Maybe abstinence-only programs are better

I am writing in response to your Aug. 12 editorial demanding that safe sex be taught in schools. (“‘Just say no’ not enough in sex education for teens”). I don’t doubt that your objective is the welfare of schoolchildren. But is telling kids that there is a safe way to be promiscuous telling the truth?

People who promote safe sex in schools think that it’s cruel to tell kids, “You can follow what you’re being taught and choose abstinence. Otherwise you’re on your own.” But the fact is, people can choose to wait for marriage, or they are on their own. If a high-schooler decides they want to enter this adult world, they had better not be doing so based on the deception that condom sex is safe sex.

“They’ll do it anyway” is the conclusion implied from the statistics you quoted. Everybody does it. “This is a democracy; majority should rule” was the impression I got. I agree that a democratic view is the most utilitarian way to promote the welfare of a mass of individuals. From this perspective, in the few counties in which abstinence-only education is permitted, it is proven to be more effective than safe-sex assumptions.

When you look at statistics, they represent a mass of individual persons. The lower the percentage of teens who contract STDs, the higher the educator’s success rate – if the goal is to keep kids from getting AIDS. If two teachers each take five of these kids, telling them opposite viewpoints, it’s in the kid’s best interest to be in the class in which three out of five avoid STDs, rather than be in the class in which two out of five stay safe. The fact that the abstinence-only schools are ones in which kids are better off shouldn’t cause people to become defensive. Their success is truly something we should all be thankful for, especially when it is contrasted with a thirty-something-year legacy of “safe-sex.”

Arlington

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