Thursday, May 7, 2009

End of Bad Sex-Ed

In other words, no more abstinence-only sex education:

"The President's FY2010 budget was released this morning (you can search through all 1376 pages here) and among the proposed changes it includes is the elimination of Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) funding. Under the Bush administration, CBAE grants went to programs that teach kids the only way to prevent pregnancy and avoid sexually-transmitted infections is to postpone sex until marriage. Budget language explicitly prevented those programs from providing students "any other education regarding sexual conduct."

As I explained in the magazine a couple of months ago, abstinence-only programs have not proven nearly as successful as approaches that combine the message that abstinence is a good goal for teenagers (see: Bristol Palin) with comprehensive and accurate education about contraception, disease prevention, and decision-making skills."

Dan Savage, appropos of his name, is more direct--it not only fails, it backfires spectacularly. (NSFW)


Via Slog.
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Update: here's the Savage video with the "backfires" quote. This was recorded before Obama's budget proposal came out.

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