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02/16/2005: Tales Out Of School
Nicolas Kristof has "hit a home run" in the article in today's NY Times called Bush's Sex Scandal.
Mr. Kristof writes:"You see, for all the carnage in President Bush's budget, one program is being showered with additional cash - almost three times as much as it got in 2001. It's "abstinence only" sex education, and the best research suggests that it will cost far more lives than the Clinton administration's much more notorious sex scandal.
Mr. Bush means well. But "abstinence only" is a misnomer that in practice is an assault on sex education itself. There's a good deal of evidence that the result will not be more young rosy-cheeked virgins - it will be more pregnancies, abortions, gonorrhea and deaths from AIDS.
But silence about sex only nurtured venereal diseases (one New York doctor, probably exaggerating, claimed in 1904 that 60 percent of American men had syphilis or gonorrhea), so sex education gradually gained ground. Then social conservatives had a brilliant idea: instead of fighting sex ed directly, they campaigned for abstinence-only programs that eviscerated any discussion of contraception."
So much of the Bushies Good Intentions end up in so many flawed programs and ideas...what a waste....and only 1,407 more days to go...
Karen on 02.16.05 @ 03:48 AM CST
