in married people.

So, as a service to you, I went over to True Lies website.

Read the rest here.

-The Oklahoma Hippy