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Faulking Opinions - Sep 14, 2008 - Printable Version
- Birds Do It, Bees Do it
by Robin Buckallew
Almost immediately after McCain announced his vice-presidential choice, the news broke. Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin, became the center of a news blitz that had folks across the spectrum of the family values debate licking their lips in anticipation of the prurient details they hoped would soon follow. The PR machine sprang into action. The right howled at the thought that this might be used against the GOP, and haughtily informed all who would listen that families are off limits. This would have seemed very high-minded and noble if it weren’t for the ironic fact that these are the same pundits who considered Valerie Plame fair game when Joseph Wilson said something about Dubya that they didn’t like. The loyal opposition (all too often more loyal than opposition, in my humble opinion) also took their stand. From Barack Obama to Arianna Huffington, the word went out: Bristol Palin is off limits. This has nothing to do with Sarah Palin as a parent, it has nothing to do with America, and we are simply going to refuse to discuss this. This is, of course, the noble thing to say and the noble thing to do, and the Democrats are seeking to make it clear that they are not the party of leerers and droolers that would put a 17-year-old girl on display just to make a point. This sounds fair and reasonable; it is, unfortunately, the wrong answer. We do actually need to talk about this. We need desperately to talk about this, but in the right way. Not in the dirty, whispering, back-alley smear way, but in the open-minded, rational way that has all too often been absent from political discourse in this country. We need to talk about Sarah Palin and her vision for this country. We need to recognize that Bristol Palin represents Sarah Palin’s vision for the country, and Sarah Palin’s vision for all our daughters, all our grand-daughters.
Sarah Palin has been speaking out in support of abstinence-only sex education for a long time. She has spoken out against choice in abortion, as well, even in cases of rape (which was 2.2 times higher in Alaska than in the rest of the country, and which leads to unwanted pregnancies in about 25% of the cases). In Palin’s vision, we will have a noble, God-fearing, moral nation that will not require sex education because we will all avoid having sex until we have been joined in holy wedlock with the one person we will pledge to cleave to for life. We will bring God back into our bedroom, and throw everyone else out until they have stood before the altar with us. In the pursuit of this goal, we will only teach our children how to remain celibate. This is the vision of America that has been written into the GOP platform, and which Sarah Palin must have convinced her vetters she agreed with. It shouldn’t have been too difficult, since it is in line with her public statements over her years in public service in Alaska. If you want to look at the vision Sarah Palin has for the women of America, look at Bristol Palin, a living embodiment of the success of abstinence training.
In recent years, more than $200 million per year has been earmarked for abstinence-only sex education. In such programs, there is to be no mention of condoms, or IUDs or contraceptives of any kind. The only education is “don’t do anything dirty, or you’ll get sick and never be happy”. If you think this is a simplification of abstinence only education, the only simplification is that I haven’t prettied it up with scientific sounding words. In the long run, that is exactly what it boils down to. The Bible says don’t do it. It is bad. You will not be happy if you do it, and you will have happier marriages if you wait. Some of the programs try to sweeten the pot by adding in glitz and glamour, such as the “Silver Ring Thing” which gives each girl signing a chastity vow a silver ring as a reminder of her vow. Glowing reports of the success of abstinence only programs have been issued by the people running them, but actual scientifically done studies that have tested their efficacy have been considerably less rosy. There is, in fact, little evidence that they are any more effective than comprehensive sex education, and much of the evidence actually suggests they are less effective. That, of course, depends upon how you measure success.
For most of us, the measure of success of a sex education program would entail actually reducing teenage sex, or at the very least, reducing teenage pregnancy and teenage STDs. This is, however, not the goal of the abstinence only programs. Reporters investigating these programs and interviewing their administrators have often been shocked when the people in charge of a local abstinence only program admit openly that they are not concerned with reducing teenage pregnancy or disease; they are interested in bringing the young people to Jesus, or at the very least, making sure they hear the message. In this, they point out, they have been very successful, much more successful than any comprehensive sex education program. This makes sense, since the message of Jesus is not the goal of the comprehensive sex education programs, and they are required by their Constitutional mandates to present a secular message in publicly funded programs. Of course, the abstinence only programs are also supposed to present a secular message when they receive public funds, but this is honored only in the breach. The children are given a message of spiritual oneness with Jesus, and chastity based on Biblical precepts.
In addition to the Biblical messages, the students in abstinence only programs are fed scientifically inaccurate information. They are given wildly distorted facts about the efficiency of condoms in preventing both pregnancy and STDs. They are told that it is a fact that if you have sex before marriage, you will have a lifetime of misery in your relationships. This is presented as a fact, even though there are no scientific studies that support this claim. They are falsely told that abortion makes you more likely to get breast cancer, and also given information about infertility following abortion that has absolutely no bearing on reality whatsoever. Students in abstinence only programs are told, dishonestly, that bacteria and viruses can get through the pores in condoms. The misinformation has been documented, the programs have been informed of their inaccuracy, but the ideology of the program is such that science becomes irrelevant.
Of course, all of this scientific inaccuracy could be overlooked if the programs are effective. What’s a little white lie for the sake of accomplishing a greater goal? Unfortunately, the programs are not effective. Studies have shown that students going through these programs are not less likely to have sex than students in more traditional comprehensive programs. Those students who sign chastity pledges delay the onset of sexual activity by only a few months compared to their peers, and evidence suggests that they have anal and oral sex more frequently, in order to retain their virginity. Studies have also revealed that students exposed to abstinence only education are more likely to get pregnant and/or to get STDs than students in comprehensive sex education. The administrators of these programs acknowledge these data; they simply don’t have much problem with these facts. After all, they say, if you choose to have sex, you should expect to face the unpleasant consequences of sin.
Much of the debate around sex education results from the uncomfortable relationship that western civilization has with human sexuality. Most of us are brought up to regard sex as something inherently dirty and wrong, but at the same time, fun and exciting. This sort of ambivalence leads us to make many mistakes in how we approach sexual relationships, as well as how we approach long-term love relationships. It also leads to some painful, comical moments when we attempt to impart whatever knowledge we might have to our children. We convince ourselves that our children are too young for as long as we can, and eventually we give them “the talk” – usually to discover they have already been informed or misinformed about most of it by their peers or their older siblings. Usually, we wait too late before we have “that talk”, because of our discomfort over broaching such a touchy topic with our beloved little ones. Most parents wait until they see the obvious signs of puberty, and even then may manage to convince themselves it’s too early if the child hasn’t broached the topic themselves. In reality, these conversations need to happen before the child reaches puberty. Biologically, a child who is 12 and has started her period is no longer a child. She is not fully a woman, because her body will continue to grow and change for another decade or so, but she is sexually mature, and her body will begin to work in strange and unfamiliar ways. The same is true for boys at puberty. In ages past, when children got married in their early teens (Romeo and Juliet were only 14), the onset of puberty at 12 didn’t cause too much problem with the societal expectation of chastity. Children reached puberty, became adults, and got married. Now, with a long adolescent period stretching like an eternity between puberty and marriage, societal expectations become much more difficult to enforce. Abstinence in teenagers is as unnatural as vegetarianism in dogs and cats. Until we recognize this basic biological fact, all our best efforts to protect our teenagers will be in vain. Comprehensive sex education should, and does, address abstinence as the most effective means of preventing pregnancy and disease, and as the goal to strive for; however, it also includes sensible explanations of sex and contraception, in the recognition that some of the students will not remain celibate.
The abstinence program has not been a success, and there is no reason to believe it will be a success if we continue to throw larger sums of money at it. To be totally fair, abstinence only funding was part of the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton, but in recent years, as the funding has continued to climb and to erode the amount of money available for comprehensive sex education, the national dialogue has become even more stilted, as people tip-toe around the difficult issues, afraid of offending someone. For too long, sex has been a taboo subject, spoken of only in back rooms and hushed whispers, a topic for scandal and ostracism. The sexual revolution, far from changing all of that, seems to have made it only worse, as the dialogue has veered into even more ridiculous domain, with the backlash threatening to return us abruptly to the period of human history when sexual misadventure was regarded as a sin so loathsome the sinner could not be accepted in broader society. Bristol Palin is only the beginning of the necessary dialogue, a dialogue that should not center on Bristol Palin, nor be designed as a smear campaign, but that will be focused on what the failure of Sarah Palin’s vision for America could mean for all of America, not just for Bristol Palin.
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