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Written by Mikkel Hansen
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Friday, 03 December 2004 |
 I guess the title can be interpreted in two different ways, but that's alright, since they both apply.
Recently a report publicized by Union of Concerned Scientists points out some... inconsistencies... in the US sex education programme.
Once again we have a case of religious irrationalism up against rationalism. The believers want something to be true, so they blindly ignore the practical and rational. In this case it's the Bush administration's agenda of teaching an abstinence-only curricula to schoolchildren that has come under fire for containing falsehoods, inaccuracies and factual errors.
The New York Times writes:
The report says some of programs erroneously teach, among other points, that condoms fail to prevent H.I.V. in heterosexual sex 31 percent of the time and that touching another person's genitals may result in pregnancy.
The NEWS.telegraph writes:
The inaccuracies include claims that condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission more than two thirds of the time and that half of US gay male teenagers have Aids.
and continues a paragraph later:
The curricula are bought by school districts from educational publishers, many with close ties to conservative Christian groups.
Under the philosophy of abstinence-only education, schoolchildren must not be taught about birth control methods or how to have "safe sex", for fear of leading them astray. Instead, they should simply be instructed that any sex outside a monogamous marriage can end their lives and destroy the fabric of society.
To receive federal funds, such programmes must limit discussion of contraception to describing the failure rates of birth control methods.
Now don't get me wrong, there's certainly not anything wrong with waiting until you're 30 to have sex, if that's what you want. I don't care if you use contraception or not. What I do care about is the right of the children to get the facts they need to make these choices.
It can't really be a surprise for anyone that a movement based on something religious (like the word of the bible) has to tamper with facts to them fit their world view. This is what happened when the religious conservatives got this trite and flawed teaching into the schools. When the root is intellectually rotten, the branches will be too.
Jerry Gramckow of the christian evangelical site family.org writes a surprisingly eloquent counter-attack. He's not successful in countering a majority of the claims though and even though he's right that the UCS are politically motivated that doesn't make them wrong in their claims. Fairly level headed and well spoken people like Jerry are the public speakers for group consisting of ignorant fundies, who aims to infect politics and society with religious superstition and fundamentalism.
It sure would be great to be on the same cultural, social and scientific level as those super fantastic middle eastern nations ruled by fundamentalist leaders and laws. Oh yeah.
On a side note, I think it's striking how much aggression that comes from the religious right. Doesn't the teachings of Jesus about love and forgiveness apply to them? But silly me, I forgot Jesus was about invading countries, killing tens of thousands, borrowing an excess of money, hoarding riches, watching people starve (hey, they're so far away, are you sure they even exist?), owning lethal firearms, being guilt ridden and, of course, suppressing natural sexual desires.
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