McNally - Board of Directors of Milwaukee ACLU
Posted on 12/04/2005 5:58:58 PM PST by SJackson
Abstinence should definitely be encouraged in the Wisconsin Legislature. All of us would be better off if state politicians abstained from passing laws about things they know nothing about.
Republican legislators are about to pass a law requiring schools in the state to teach teenagers that sexual abstinence until marriage is the "preferred" behavior in Wisconsin.
Legislators actually believe they have a right to declare certain sexual activities - or, in this case, no sexual activity - the official behavior of our state much the same way they designate various species of wildlife the official state bird or the official state rodent.
At the same time politicians are telling everyone in our state not to have sexual relations unless they are married, they also are in the process of amending our Constitution to tell other people in our state they can never get married.
So what is it our schools are supposed to be teaching gay teenagers exactly? You shouldn't engage in sex unless you are married and, by the way, you can't get married.
Is it even true that sexual abstinence until marriage is the preferred behavior in our society anymore? That's extremely doubtful.
We read novels about the quaint, olden days when the wedding night was a fumbling, frightening embarrassment between two ignorant amateurs. But today many people - let's venture to say most people - delay marriage until they've had some hands-on, real-world experience with sexual relationships.
It seems like a good idea. On the other hand, it's clearly an extremely bad idea for the Legislature to pass a law requiring schools to teach things that aren't true.
Politicians have no problem with lying laws. Republican legislators recently passed another bill requiring doctors in Wisconsin to lie to their patients. The purpose of that bill was to discourage women in the state from having abortions.
Politicians came up with the idea of requiring doctors to advise their patients that after 20 weeks a fetus is developed enough to feel pain and suffer during an abortion. Doctors are not currently telling women any such thing because there is no medical evidence that it is true.
Gov. Jim Doyle is expected to veto the bill. Otherwise, Wisconsin doctors would be required by law to forget everything they learned in medical school and tell their patients whatever lies politicians want to make up.
It takes a special kind of arrogance for misinformed politicians to presume to substitute their own ignorance and prejudices for the professional education of a physician or a schoolteacher.
Mandating the teaching of ignorance by law isn't just misguided. In today's world, it can be fatal.
There has never been a society in the history of the world in which teenagers failed to discover sex. The attraction is natural and powerful enough to overcome the sternest lectures on abstinence, even one with the full power of the Wisconsin Legislature behind it.
The problem with "abstinence only" or "abstinence first" education in the schools is that it has been used to discourage contraception at a time when safe sex has never been more important.
Because HIV and AIDS have raised the stakes of unprotected sex, responsible sex education should acknowledge the fact that some teenagers will engage in sex and encourage them to use contraception if they do.
Instead, abstinence education attempts to terrify teenagers away from sex by over-emphasizing the failure of contraception, which, statistically, is extremely rare.
As a result, research has shown that teenagers who have been taught abstinence-only are much less likely to use any protection at all when they do have sex.
Abstinence fails far more often than condoms do. Sex has a way of breaking out spontaneously between two people in spite of advance disavowals and without any consultation at all with the Legislature.
The strictest, most controlling societies have never succeeded in preventing the discovery and enthusiastic participation in sex.
That's not because teenagers are immoral. Sexual activity itself is neither moral nor immoral. It is biological.
There are complicated moral questions surrounding the subject of sex, and parents and schools have a responsibility to talk openly with young people about those.
These include the immorality of attempting to forcefully gratify sexual desires with someone who is unwilling or of dishonestly abusing the emotions of another for sexual gain.
Some people have a sincere religious belief that it is immoral to have sex outside of marriage. Those people should refrain from having sex outside of marriage. They also are free to teach those beliefs to their children.
But even the most socially conservative parents these days probably would prefer to see their children grow into healthy, happy, sexually responsible young adults, even if it takes a little practice.
Joel McNally of Milwaukee writes a weekly column for The Capital Times. E-mail: jmcnally@wi.rr.com
Published: 9:10 AM 12/3/05
Wild-eye right drags down iconic American Girl dolls
Almost as bad, in attempting to prevent teenage pregnancy, Girls Inc. reveals to girls that abstinence is not the only method of birth control. Since abstinence has been known to fail, it also acknowledges the existence of contraception and abortion.
For your political list. Joel McNally is so entertaining.
Plus historically legislatures have more comptence in the area of human sexual behavior than in the area of animal behavior. This guy should read a definitojn of "police power."
"Since abstinence has been known to fail"
I've heard of this happening one time in roughly the last 2000 years.
There's nothing safe about sex with condoms. It's actually a pretty good way to get STDs or AIDS if they choose the wrong partner.
The people who peddle this kind of junk to naive kids should realize that they are complicit in killing them.
"Since abstinence has been known to fail"
Well, there was that one case of a virgin birth..
Exactly!
Whether that pleases the author, I don't know. I'd guess he'd prefer you don't talk about it. His editorial last month, Far right politicians give Christians a bad name
BARF!
They do have that right. If the parents of the children in that state declare the 'preferred sexual behavior' of their children be to abstain from sex, then their elected Representatives have all the right in the world to suggest such to the state's children. It's just basic morality anyway, fornication and sex outside of marraige are sinful according to the Christian faith.
For the secularists/atheists/anti-religionsists out there, children having sex can be bad for other reasons too. They very often get pregnant, get STDs, get a bad reputation and a poor self image. They can grow up too fast and lose their childhood. Children who refrain from haivng sex, on the other hand, are never harmed by their abstinance. They've everything to gain and nothing to lose.
My reaction too. Ugly + Liberal = BARF
They most certainly do. Depending on the circumstances, Wisconsin's age of consent is either 17 or 18.
You could, though that's changing the topic in the same way the author does in equating the teaching of abstinance with a rejection of birth control.
What they DON'T want is for young women to have happy little babies, period.
Instead, they want them to wait so they fall within two demographics: miserable, single, bitter, professional leftists... or nanny-state dependant failures who never learned any responsibility, let alone family values.
Both groups vote democrat.
Bullsheet, abstinence does work...
Legislating morality rarely works.
That said, there's something else in play here. And it has to do with money.
I don't think the creation of babies even enters the discussion. If abstinance doesn't work, well, there are ways of avoiding babies after the fact.
Shall we do a poll to determine what percentage of parents were intoxicated as teens and therefore justify teen drinking?
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