“These programs work…We see it all the time. I don’t trust this data…Things have changed.”
– in-denial Leslee Uhruh, president of the nonprofit National Abstinence Clearinghouse, wailing about a new study out that abstinence/virginity pledges aren’t cutting teen sex
Facts be damned, the bible beaters have their fingers tightly pushed into their ears, their eyes closed, and singing “la la la la la la” as reports come out indicating that teens are engaging in sexual activity despite virginity pledges, silver rings and Jesus head jewelry. (WaPo):
Many abstinence programs have embraced the concept of virginity pledges, encouraging children as young as 9 to promise to wait until marriage to have sex.
So how reliable are reports of sexual activity by teenagers who took such a pledge?
Not very, according to a study by Harvard doctoral candidate Janet Rosenbaum published in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Rosenbaum found that 53 percent of adolescents in a large, federally funded study who said they made a virginity pledge denied doing so a year later, often after they had become sexually active.
At the same time, 10 percent of teenagers who said they had had intercourse and then made a pledge or became born-again Christians subsequently said they were virgins.
The WaPo also reported on this in March 2005, again, with data on these virginity pledges touted by head-in-the-sand organizations like True Love Waits and the Silver Ring Thing — they are doing nothing to stop the spread of STDs in young people.
It was found that among the 20 percent of kids that took a virginity pledge, 61 percent of the consistent pledgers and 79 percent of the inconsistent pledgers reported having intercourse before marrying or prior to 2002 interviews. Almost 7 percent of the students who did not make a pledge were diagnosed with an STD, compared with 6.4 percent of the “inconsistent pledgers” and 4.6 percent of the “consistent pledgers.”
But for some of the fundies, stopping STDs isn’t even the point, and they are admitting it. That’s refreshing.
Denny Pattyn, founder of Silver Ring Thing, an evangelical Christian program that has received federal funding, said that about 60,000 youths have made virginity pledges after attending a three-hour sound and light show sponsored by his Pittsburgh-based group. Participants spend $15 for a silver ring inscribed with a Biblical verse — a virginity symbol to be removed on the wearer’s wedding day and given to his or her spouse.
“We teach abstinence because it’s the truth,” said Pattyn. “We don’t analyze ourselves based on reducing the risk.”
Pattyn said that his program assesses its effectiveness in part by sending e-mails to participants for four months after they take a pledge to ask if they are abstinent.
There you have it. La la la la la la…
Silver Ring Thing, by the way, lost its faith-based funds in January after it was found to be in violation of fed regs that prohibit “religious instruction or proselytization.” Up until that point it had received over a million of your tax dollars. In order for the organization to reapply for buxxx, it has to separate its abstinence education from religious education. With above statements like Pattyn’s, it doesn’t sound like there’s been much of a change in “strategy.”
Also:
* Newsflash: fundies are f*cking before marriage
* Abstinence ed is really working: oral sex safe and not really sex, say teens
* Texas teens increasingly knocking boots after abstinence program
Hat tip, Holly
76 Responses to “Fundies, one more time — virginity pledges are failing”
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The one lesson that even the fundies should have taken from Clinton’s impeachment– PEOPLE LIE ABOUT SEX. Especially teenagers and especially if there is a lot riding on the idea that they shouldn’t be having The Sex.
Four months? Allow me to go out on a limb here and say that if you’re going to do follow-ups to make sure your property…i mean, participants aren’t having sex after doing the Silver Ring BS, you may want to do it for a little bit more than four months.
Not to mention the fact that folks you’re e-mailing could be, you know, lying.
Hell, a friend of mine in college wore her “virginity ring” long after it didn’t mean anything, because she couldn’t face her family’s wrath if she stopped wearing it.
Another thing I have wondered about is what it is supposed to mean if you lose the ring or trinket accidentally (e.g., while swimming)? Is that like breaking your hymen while riding a horse?
Alright, stats are malleable, you can fudge them and twist them and basically make them say more or less the opposite of what they really say, so generally speaking I’m willing to give some wiggle room on the ‘those stats are wrong’ argument. But for crying out loud, Leslee, you then have to have your own counter-stats to back up your argument with! You can’t just bluntly declare that stats are untrue with no proof or even a decent theory.
And no, ‘Things have changed’ is not a decent theory.
I still like Dan Savage’s take (this week) on the abstinence rings—since more than 50% of those who wear the rings break their vows within a year, he counselled a teenager whose Christian girlfriend didn’t want to have sex, why not get her an abstinence ring and wait a year?
“We teach abstinence because it’s the truth,� said Pattyn. “We don’t analyze ourselves based on reducing the risk.�
Is it just me or does it seem like they don’t even know what the meaning of “the truth” is? How exactly can “the truth” apply to abstinence as the subject of the sentence?
As someone who remained celibate in high school, through no choice of my own, I first found this whole “abstinence” movement very offensive, but then I looked at the stats on kids who take these pledges and found out that not only are they just as likely to have sex as anyone else, but they’re actually MORE likely to engage in oral and anal sex. So I’m all for these virginity pledges, in his column today Dan Savage counseled a young man who is dating a nice Catholic girl who won’t put out, to join her in a “virginity pledge.” Logic being it may take a while, but the numbers show you have at least a 50/50 chance of getting in her pants within a year of taking the pledge, or at the very least you can explore the various loopholes in the silver-ring thing contract. So my advice to all of those young men and women struggling with virginity in high school is to hop on the abstinence bandwagon! You’ll be no worse off than you are now, but at least you’ll have a better opportunity to meet and mingle with other desperately horny and confused teenagers, who now thanks to this “pledge” are now probably more aware of having sex, while at the same time more compelled to remain “pure”. Just remember, the more dirty and illicit something seems the more fun it is.
Why can’t they just see that their God endowed us with wonderful play things and doled out particularly out-of-control urges to teenagers to play with them and play with each others?
Then they might be on the path to a naturally verified spiritual truth!
I would highly recommend a book, [i]Kingdom Coming[/i], by Michelle Goldberg. It’s about the rise of the Christian dominionists; one of the strong points she makes in the book is that the dominionists never met a fact they didn’t hate.
They dismiss inconvenient fact as a bias of their opponents, the secular humanists. There is no common ground of reality between the two groups; both dismiss the other’s arguments and citations as flawed and unacceptable.
So this, teaching abstinence because it’s the truth and dismissing the other side’s statistics as flawed, is entirely in line with the rest of the movement, such as attacking Darwinism and evolution.
I hesitate to dismiss abstinence-only out of hand as a stupid idea, but giving any credence to it at all really is the start of a slippery slope. It is clear to me that societal pressures simply don’t outweigh internal and hormonal pressures, so expecting outward signs of conformity to reflect internal behavior is bootless.
It is clear to me that societal pressures simply don’t outweigh internal and hormonal pressures, so expecting outward signs of conformity to reflect internal behavior is bootless.
Here’s why your position (and most of Pandagon’s) is wrong: SImply put, you do not challenge the young of today to rise above animal instinct. You say in practice, “Poor babies. You simply can’t help yourselves. Just like dogs that piddle on the carpet, you can’t help but screw. So, we’ll facilitate that.”
By denying the need for abstinence, despite your statistics, you bless our reversion to animals.
ANd I suspect many of you are OK with that. A further sad commentary.
Sex is inevitable…it was for each parent and it will eventually be for each child. There are a limited number of choices once we accept this premise but they all have merit. Sex promulgates life but it’s also enjoyable and desirable…even when people aren’t doing it to create offspring. What children need is an understanding of the merits of sex as a component of love. They should be encouraged to appreciate that sex is good and natural. They should receive good education about sexual issues, and they should be given a full understanding of its negative consequences.
The debate is so polarized by the ‘yes or no’ mentality that children can’t get past the right or wrong structure to equate sex with healthy and meaningful relationships. Sex and love are not simple yes or no concepts. Inundating children with such messages handicaps their ability to have successful relationships. It’s time parent’s start thinking about their children’s welfare and well-being instead of clinging to their own antiquated and ingrained fears and obstacles.
read full article here:
www.thoughttheater.com
Chan -I haven’t read Michelle Goldberg’s book (though I’ll be looking it up as soon as I’m done commenting), but it’s important to make a distinction between Dominionism and the rest of the religious right. Most of the religious right in the USA are premillenial dispensetionalists, which means they believe that the rapture will occur, followed by the tribulation, followed by the millenial rule of Jesus on earth. Dominionists are postmillenialists, who believe that a thousand year rule by Godly Men(tm) is a precondition for the return of Jesus, with the whole tribulation ‘n stuff taking place either before or after, depending on the particular flavor of postmillenialism.
Dominionists are wackjobs, much scarier than the Robertson crowd: If you have a choice between Robertson’s Gilead and Rushdoony’s Gilead, go with Robertson. It’s that bad. The good news is that Dominion theology is a very small movement within modern USAmerican religious wackjobbery. The bad news is that they do have sympthizers and fellow travelers within the more mainstream religious right who are willing to overlook the fundamental theological incompatibilities in order to gain political power.
So sex is the same as piddling on the carpet? Yikes. But let’s follow the analogy for a moment. If sex is like piddling on the carpet, then abstinence education’s like telling someone not to pee. Ever.
Seems to me abstinence education’s pretty much guaranteed to make for some messed-up puppies.
Or better yet, abstinence education’s like telling kids they can’t pee until they’re married. But what’s that make their spouse? The toilet?
There’s something really wrong with this compass, I think.
compass:
The fact that you silo and dismiss normal human sexuality as “animal instinct” and equate it with dogs piddling on carpets just serves to demonstrate how narrow and incomplete your view is.
Sexuality — and yes, the enjoyment thereof — is a highly complex, multifaceted, fluid, emotional, psychological and yes, physical thing. Writing it off as the same as excreting shows just how silly and undeveloped and panicked by complexity and subtlety and choice you really are.
If sex is like piddling on the carpet, then abstinence education’s like telling someone not to pee. Ever. […] Or …like telling kids they can’t pee until they’re married.
nolo: Succinct and witty and accurate.
I’m jealous.
Is it any wonder the divorce rate is higest in the Bible belt? When the only concern in dealing with teenagers is whether or not they’re having sex and the most important purpose of marriage is that it’s a green light for sex, everyone is left completely ignorant of the compexities of long-term relationships, not to mention absolutely no information about how to make healthy sexuality a part of such relationships. Sex, will keep a relationship together for about eighteen months, regardless of the pscyhological/social compatability of the partners. When couples are using birth control and allowed to experiment, they can then move on to find more suitable partners (and will recognize, with proper education and advice why starting sex too early in a relationship often leads to disaster). But when you have to get married to even experiment with sex, then, by the very nature of human sexuality, it can only lead to early marriage, with countless marriages failing after 18 months or so… Just enough time to have a child or two involved in the mess. But then, of course, I’m sure I’m just reflecting the liberal bias always reflected in reality.
“By denying the need for abstinence, despite your statistics, you bless our reversion to animals.”
What pray tell is this desperate “need” for abstinence? Forget all of the cold hard irreffutable facts that show that abstinence education, at best doesn’t work, and at worst endangers the health and well being of those exposed to it, and just focus on what’s wrong with having sex? Why is having sex always the gateway to animalistic depravity and not a gateway to a higher knowledge of self or collective understanding? Teenagers are gonna have sex, its not an “animal” instinct, its a human instinct. Young people have been having sex long before contraception or feminism were ever invented and will continue to do so long after. Sex is a need as basic as sleeping and eating, and as long as we’re talking about animals why not bring up the concept of estrous? Estrous refers to the the recurring physiologic changes that are induced by reproductive hormones in most mammalian females, except for humans and great apes. So what–biologically speaking–seperates us from the animals? Well how about this:
“Mammals share the same reproductive system, including the regulatory hypothalamic system that releases gonadotropin releasing hormone in pulses, the pituitary that secretes follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone, and the sex hormones including estrogens and progesterone. However, species vary significantly in the detailed functioning. One difference is that animals that have estrous cycles reabsorb the endometrium if conception does not occur during that cycle. Animals that have menstrual cycles shed the endometrium through menstruation instead. Another difference is sexual activity. In species with estrous cycles, females are generally only sexually active during the estrous phase of their cycle…Humans, unlike some other species, do not have any external signs to signal receptivity at ovulation.”
So what does this mean? Basically, unlike lower species of mammals (cats, dogs, horses, bears, etc.) who only fuck when “in heat”, we are ready to go at it almost all the time. So for whatever reason human females have a more advanced reproductive system that allows for a much greater flexibility. So why not take full advantage of this biological quirk? And as long as we are living in the year 2006–I know sometimes I find it hard to believe–why not take advantage of our highly evolved brains and utilize some of the more handy technological advances so as to remove some of the risk involved in having sex? I know that’s an abomination to most religious fundementalists, but really grow the fuck up.
seeker, I just find it incredibly creepy and weird that compass is analogizing sex to the excretion of waste.
Y’all are missing the whole point. The purpose of these virginity programs is to make women feel guilty about having sex, thereby greatly increasing their personal hotness, naughty little things…
It’s worked for the Holy Roman & Apostolic Church since the days of the Apostle Paul. I think we’d be shortsighted and unkind to deny the Fundies this tradition-tested means of enhancing the pleasure of the marital act.
nolo: Me too. It is a rather neat demonstration, though, of some people’s borderline mentally ill view that sex is as necessary as shitting, but more disgusting.
you bless our reversion to animals.
Got news for ya Compass, there isn’t a reversion involved.
Unless you are talking about removing the technological means by which we prevent pregnancy and STDs - removing those are a REAL reversion.
It’s important to remember that the anti-sex wackjobs aren’t really anti-sex wackjobs (if they were, they’d recognize their methods weren’t very effective and switch to something else) — they’re anti-safe-sex wackjobs. It’s OK with them if you have sex, just as long as you feel bad and icky about it and increase your risk of pregnancy and STDs.
If they merely taught abstinence, that would be fine (albeit mostly pointless). It’s the fact that they teach abstinence only that makes them evil. They’re like rock-climbing instructors who refuse to teach their students about ropes or harnesses.
The purpose of these virginity programs is to make women feel guilty about having sex, thereby greatly increasing their personal hotness, naughty little things…
Which is all well and good until they decide they’d rather not fuck you either, thanks.
I hesitate to dismiss abstinence-only out of hand as a stupid idea
Good gods, why? It’s a ridiculous bit of church doctrine dressed up as legitimate school teachings, it leaves students incredibly unprepared for eventually having sex, and it’s a proven failure. What on earth does it take for you to dismiss it out of hand as a stupid idea?
If sex is like peeing, then comprehensive sex ed must be like toilet training, including the parts about “wipe” and “wash your hands afterwards,” which are the basic instructions for cleanliness and health in this culture. I do think it’s a rather pathological analogy, though.
Shorter compass: “Seatbelts cause car accidents!”
Dude, comparing sex to peeing is disgusting and wrong. I don’t even want to know what the hell anyone who would have thought of that analogy in the first place is like in bed.
By denying the need for abstinence
Why, yes, I do dismiss a need for abstinence. Where does this need come from? Oh, silly fables? No thanks.
seeker, I concur. I had a thought, though, that’s intriguing me. Lots of social conservatives (and I know a few of them personally) are also avid sport hunters, and they encourage their kids, both boys and girls to take up the sport as well. In fact, my SO’s Rush Limbaugh-reading brother’s 11 year old daughter took her first deer last fall. It was a clean shot, too, and I’m told she took it with a gun that’s not exactly a beginner’s weapon. When Dick Cheney was in town a few days ago, I thought about carrying a sign that said “My 11 Year Old Niece Is A Better Shot Than You.” But I didn’t, and I digress.
I’ve got no problem with hunting per se, nor do I have a problem with kids engaging in the sport. What fascinates me, though, is that when it comes to guns and kids, my social conservative friends firmly believe that education, not abstinence, is the answer to avoiding tragedies. When it comes to their kids and sex, though, it’s another story. The same parents who feel they can trust their 11 year old daughter to operate a firearm that grown men find challenging suddenly get uncomfortable letting the same girl have information about how her body works. And there’s something really wrong with that.
I hate it when a troll makes me think of something that’s worth mentioning, but compass brings up this point: we say that people will have sex, that it is a deep-rooted biological impulse and it is futile to deny its existence, and that controlling it will only lead to warped values and societies. What’s troublesome is that this sounds like the ‘boys will be boys’ argument often used in defending rapists. Testosterone, that’s just what it does - obviously, that statement is full of shit. The problem is that I think we get lazy and use the same language. The consequences are radically different, and I’m not arguing that sex=rape at all, but I think we do grant that people should be expected to limit their instincts.
We don’t oppose abstinence-only education merely for its impossibility; that’s a convienient bit of of statistics. The problem is that it substitutes a religious ideology for actual sound research on how to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies. When it’s taught as science rather than morality, we should accent its failures as such, but it’s fundamentally only a part of the problem. The real issue isn’t that the fundies seek to overturn our teenage hormones, as that they seek to destroy sex. It’s connection to instinct can be stressed, but even if we didn’t feel the biological urge, I think we have to make a case for it.
Compass, were you a virgin until marriage? If not, go fuck yourself.
(Is that like wetting your pants?)
You say in practice, “Poor babies. You simply can’t help yourselves. Just like dogs that piddle on the carpet, you can’t help but screw. So, we’ll facilitate that.�
I dunno how you train your dog, but I made sure mine was housebroken. She gets to pee, but not on my carpet.
Sure, there’s the inevitable accident if she’s sick or she’s been in too long or there’s a thunderstorm, but for the most part, the training we did ensures that she gets to take care of her physical needs and I don’t need to follow her with a bottle of Nature’s Miracle.
Telling my dog to never, ever pee, and never taking her outside just ensures that I will have a pee-soaked carpet.
A friend’s sister is an OB-Gyn who trained in the New York City area, then moved
to Lynchburg, VA (home of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University). She said that she
had never seem so much venereal disease as when she moved to Virginia.
Once again, Compass’ needle seems to be spinning wildly out of synch with reality.
Them hors are moaning. Hallelujah!
By denying the need for abstinence, despite your statistics, you bless our reversion to animals.
This is rich. By supporting the use of prophylactic devices and/or chemicals developed by these huge ass brains we humans are blessed (by God for you religious types) with we are “reverting” to an animal state? Yet insisting that a woman risk pregnancy with every act of coitus raises us above animals somehow? What-the-fuck-ever dude.
Keep sawing away at your thumbs, you should be ready to move back into the trees any time monkey-boy. Devolution in action.
We don’t oppose abstinence-only education merely for its impossibility; that’s a convienient bit of of statistics.
Personally, I oppose it because education that relies on selective ignorance is worse than useless.
I do remember my mom telling another mother who had declared that slasher movies were preferable to ones with sexual content “well, I expect my kids to have sex at some point, but I’d prefer they not murder people or be murdered.” She was great that way.
When are these people going to learn that suffering doesn’t automatically make you a good person? And that sometimes, it just makes you tiresome?
I think the analogy Compass was trying to draw (and obviously failed at) was that dogs can’t be taught abstinence (if they could, we’d have no need for spaying and neutering) and we believe abstinence-only education is just as worthless. Observe:
“Here’s why your position (and most of Pandagon’s) is wrong: SImply put, you do not challenge the young of today to rise above animal instinct. You say in practice, “Poor babies. You simply can’t help yourselves. Just like dogs that piddle on the carpet, you can’t help but screw. So, we’ll facilitate that.”
By denying the need for abstinence, despite your statistics, you bless our reversion to animals.
ANd I suspect many of you are OK with that. A further sad commentary.”
I was going to say this guy has a Puritan mindset, but the Puritans promoted sex as a gift and duty from God.
It’s a good point, Mikey, that we shouldn’t get too reliant on the “instincts” explanation. However, I’d say there’s a big difference between a couple of teenagers mutually deciding to follow their instincts, and a teenaged boy raping his girlfriend. When your instincts lead you to hurt other people,t hose instincts damn well need to be restrained. So I’d say sex ed needs to include both information about safe sex, and the reminder that it’s okay to say no when you’re being pressured, and that you should damn well take no for an answer. Which, if memory serves, my comprehensive sex ed classes way back when did include.
BTW, what the abstinence-only types don’t seem to realize is that the best way to get teenagers not to have sex is to de-mystify it. If it’s this huge, forbidden “grown-up” thing, then it’s fascinating. If parents and educators talk to teens about sex in a matter-of-fact way, it seems much less exciting. Heck, my mom raised my two siblings and me in a very sex-positive atmosphere, and none of us got around to having sex until we were in college. There was nothing to rebel against. She gave us books, talked about sex in a non-embarrassed way, even left boxes of condoms around the house just in case we intended to have sex but were too embarrassed to talk to her about it. All it accomplished was to make sure my one sexually active high school friend had a good supply of condoms, and I really couldn’t be bothered with it. Having to remember to take a pill every morning, using condoms, finding a place to have seex, having to figure out how to clean up the mess afterwards. Those things all sounded like a lot of hassle (but I knew I’d have to do them if I did have sex, because the idea of teen pregnancy or STDs sounded much worse), so I figured I’d wait until I was off at college and had some privacy. Sure, I was curious, but I already knew all about it in theory, and had for years, so I didn’t feel a pressing need to indulge my curiosity in high school.
Dear compass,
Human beings ARE animals. That’s right. Just like every other animal, we eat, sleep, defecate, urinate, experience fear and joy, and reproduce. Almost every single mammal and ALL primates engage in sexual contact that has nothing to do with reproduction, but instead serves a social purpose. There is tons of literature out there on this.
And, just like animals, we show irrational fear of things that are harmless to us but nonetheless escape our comprehension. Your post is an example of that.
|T|
When dogs hump they can’t think and plan ahead for the future. In fact, the purpose of having heat is to ensure that the female dog gets knocked up with puppies, which she may or may not tend for, depending on circumstances. (I’m pretty sure most mama dogs will do their best to tend to most of their brood, but having never had a dog in my life, I don’t know.) G-d knows the daddy dog isn’t going to be sticking around in a lot of circumstances.
But when I hop into bed with my beloved, we use the brains G-d gave us (and the nice scientists who created the stuff) and have at with birth control pills and/or condoms. So, pray tell, how exactly is it that we are lowering ourselves to the animal level? Seems to me that using birth control raises us above animals, because we can plan ahead for contingencies.
But I’m a sex educator, so what I say probably isn’t worth a hill of beans in the mind of someone like compass.
I personally resent the comparison of my following my urges with that of animals following their urges.
Regression? Bah!
I have far more creative fun with my sex life than most animals I can think of, except maybe the Platypus. Then again, fighting for mating rights with venomous spurs is perhaps an overrated pleasure.
Then again, fighting for mating rights with venomous spurs is perhaps an overrated pleasure.
Obviously, you’ve never been in some of the places I hang out in.
But seriously, folks, compasses’…*ahem*…observation reminds me of the time the last Pope John was handed blueprints for the new Vatican expansion. He looked them over, then wrote “We are not angels.” in Italian in the corner and sent them back to the builders to be changed…because the architect had forgotten to include any bathrooms.
Chan said “They dismiss inconvenient fact as a bias of their opponents, the secular humanists. There is no common ground of reality between the two groups; both dismiss the other’s arguments and citations as flawed and unacceptable.”
One problem with your logic Chan, reality IS the common ground that we all share. Secularists try to make sure that what they think is true is not in conflict with the facts. The antihumanists try to make sure that they ignore reality when it conflicts with their “truth”. The so called arguments made by people like Denny Pattyn are flawed and unacceptable.
Mikey’s point is a good one, and I’ve said similar things before.
Another thing I’ve said before is that this abstinence-until-marriage business isn’t really about denying sexuality. It’s about enforcing a specific model of sexuality.
The conservative Christians I’ve known *demanded* that kids start dating as they reached their teens. Having a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend was *mandatory*. It’s a public problem if a conservative Christian teen was single. And the expectation was that they’d get married early, and have a certain sort of domestic arrangement with a certain number of children.
It’s quite understandable that abstinence pledges fail, since there’s so much pressure placed on conservative Christian kids to express their sexuality, albeit in narrowly circumscribed ways.
Wheee!! So much to respond to !!!
Sex is inevitable Once again, the animal argument. Already responded to that.
So sex is the same as piddling on the carpet? Stop twisting my words. I am saying that is what YOU people view it as. A biological imperative as unavoidable as excretion.
But let’s follow the analogy for a moment. If sex is like piddling on the carpet, then abstinence education’s like telling someone not to pee. See above.
Or better yet, abstinence education’s like telling kids they can’t pee until they’re married. But what’s that make their spouse? The toilet? There’s something really wrong with this compass, See above. And if you see your spouse as a toilet. . .well, all I can say is that the idea occurred to you, not to me.
Writing it off as the same as excreting shows just how silly and undeveloped and panicked by complexity and subtlety and choice you really are. See above. You people need to read simple English. This is a comparison that your position de facto creates. I do not agree with it. I simply point it out.
Why is having sex always the gateway to animalistic depravity and not a gateway to a higher knowledge of self or collective understanding? Never said that. said that to BLESS untrammelled access to sex is to say that people are no better than animals. Again, you folks cannot read the message in plain English.
but really grow the f***up. More of that good-time liberal rhetorical skills showing themselves.
Got news for ya Compass, there isn’t a reversion involved. Well Kate, maybe you’re still an animal. Good luck with that.
They’re like rock-climbing instructors who refuse to teach their students about ropes or harnesses. Nice try, but no sale. Rock climbing is an individual activity. To take your analogy to its logical end, we should not be teaching about masturbation unless we show masturbaters how to use condoms. It doesn’t parse.
Shorter compass: “Seatbelts cause car accidents!â€? Sophist, your name fits you. (Sophists. . .)reflected a desire for spurious learning that would lead to political success (http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/sophists.htm). In other words, you’re dead wrong and illogical to boot, but it sounds good to your nattering, unlearned supporters.
Dude, comparing sex to peeing is disgusting and wrong. I don’t even want to know what the hell anyone who would have thought of that analogy in the first place is like in bed. Yet another -out of dozens- of people who cannot parse simple English.
but I think we do grant that people should be expected to limit their instincts. Well put, Mikey. Now, we might then debate the issue of STD prevention, which is an entirely different subject, and your points there on one level are very valid indeed. Thank you for actually reading and comprehending.
Compass, were you a virgin until marriage? If not, go fuck yourself.
(Is that like wetting your pants?)
More of that good old-time liberal rhetorical skills showing itself.
Sarcastro, READ THE COMMENT CAREFULLY!!! Your ignorance is showing itself most dreadfully.
I was going to say this guy has a Puritan mindset, but the Puritans promoted sex as a gift and duty from God. Lost again. Never said sex was a bad thing in any way.
Human beings ARE animals. That’s right. As I said earlier Furious, maybe you are. Good luck with that.
But I’m a sex educator, so what I say probably isn’t worth a hill of beans in the mind of someone like compass. True enough. A question: If sex is so instinctive, why do we need teachers?
Like you?
When are these people going to learn that suffering doesn’t automatically make you a good person? And that sometimes, it just makes you tiresome?
like Compass?
I think you hurt compass’s feelings. Oh, and he/she didn’t answer the question about how well his/her virginity pledge worked.
Now for something more productive and less snarky:
Compass argues from the point of view that (nonhuman) animals have no control over their appetites, wheras human beings, in theory do. Exercising control over ones appetites is the, if not sole, primary way for a human being to differentiate himself from lesser animals. I learned about Boethius and the great chain of being as well.
Thus the fascination with abstinence, earlier fascinations with fasting, vigils and even (givien there is an appetite to avoiding suffering) flagellation.
I find a pair of logical errors with the use of that argument (which given the fact that Compass has introduced and not expounded upon it, I must take that he is arguing exactly as I have heard it many times before)
1) That the current sexual conduct of a plurality (if not majority) of people is the full expression of our animalistic urges. I’ve never experienced, witnessed or heard from a reliable source accounts where this is true. Some people do undoubtedly have sexual intercourse on no other impetus but their appetites. That is not what anyone here has yet advocated as a behaviour to teach to young people. I will only speak for myself, but what I advocate is that young people approach possible sexual encouters with reason. Reason, if you remember that separates us from other animals, reason that does not function without information. Information that abstinence only education does not provide.
2) Animals mate solely to procreate and replenish the species with no understanding of what is a sustainable population. Humans are capable of mating to learn, share and explore themselves and their partners. Animals do not do this. Thus mating for the sole purpose of procreation could more easily be argued to be the more animalistic behaviour than mating for pleasure and intimacy.
I’ll cease feeding the troll, now. Sorry folks.
Um, compass, I take it that you have never given birth to a child.
We are all animals. We eat. We poop. We fuck. We give birth. We lactate. Just because we can write about it and reflect on it and think about future and past doesn’t change our essential mammalian nature.
Deal with it, monkey boy.
Umm, I don’t have much rock climbing training, but last time I checked, it is absolutely a partnered activity. The only reason I haven’t joined the local rock gym yet is that I haven’t found a partner that has the same schedule I do that I could regularly climb with.
But this is seriously off the main thread of discussion. What is this non-animal guy anyway, a tin man stuffed full of red herrings? Or maybe he’s that straw man I’ve heard so much about.
I said to my lover, “Gawd, these people really believe virginity pledges work. Why?” She replied, “That’s cause they believe that New Year’s Resolutions work too.”
If sex is so instinctive, why do we need teachers?
Sex is instinctive. Safe sex, however, is rather more than the dogs and monkeys of the world can manage. Strangely enough, however, conservatives seem to think that such extra-instinctual activities actually make us more animalistic, while their own ’sex only for breeding’, which is more like most animals, rises us to the level of sexual saints.
Compass, as cliche as this sounds, your arguement is one big straw-man fallacy. You’re assuming that liberals hate abstinance-only education because of the word “abstinance”. This is not the case. We hate it because of the word “only”. We (at least I) have no problem with encouraging abstaining from frivilous sex. However, with abstinance-only education, if someone DOES decide to have sex, they’re not going to have a back-up plan*, because apparantly a hollow latex tube is Satan incarnate.
Abstinance-only education relies on lying to people in order to scare them into complacency. However, high schoolers are alot smarter than you think, and once they find out that they’re being lied to, they’re not going to listen to anything you say, not matter how sensible. By assuming the worst of those that you preach to, all that is accomplished is that your audience becomes jaded.
Not to mention the fact that the basis of abstainance-only education is a joke unto itself. “Sex is a terrible and vile act that you should only do with someone you truly love.”
*I wanted to say “plan B” here, but that woudl spark a whole other debate.
Why Virginity pledges don’t work.
Our bodies start to change at puberty, massive amounts of hormones circulate erratically, randomly, uncomfortably.
Unsympathetic adults, who should know better, tell us to wait it out and it will be better, perfect, desirable, right, but only when we are married.
Same age group friend says they can make it feel better, go away, have fun at the same time.
Virginity pledge gets forgotten because we just want it to go away so that we can think again, feel like ourselves again, and our friend says they can help. Barring any better information, any rope to hold onto that becomes the one thing that works. If we abandon the children to cope for themselves, or just feed them platitudes in the face of life changing events, then we cannot expect them to come to us for help. They will help themselves, and that is where children come from after all.
I like how Compass, in true troll fashion, has not responded to the points that were actually brought up among the snark about the peeing analogy — that abstinence until marriage often leads people to treat marriage as little more than a green-light to sex, and that teaching nothing but abstinence (which is really the problem with these programs — abstinence ONLY) reduces relationships to an all-or-nothing affair and limits people’s choices about one of the most personal aspects of their lives.
Abstinence-only people, at least from my point of view, are even MORE focused on sex than the rest of us — their sexuality (or lack thereof) is ALWAYS on display. How many other people go around wearing jewelry declaring exactly how many times they’ve had sex? And their relationship advice always has this odd undertone to it — getting to know the other person is often framed as seeing whether they are good marriage material, which in this sort of rhetoric boils down to whether or not the person is eligible for sex. Eugh. Seriously, WE’RE supposed to be the sex-focused ones?
I would’ve said virginity pledges are succeeding brilliantly: at producing more pregnant teenagers, which presumably is the intention.
Do the moms & sons (or better yet, fathers & sons) have their own abstinence pledge ceremonies with silver virgin rings or did I miss that?
Recently in my rural, small town community in a so-called blue state, a local paper printed a survey covering many topics, drug use, etc) given to high schoolers & it appears that almost 50% were having sex. I wonder what that number is in redder states.
The delusionals stutter & stammer when asked what the punishment should be for women who have abortions if it was illegal. If their argument is that abortion is murder, they can’t or won’t say if they think the woman should get the death penalty, life in prison or any jail time & they certainly have not examined what the penalty should be for the impregnators.
When restrictions are put on birth control services & abortion the first group of women to be affected have lower or no income. It is so mindblowing ironic to me that the delusional’s agendas, right out of the gate, guarantees increasing the number of people that they have such contempt for…you know, those “lazy, cadillac driving”, welfare recipients. How odd that those who bitterly resent having to “pay for all those babies these women keep popping out” can’t comprehend that their crusade has just the opposite result. Of course, anyone with half a brain realizes that ALL americans being able to have access to preventative services such as birth control, breast cancer screening, checkups for babies & preschoolers, early childhood education, comprehensive sex education in schools, etc, can only benefit our communities. God forbid that common sense should prevail.
Well Kate, maybe you’re still an animal. Good luck with that.
Compass, presumably, is a protist.
A question: If sex is so instinctive, why do we need teachers?
Because there are people out there who don’t know that if you swallow someone’s sperm, you can’t get pregnant.
Because there are people out there who don’t know how to put on a condom.
Because there are people out there who aren’t sure how to do “that anal sex thing” and want to know if it’ll hurt.
Because there isn’t a lot of good, solid sex education out there to bypass the fear, lies, and secrecy Americans shroud sex in, and so people who really want to know answers don’t know where to turn to.
And, as Garnet put it (and so did I in the original comment) safe sex, sex which is planned for, sex with a purpose, is not instinctive. Even (especially!) NFP is not instinctive.
Technocracygirl:
A few more reasons:
Because there are people out there who think that smoking marijuana before having sex will make pregnancy impossible (lowered sperm counts and all that).
Because there are people who think that rubbing your finger in your ear to get a bit of wax on it, and then inserting said finger into a woman’s vagina will inform you as to whether or not that woman has an STI.
Because there are people who think that drinking a warm Heinekin after sex will act as a contraceptive.
All of these are common responses people I know have received when doing sexuality education (and I’ve seen the comment cards asking exactly these questions).
but really grow the f***up. More of that good-time liberal rhetorical skills showing themselves.
Once again, a troll makes the mistake of thinking everyone here is a liberal.
Compass, do you find it so impossible to wrap your little brain around the fact that a republican (although a highly disgusted one at that) can have very left of center views on some subjects? Or does not shoving the flag up one’s ass, wishing to march to the past with eyes wide shut and saluting faux gnus as the sole truth disquaify one from the republican party these days?
Just STFU.
Judging from his comments here, compass is a basidiomycete, perhaps a homobasidoemycete, as he seems to fit the pattern of gaining nutrition from BS and being raised in the dark :>)
Compass, the sex is like peeing analogy is yours, not mine. The analogy I prefer (or at least the question I’d like to see you answer) is why are social conservatives more comfortable teaching their kids about gun safety than about safe sex?
PoliSci
Is it just me or does it seem like they don’t even know what the meaning of “the truth� is? How exactly can “the truth� apply to abstinence as the subject of the sentence?
They mean they’re abandoning all pretense of “well, it really keeps kids from having sex, and prevents pregnancy and STDs” and just saying “the Bible says sex is bad without the magic words, we believe it, and that settles it.”
The witnessing one didn’t say sex is like peeing; he said nonmarital sex is like peeing on the carpet. That said, I’m not going to bother attempting to engage him in discussion because our worldviews are so incompatible — we’d be talking about totally different things even if we were using the same words. I recommend everyone who isn’t an evangelical Christian fundamentalist realize that he’s never going to realize your position can even make sense.
Try again?
Judging from his comments here, compass is a basidiomycete, perhaps a homobasidoemycete, as he seems to fit the pattern of gaining nutrition from BS and being raised in the dark :>)
so he’s not a badger badger badger but a mushroom mushroom
kac90b, I hope you don’t think I’m a republican.
And as for our good friend Compass, in his lengthy response, he doesn’t really respond to the question of whether or not he remained pure until marriage. As for his comment that he never claimed that sex leads to “animalistic depravity” he merely “said that to BLESS untrammelled access to sex is to say that people are no better than animals. Again, you folks cannot read the message in plain English.”
So Compass if you’re still out there, what is “blessing” untrammeled access to sex? Why shouldn’t we have untrammeled access to sex? Why should we be expected to wait until marriage? Why does sexual exploration make us no better than animals? Why is sex outside of marriage a bad thing? I can read English, I’m just having a hard time figuring out what your deal is when it comes to sex. What do you propose? Abstinence only education? Is there something inherently wrong with teenagers having sex? If you did wait until marriage, or are waiting until marriage, why did you do so? Why should others? I’m not asking these questions because to be sarcastic, but because I would really like to know, because I really can’t figure it out.
afrit said: “Dude, comparing sex to peeing is disgusting and wrong.”
R. Kelly would disagree. Not that he’d be right or anything. He’d just disagree.
They mean they’re abandoning all pretense of “well, it really keeps kids from having sex, and prevents pregnancy and STDs� and just saying “the Bible says sex is bad without the magic words, we believe it, and that settles it.�
Now that they’re admitting it, can we quit spending tax dollars on teaching their religious beliefs in public schools?
FrontsNYC: No, no, not you at all. I’d never hurl that slur toward anybody I wasn’t sure of. I was referring to myself. But again, let me reiterate. I am a very pissed off, disaffected close-to-former-republican. Years ago, I thought one could be republican and still be moderate, educated, fair, compassionate and, well, you know. Human. These past years have totally disabused me of the fact. While I know many republicans who do have those qualities, the current incarnation of the party doesn’t want them. Not patriotic enought to be real murkins, i guess.
so he’s not a badger badger badger but a mushroom mushroom
Oh boy, another afternoon with *that* looping endlessly around in my brain. Thanks, Ms. Kate.
Crew-Sade!…
Two entries in the bloggo this morning concerning Christain craziness: Conquered it overseas only to nurture it here The truth is that it doesn’t take as much for people to slide towards fascism as we’d like to think. The ingredients……