Is Sex Ever Really "Safe?"
For most of the past several decades, liberal sex-education organizations such as Planned Parenthood and Sexuality Information and Education Council for the United States (SIECUS) have had a philosophical monopoly in public school sex-education programs. With the implementation of Title V of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, these groups saw an end to their monopoly. Title V allocated $250 million ($50 million per year for five years) for states to teach abstinence until marriage. SIECUS and friends have not been happy about Title V.
SIECUS and Planned Parenthood are not the only organizations seeking to liberalize America's views about sex education and sexual behavior. Over the last few decades a coalition of liberal sex-education groups a "Safe-Sex Alliance" (The Alliance) has formed with the intention of teaching young people that sex any sex as long as it's consensual and protected from unwanted pregnancies and relatively safe from infection by sexually transmitted diseases is a good thing.
Through the years, as concerned parents and family-friendly groups have taken a stand against the push to get condom-based "safe-sex" programs into schools and youth groups, the Alliance has had to craft new arguments in order to expand its foothold. The Alliance has repeated the arguments so often and so loudly that many if not most Americans have come to believe them. But their arguments simply do not stand up to scrutiny.
Myth #1: All teens are sexually active.
Not all teens "are doing it." More than half of all high school students have never engaged in sexual activity, and nearly four in 10 teens will graduate from high school as virgins. In fact, only about 36 percent of teens are sexually active. 1
The "Safe-sex" Alliance claims that the vast majority of America's young people are unable to abstain from sex. Because they cannot avoid the risk by abstaining, adults need to help them by providing the best risk-reduction measures. These measures are based on providing access to condoms and graphic instruction in how to use them.
This risk-reduction strategy is inconsistent with the message that the medical community and the public in general present to youth regarding other high-risk behaviors. 2 From tobacco, alcohol and drug use to fighting, gun use and drunk driving, the prevailing message is "don't do it" avoid or eliminate the risk. But when it comes to sex and all the potential dangers that accompany it the message is, "Use condoms to reduce your risk of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases." A risk-reduction message is inconsistent with the longstanding primary-prevention medical model. This proves that the promotion of "safe sex" in our schools is driven by a radical philosophical dogma, not by medical or scientific reasons.
Myth #2: Condoms protect against unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
The Alliance's purpose in propagating this distortion is simple; it wants to keep the sexual revolution healthy and alive. If the public at large can be convinced that condoms offer certain or nearly certain protection from pregnancies and STDs, then the Alliance can argue that the only thing holding people back from free sexual expression is outdated, irrelevant religious restrictions. The problem is that while they're keeping the sexual revolution healthy and alive, kids are unnecessarily contracting health-destroying and deadly STDs including HIV/AIDS, HPV (Human papillomavirus), chlamydia and herpes simplex 2 (HSV2).
According to the CDC, condoms must be used consistently in order for them to be effective. And, according to the CDC, "Consistently means using a condom every time you have sex 100 percent of the time no exceptions." Furthermore, when "[u]sed inconsistently, condoms offer little more protection than when they are not used at all." One study found that only about 20 percent of people always use condoms.
Although the condom industry claims a 98 percent effectiveness rate for condoms, the fine print has to admit that this rate is for laboratory tests, not for actual use by teenage humans. In fact, one prominent study of adult condom users found that "in the last month [of the study], 33 percent of consistent [condom] users were potentially exposed to risks of infection and pregnancy during condom use [due to condom failure]." And adults are considered to be more responsible users of condoms than are teenagers.
Myth #3: Title V abstinence-until-marriage programs deprive kids of access to information they need in order to protect themselves from unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
Title V has not deprived any students of contraceptive information or availability. Nor has Title V forced the closure of any family-planning clinics or reduced by a single penny federal funding received by "safe-sex" initiatives. A recent survey of school principals and superintendents is further evidence that the condom-based "safer-sex" message receives the bulk of taxpayer funding.
Myth #4: Teen pregnancy and STD rates would decline if we would provide teens easy, free and confidential access to condoms in schools.
The Alliance wants the public to believe that the only reason kids aren't using condoms faithfully is that conservatives have kept kids uninformed and have kept condoms unavailable to them. If we teach kids about the dangers of unprotected sex and provide them with condoms for protection, then life will be wonderful in sexual utopia, they say. Don't believe it.
A 1998 study of a Los Angeles high school condom distribution program found the following: 3
- While males reported increasing their condom use from 37 percent to 50 percent, the percentage of females reporting that their partners used condoms did not increase significantly.
- More female teens significantly increased their participation in a wide variety of high-risk sexual behaviors.
- The percentage of male students engaged in sexual activity remained slightly higher than the national average.
- The number of male students involved in unhealthy and risky same-gender sexual activities increased.
A 1999 study of a Seattle high school condom distribution program found these results: 4
- Despite the availability of condoms, the percentage of sexually experienced students who used a condom at last intercourse decreased significantly.
- The decrease in condom use was much greater among students in schools with health clinics that distributed the greatest number of condoms.
Myth #5: The Alliance wants parents to play a central role in their children's sex education.
Yes, parents must be part of the process. But what do those words mean when they come from the Alliance? At least two of the Alliance-approved Center for Disease Control (CDC) Programs that Work one called Be Proud! Be Responsible! and the other called Becoming A Responsible Teen (BART) include contracts that require students to keep everything said or written in the class confidential including from their parents. 5 (BART participants who break the confidentiality contract are removed from the program.)
Numerous studies have shown that parental involvement in the lives of their children helps those children to avoid many risky behaviors, including premarital sex. According to a report by James Jaccard, Patricia J. Dittus and Vivian V. Gordon published in Family Planning Perspectives:
[A]s adolescents' perceptions of mothers' emphasis on abstinence increased, the likelihood that the adolescent had engaged in intercourse decreased. In contrast, as reported discussions about birth control increased, the likelihood that the adolescent had initiated intercourse also increased. 6
Myth #6: Abstinence programs have been proven ineffective.
The September 10, 1997 issue of JAMA published an article on the first wave of findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health the most extensive study on adolescent risk ever conducted. The study showed that the factor most strongly associated with a delay in the onset of sexual activity was a pledge of abstinence. In fact, the pledge of abstinence was three times more strongly associated with a delay in sex than the next most positively correlated factor. 7 A pledge of sexual purity is the cornerstone of an abstinence movement called True Love Waits, which is popular among many school and church youth groups.
According to a monumental study called "Promising the Future: Virginity Pledges as they Affect the Transition to First Intercourse" by researchers Peter S. Bearman and Hannah Brucker, "They [teens] do not need to pledge to avoid sex, but pledging helps them not have sex. On the average, it reduces the baseline rate of time to sexual debut by 34 percent." 8
Myth #7: Abstinence until marriage is a religious idea and constitutes a violation of the separation of church and state.
Granted, nearly every major religion strongly condemns sex outside of marriage and upholds the marriage relationship as the only proper place for sexual activity, but abstinence outside of marriage is not an idea exclusive to religious thought. And the benefits of abstinence outside of marital fidelity are not exclusive to people of faith. The ravages of the "sexual revolution" have never played favorites. STDs are equal-opportunity monsters, and faithful marriages are the strongest defense against them.
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Relationships: Blended Families, Parents and Adult Children
Transitions: Preparing for Adolescence, Empty Nest
