The Devil Wears Trojan

What’s Really at Stake in the Sex-Ed Wars.

By Emily Amick, Wellesley College

In today’s world, sex comes at us from every angle. Whether it’s The Girls Next Door flaunting their Playmate-worthy assets on TV or Vanity Fair’s salacious 2006 Hollywood issue featuring two nude starlets on the cover, it’s difficult to grow up without knowledge of this supposedly “private” act. But while television and magazines can show sex personified, they don’t provide kids with an understanding about how to make healthy decisions.

That’s where education comes in. Abstinence-only programs like Me, My World, My Future teach kids that, “At the least, the chances of getting pregnant with a condom are 1 out of 6,” and Choosing the Best PATH explains, “Condoms provide no proven reduction in protection against Chlamydia, the most common bacterial STD.”

These statements rival Richard Nixon’s in the honesty department.

This flagrant disregard for medical fact is not unusual in the realm of abstinence-only education. In a December 2004 report, the House Government Reform Committee’s Minority Staff report found that over 80 percent of federally funded abstinence-only sex curricula contained “false, misleading or distorted information about reproductive health.” The Washington Post reported that several million students have been taught inaccuracies such as, “Half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person’s genitals ‘can result in pregnancy.’”

Despite these blatant falsehoods, between 2001 and 2005 the federal government’s spending on abstinence-only programs doubled. No evidence exists suggesting that abstinence-only is effective. A Columbia University study found that 88 percent of teenagers who take a “virginity pledge” eventually have premarital sex. Other research shows that teens who participate in abstinence-only programs are less likely than teens who participate in comprehensive sex education to use contraception once they become sexually active.

Now some progressives in Congress are responding. In order to protect young people from being taught false, possibly life-threatening information, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) introduced the Guarantee of Medical Accuracy in Sex Education Act on June 14. This act protects youth by withholding federal funds from programs containing medically inaccurate or false information pertaining to human sexuality.

A spokesman for Rep. Gutierrez told Campus Progress via e-mail, "Inaccurate and misleading information regarding contraception and sexually transmitted diseases undermines our efforts to educate and inform young people. This bill ensures that students have facts and accurate information they need to make informed decisions about their lives."

The Guarantee of Medical Accuracy in Sex Education Act is the first step in stopping the growing abstinence-only movement in this country; a movement Rep. Moran told Campus Progress “seems completely innocuous and pro-family,” but is actually “part of a conservative religious-based agenda. … This is clearly a first step in the effort to impose standards on sex.” He continued, “They think it’s okay to deliberately deceive people — teenagers — in order to achieve their agenda.”

Advocates of comprehensive sex education believe increasing students’ knowledge of everything related to sexuality — including contraception, abstinence, homosexuality, healthy relationship techniques, and abortion — is the best way to help young people protect themselves. But proponents of “abstinence-only until marriage” programs blame comprehensive sex education for bringing about a dark age of sexual licentiousness. In response to the Guarantee of Medical Accuracy in Sex Education Act, Christina Espenscheid, Educational Programs Director for Abstinence Clearinghouse, described comprehensive sex education in a June 14 press release as “condom pushing programs that force early sexual activity at the cost of our children’s futures.”

The next day, Kansas State Board of Education member John Bacon told the Wichita Eagle, “Comprehensive sex education is dangerous for students.” Kansas recently joined 26 other states in mandating that all sex education classes must stress abstinence-only.

Abstinence-only advocates argue that giving teenagers information about sex is like giving them keys to a car before they are allowed to drive. But they ignore the fact that students who receive adequate driver’s education end up in fewer car accidents than students who don’t. When it comes to sex, perhaps conservatives’ concerns aren’t about accident rates at all, but rather about who should be allowed to drive.

In the decades between hoop skirts and miniskirts, many Americans’ perceptions of proper sexual conduct widened to include premarital sex and contraception, while concurrently women received more and more social and economic equality. The interdependent relationships connecting these trends are thickly intertwined. So it’s not surprising then that a 2004 Congressional review of the most popular abstinence-only programs found that beyond containing medical inaccuracies, these programs promote “unsettling gender stereotypes.” Rep. Moran noted, “This is the stuff we mock when we see it taught in Islamic fundamentalist school … and we think how backward those people are, yet here we are doing it to our own children.”

According to abstinence-only supporters, premarital sex, contraception and a litany of other common practices deviate from the values of the “traditional family,” a structure conservatives see as the backbone of American society. Unprotected, monogamous sex between and a man and a woman is the foundation of this union. Promoting abstinence means a commitment to protecting and promoting the “traditional family,” a family model in which each person has a known purpose and position. The fear of sex education is part of a broader reluctance to let go of these traditional “Leave it to Beaver” gender roles.

In Kanab, Utah, the city council recently passed a resolution decreeing that its top priority was to protect and nurture the “natural family. … We envision young women growing into wives, homemakers, and mothers. … We look to a landscape of family homes, lawns, and gardens busy with useful tasks and ringing with the laughter of many children.”

Women have been leaving their traditional roles as mother and wife in part due to the sexual revolution; but some conservatives argue that this deviation from what nature intended has had substantial negative impact on women. Amy Kass, a former University of Chicago professor of classics, wrote, “The happiness they [women] were promised — the happiness they dearly want — is somehow eluding them. … The politics of sexual liberation for women have devolved into a veritable nightmare.” In Ms. Kass’ version of the war between male desire and female virtue, both men and women are happier when the traditional model of gender relations is restored. Men make advances, and women resist with the “promise of yielding should the man prove his worth.”

Leon R. Kass, Amy Kass’ husband and former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics under President George W. Bush, revealed the truly revolutionary implications of the sexual liberation movement: “For the first time in human history, mature women by the tens of thousands live the entire decade of their twenties — their most fertile years — neither in the homes of their fathers nor in the homes of their husbands; unprotected, lonely, and out of sync with their inborn nature.”

Sigmund Freud warned that early sexual activity threatened the foundations of modern civilization. And it’s true — the sexual revolution changed the fundamental power relations on which everyday life was built.

The breakdown of traditional sexual attitudes undermined the gender hierarchy and therefore, the position of the family as the foundation of Western society. Though a perfectly ordered life worth living seems sweet as apple pie, such a ironed-out version of life does not take into account the diverse wants and needs of individuals — especially women.

The sex education debate is a debate about women’s futures, about whether our role is as nursery maid or corporate executive at Minute Maid. Promoting abstinence-only education in our schools is only a small part of a greater movement of sexual conservativism, a movement that believes women’s primary roles are that of wife and mother.

Continually arguing over the efficacy of abstinence-only programs won’t end the disagreement over sex education in America. We must acknowledge that although abstinence-only programs have no efficacy, people will continue to support them. We are engaging in a dialogue with people like Leon Kass, people who believe that, “The celebration of equality gradually undermines the authority of religion, tradition, and custom, and, within families, of husbands over wives.”

Rep. Moran said, “Some of these people would be more at home in a Taliban-type society, a theocracy, where you preach a religion’s myth as if it were true so you can maintain a social status quo.”

In the end, there is no “Decider” who can return women to their place in the kitchen. Likewise, no election can stop these people from trying to turn back the clock. Simply ignoring these movements while working on minimal, albeit important, policy changes is not the way to win the war.

We must continue to trust young people’s ability to, given all of the information we have available about relationships and human sexuality, make safe, healthy decisions about their own bodies and lives. It is also critical that progressives concurrently educate their base about the sexist values imbedded in abstinence-only education. Sex education is one small fight in the values war — but a loss in this battle would be tragic for the American youth.

 
Emily Amick is a member of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts Board of Directors and a senior at Wellesley College. She is an intern this summer at The Nation in New York City. You can reach her at EmilyAmick@gmail.com.

Illustration: Matt Bors

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