The War Against Valentine’s Day
The humorous and sickeningly entertaining Christian Right never fails to make me so incredibly thankful that my friends and family are completely contradictory to their thought process.
Again – for those of you ready to sound the alarm on the Pope-Mobile each time someone fails to mutter “Under God” while reciting the Pledge, please note I’m speaking of the Christian Right, which is much different than your open-minded church going neighbor who sent you a Christmas card a couple months ago.
The latest smoldering pile of bullshit this group just unveiled from under the velour covering? The war against Valentine’s Day!
When not complaining about the war against Christmas – because we’ve hardly heard a peep about the holiday in the last couple of hundred years – the Christian Right casts stones from their own glass church by recognizing a new competing celebration on February 14th: The Day of Purity, otherwise known as a day to pledge abstinence before marriage.
Seems harmless enough, right?
The idea itself is not inherently bad. Obviously the only way to surely prevent all STD’s, pregnancy (and arguably depth, growth and maturity in a relationship) is to not have sex.
There are however, several reasons, supported through research and common sense, to argue that such programs do more to hurt than help, and simply don’t make sense.
- First of all, pledging abstinence has proven time and time again to be and unfulfilable goal for many with a success rate of 20 to 30 percent in most studies (back when I was in school that was an F.) A psychology professor at Northern Kentucky University surveyed 527 college students and found 61 percent broke the pledge in the very next year alone. As a result, teens are much more likely to experiment with unprotected vaginal and anal sex, as well as oral sex.
- According to a recent 8-year study, those who make abstinence pledges are statistically just as likely to obtain STD’s than those who do not for the reasons listed above.
- Many of those who advocated abstinence education are in favor of abstinence-only education. This leaves teens ignorant about birth control and STD protection with incredibly reliable success rates. Common birth control methods are then viewed with a negative stigma, and not used when the pledges are broken because they’re not on hand.
- Abstinence-only education tends to advocated by conservative Christians intentionally guiding teens toward philosophies stemming from Christian ideals and values instead of using science, research and advice from the medical fields. If you question this point, I challenge you to think of people or organizations that urge abstinence-only education who don’t have a religious affiliation... from organizations such as “Concerned Women of America (which was run by men last time I checked)”, to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, on up to our born-again president. Just as those who battle evolution in public schools have conservative Christian undertones, a push for a religious agenda, and contempt for the scientific community, so do those battling sex education. They’re the same people, coming from the same groups.
- Lastly, and this is my favorite – How can gay kids be asked to wait for marriage until they have sex by the same Christians who continue to try to make it illegal for them to marry? Do they have to wait until same-sex marriage is legal? Do they have to not ever have sex because same sex marriage is supposed remain illegal? Doesn’t this entire program ignore the sexual education of one of the higher risk groups in the first place?
In closing, I’d like to leave everyone with some words of wisdom on the subject, from Bill Maher (who happens to be back on HBO, Feb 17th!!)
Again – for those of you ready to sound the alarm on the Pope-Mobile each time someone fails to mutter “Under God” while reciting the Pledge, please note I’m speaking of the Christian Right, which is much different than your open-minded church going neighbor who sent you a Christmas card a couple months ago.
The latest smoldering pile of bullshit this group just unveiled from under the velour covering? The war against Valentine’s Day!
When not complaining about the war against Christmas – because we’ve hardly heard a peep about the holiday in the last couple of hundred years – the Christian Right casts stones from their own glass church by recognizing a new competing celebration on February 14th: The Day of Purity, otherwise known as a day to pledge abstinence before marriage.
Seems harmless enough, right?
The idea itself is not inherently bad. Obviously the only way to surely prevent all STD’s, pregnancy (and arguably depth, growth and maturity in a relationship) is to not have sex.
There are however, several reasons, supported through research and common sense, to argue that such programs do more to hurt than help, and simply don’t make sense.
- First of all, pledging abstinence has proven time and time again to be and unfulfilable goal for many with a success rate of 20 to 30 percent in most studies (back when I was in school that was an F.) A psychology professor at Northern Kentucky University surveyed 527 college students and found 61 percent broke the pledge in the very next year alone. As a result, teens are much more likely to experiment with unprotected vaginal and anal sex, as well as oral sex.
- According to a recent 8-year study, those who make abstinence pledges are statistically just as likely to obtain STD’s than those who do not for the reasons listed above.
- Many of those who advocated abstinence education are in favor of abstinence-only education. This leaves teens ignorant about birth control and STD protection with incredibly reliable success rates. Common birth control methods are then viewed with a negative stigma, and not used when the pledges are broken because they’re not on hand.
- Abstinence-only education tends to advocated by conservative Christians intentionally guiding teens toward philosophies stemming from Christian ideals and values instead of using science, research and advice from the medical fields. If you question this point, I challenge you to think of people or organizations that urge abstinence-only education who don’t have a religious affiliation... from organizations such as “Concerned Women of America (which was run by men last time I checked)”, to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, on up to our born-again president. Just as those who battle evolution in public schools have conservative Christian undertones, a push for a religious agenda, and contempt for the scientific community, so do those battling sex education. They’re the same people, coming from the same groups.
- Lastly, and this is my favorite – How can gay kids be asked to wait for marriage until they have sex by the same Christians who continue to try to make it illegal for them to marry? Do they have to wait until same-sex marriage is legal? Do they have to not ever have sex because same sex marriage is supposed remain illegal? Doesn’t this entire program ignore the sexual education of one of the higher risk groups in the first place?
In closing, I’d like to leave everyone with some words of wisdom on the subject, from Bill Maher (who happens to be back on HBO, Feb 17th!!)
New Rule: Abstinence pledges make you horny. A new eight-year study just released reveals that American teenagers who take "virginity" pledges of the sort so favored by the Bush administration wind up with just as many STDs as the other kids.
But that's not all -- taking the pledges also makes a teenage girl six times more likely to perform oral sex, and a boy four times more likely to get anal. Which leads me to an important question: where were these pledges when I was in high school?
Seriously, when I was a teenager, the only kids having anal intercourse were the ones who missed. My idea of lubrication was oiling my bike chain. If I had known I could have been getting porn star sex the same year I took Algebra II, simply by joining up with the Christian right, I'd have been so down with Jesus they would have had to pry me out of the pew.
For a bunch of teens raised on creationism, these red state kids today are pretty evolved -- sexually, anyway, and for that they can thank all who joined forces to try and legislate away human nature, specifically the ineluctable urge of teenagers to hump.
Yes, the "What do we tell the children?" crowd apparently decided not to tell them
anything. Because people who talk about pee-pees are potty-mouths. And so armed
with limited knowledge, and believing regular, vaginal intercourse to be either
immaculate or filthy dirty, these kids did with their pledge what everybody does with contracts: they found loopholes. Two of them to be exact.
Is there any greater irony than the fact that the Christian Right actually got
their precious little adolescent daughters to say to their freshly scrubbed boyfriends: "Please, I want to remain pure for my wedding night, so only in the ass. Then I'll blow you." Well, at least these kids are really thinking outside the box.
There's a lot worse things than teenagers having sex, namely, teenagers NOT having sex. Here's something you'll never hear: "That suicide bomber blew himself up because he was having too much sex. Sex, sex, sex, non-stop. All that crazy Arab ever had was sex, and look what happened."
Well, that's our story -- of how faith and the party of smaller government combined to turn your kids into a generation of super-freaks. Which shouldn't be surprising: Prohibition didn't work, "Just say no" didn't work, and I understand there's a host of Americans who illegally obtain and smoke marijuana. They're the ones who've been giggling every time I say anal sex.
posted by Jeremy at 9:03 AM
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