Friday, April 02, 2004

Teaching reality vs teaching abstinence

Apparently there is not enough information in the fine print on the back of a 1' x 1' condom wrapper. Some people, including many in our government, want more. Here is their claim: apparently condoms are not that effective against HPV (genital warts). Ergo, abstinence is better than condoms, and that ought to be written on the back of already crowded condom wrappers that no one reads anyway.

No one except the too-stupid-to-read demographic does not know that condoms are not perfect. They break, things leak, not everything gets covered, etc. We ought to teach this in class.

Of course the argument that abstinence is therefore better is also bunk.
People who try to practice abstinence have no need to carry condoms or even go on the pill. So when, as inevitably happens with every teenager, they finally do have sex, they are unprepared and get whatever disease their enticing partner has, and often pregnancies result.

But there are still people who (ironically enough) have the chutzpah to call themselves Project Reality are asserting that preaching abstinence is a more worthy endeavor than preaching the wonders of the best protection we have given the real world fact that people have sex. That is reality?

People, especially teenagers, hate using condoms. If you can get kids to use that it is a miracle. God himself could not orchestrate the cessation of sex. (Even in the Bible everyone was shtuping everyone else.) It is too well embedded in our genes. You would have to separate men and women from each other until you are ready for them to marry, then arrange their marriages for them. In other words we would have to devolve to Hassidic Jews from the stone age. This is a clear step backward.

Let us just preach safety. If Clinton would have mentioned the word "Trojan" in that deposition about his sex life, STDs would have decreased by 50% among teens. Let Bush get up on TV and say that he and Laura used one on their first date, and overnight we will have a healthier nation.

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