why are right-wing morons so afraid of the fact that teens are curious about exploring their sexualities?

Oh right. It makes them "uncomfortable" (ie: jealous of the fact that they can't cop to their own insceure feelings)

This just reminds me of the South Park Chinpokemon episode. Probably because it was on last night when I came home.

In it, the kids become obsessed with a new cartoon and are turned into mindless drones getting ready for war when their parents realize how to stop them is to join in, thus making Chinpokemon uncool.

I know they're using fresh faced youths to push this, but a part of me thinks it's just going to backfire anyway, with a bunch of grown adults pushing abstinence as something "cool" for the young kids to do.

This is one of the things that actually bugs me alot, because (as a young person) I know alot of people who are educated in this abstinence only rhetoric, and it's screwed up alot of my friends to be told that they shouldn't use contraceptives.

Honestly, there are alot of things that the conservative blowhards have screwed up, but this is, in terms of its impact on the American youth, the one that I think will be most devastating in the long term.

These uptight repressed folks can try all they want and lie about it, but the fact is that most people will find sex to be fabulous, exciting, FUN, and healthy. Despite all their efforts, they cannot change the common knowledge that sex feels good.

I have no problem with social marketing campaigns that can make waiting to have sex popular, but I have yet to see one that also respects individuals who DON'T wait. If some genius can figure that out without putting down people who do have sex, then I'm game.

When I was a young Christian teen, I bought in easily to this crap. At that time I was insecure of my sexuality, though, so I guess it was just a message I could buy into. "I'm not having sex, so I can totes fit into this stereotype!"

It wasn't until I got to around eighteen or so that I started to question this whole direction. From what I can gather, God's reasoning for not having premarital sex was so you wouldn't have to worry about disease or having a kid, so then you wouldn't have to carry something like that into a marriage later on. It makes sense, but that, to me, is a personal choice. It's not up to a bunch of judge-worthy yuppies to tell me not to rail with my boyfriend.

When it comes to sexual education, teens NEED to get real information that will allow them to make their OWN choices. Abstinence-only is a form of sex-ed, but the way it's marketed is to get these teens to side in only that particular education.

Wow, I've already been wanting to have Pam Stenzel kiss my ass, and now I have Keith Deltano too?

I actually have a friend who had seen a presentation by Ms. Stenzel at her high school. Something like eight girls that were in the audience were pregnant at the time. They were all crying by the end.

i hate to say something that anti-choice folks say, but it should be taken seriously that abortion can cause huge physical complications and repercussions. Not that these problems should be exaggerated, like a tactic, but, well, they shouldnt be downplayed.

so, fellas, if ur out there, get a vasectomy. end the debate. or, shift it to your bodies while i deals with the rest of patriarchy, plzies

What's the need for all the lies? Why can't they just make an ad campaign that says that to have or not have sex is a personal choice? And choosing to not have sex is cool because it asserts who you are and what you believe.

Well, I guess then they'd have to concede that choosing to have sex would also make you cool for the same reasons.

I find myself always trapped here. Because I remember being a virgin in high school and well into college and there being a lot of stigma against me. The religious sect shames you for choosing to have sex, but the secular side shames you for choosing not too.

So, I'm all for telling kids that choosing to remain a virgin is cool and abstaining from sex even after you've done it before is cool. It doesn't make you bizarre or a loser to choose to not do something. I wish the religious right didn't feel the need to lie to, trick and otherwise manipulate students that are already having a hard time, and might already make the same decisions of their own accord if they were only given a chance!

A feminist all my life, I had absolutely no problem encouraging my four daughters to stay virgins until they got to college. I have always been pleased that, for once, they listened to me. I was a fiercely arrogant virgin until I was almost 22 and made love with my future husband. I was a college debater and always loved debating with men why I would not consider a one night standard. Why?

I had very high standards. I had absolute confidence in my intellect and always knew I could not separate my emotions from my body from my mind.I had learned to masturbate when I was 4. By the time I was 12, I learned the surefire romance novel/masturbation method. Before I would make love with my true love, I insisted he read every single word of Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex.

My first marriage ended in divorce after 28 years. For a very long time it was a wonderful marriage. My homework got even more arduous for my future second husband. I had a sweatshirt that proclaimed, "Never love a man who didn't love Jane Austen, Doris Lessing, and Margaret Drabble." That shirt eventually got me a wonderful English husband, 16 years younger, whom I met on a Jane Austen listserv, who gave up home, job, and country to swim the Atlantic for me.

The best abstinence education is to teach girls to truly value and respect themselves. I have never been repressed or uptight and would match my lifetime orgasm record against anyone's. But the way to my body has always been through intellect. And when you enter my body, you enter my soul. Having had only two lovers in my life has worked out brilliantly for me.

Danyell - I can relate. I was a virgin in high school (not by choice) and I felt like I was some kind of reject. Everybody else was having sex (or so it seemed) and I desperately wanted to but there didn't seem to be any opportunities. All the 80s teen movies didn't help. I remember feeling like such a loser. Once, I saw some news story about abstinence (although they didn't call it that in the 80s) in which a pretty popular looking high school aged girl was talking about how she wanted to wait until she was older to have sex. Seeing that interview didn't reduce my desire to have sex but it made me feel little less horrible.

But, even though I wasn't getting any (sex or sex ed at school), I was one of the best informed teenagers with respect to contraception. My mother always talked to me about that and I had a well read copy of Our Bodies Ourselves. This early-acquired knowledge has been very useful to me through my entire adult life.

I think it's criminal the way the right lies to teenagers (teenage girls, particularly) to further their demented agenda.

I read Vanessa's article, and some of the quotes from the "abstinence only" people are horrifying. Not only did they manipulate statistics and sometimes even outright lie, they phrased everything in such a way as to continue our culture's distorted representations of sexuality, particularly with regards to gender. They treat women's sexuality as a myth while equating masculinity with being a sexual fiend who is (nearly) unable to keep it in his pants.

So, we're socializing young women to fear all sex, while conditioning young men to pursue it at any cost...sounds like a great way to fuck up everyone's natural sexuality, invite girls to fear men and be passive (to sexuality and perhaps to victimization), and to sustain a culture where rape is an inevitable consequence of masculinity (all of this, of course, without mentioning rape at all).

It's hard enough to be a well-balanced young person in this culture; the religious right is only making it worse.

i also love how the abstinence only set clearly has no respect for young women who are celibate... surely, they encourage their behavior, but making abstinence hip in contrived ways like comic books and such... well, it just says to me that young women can't make decisions based on clear and clean information.

i say women, because i don't really see the same targeting of men... as if we don't even matter to these folks, except in a peripheral fashion. not that i'd want young men to be targeted by these folks, but we're not invisible and we're not animals:

guys are visual, so when a girl is dressing to show off (wearing tight pants, low-cut shirts, etc.), it is hard for guys because they are stimulated by what they see.

looking at this stuff, i count myself as soooo damn lucky to have gotten my sex ed through the unitarian universalist church i went to as a kid. now that was a great program - and mighty hip (we covered everything from average time to arousal to different body types and disability)...

And, also, as a young woman raised in a Christian right sort of environment, let me just say that I am even now sort of embarassed by contraceptives and protection. Sex doesn't bother me at all (I really enjoy it to be honest!), but slipping into the campus health center to pick up condoms makes me blush (because while I can intellectualize all I want, I can't kick the feeling that only sluts carry condoms). Asking the lady at the pharmacy counter for EC paralyzed me with fear (it's only happened once, and I made my boyfriend do it because I was so mortified and so scared that the pharmacist might refuse based on "conscience laws" and lecture me instead -- a realistic fear in my area).

I honestly think the Christian right demonizes safer sex more than sex itself. "Sex is okay, within marriage, but sometimes you go too far in the heat of the moment. This is why you shouldn't get into this situation, but for you non-virgins out there, you can repent and be forgiven!" is the theme of most Christian sex ed. But it's immediately followed by "If you have condoms, you PLANNED on having sex, which is premeditated sin and infinitely worse. Besides, contraception is defying God's will, and maybe even equivalent to abortion!"

Are the Jonas Brothers involved in this trend?

"The best abstinence education is to teach girls to truly value and respect themselves."

amen!
you sound like an awesome mom, redstocking grandma. we have GOT to start teaching a healthy, medically accurate sex-ed curriculum in this country. the abstinence-only crowd is so completely toxic both to women and men.

Geobqn,
Yes, the Jonas Brothers wear purity rings:

http://www.usmagazine.com/jonas_brothers_we_are_all_virgins

Intending no disrespect, Rebecca, abstinence-only is by no means "a form of sex-ed". It is, in a sense, the opposite of sex education. Teaching abstinence as an option, while giving attention to the other available options, is sex education: but that's not what abstinence-only does. Abstinence-only refuses kids information on any method of protection other than ThouShaltNot.

Teaching abstinence-only is, by definition, the opposite of education. It is deliberate inculcation of ignorance. And it's an expression of profoundest disrespect for the young: "My trust in my child is so scant that I fear if she's given any information other than ThouShaltNot she'll instantaneously start fucking strange men she's never seen before. I must keep her in a state of terror: this is the only way to keep her from fucking greasy losers she meets in bars."

The message of sex education is, "Knowledge is power. Gain it and use it."

The message of abstinence-only "education" is, "Knowledge is dangerous. Fear it and avoid it."

Pahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Ahem.

Aahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaa!!

Best of luck to them.

My small Michigan town had abstinence ed and all it ultimately did was make me ignorant about my first sexual experiences. Luckily, I've educated myself about how to be safe since.

Silver Ring Thing, anyone?

You know what I find awful? People who go around talking to everyone about their goddamn virginity. I'm looking at you, Jonas Brothers. I don't care whether or not you've had sex! I don't want to know! I cared if my friends had, if they wanted to tell me, but not total strangers in crappy tween "bands." Maybe they think premarital sex isn't classy. I think it's not classy to go around telling everyone whether or not your penis has been inside a girl yet.