Trump Administration shifts funds away from comprehensive sex ed classes to those that teach abstinence.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

The Trump administration will shift federal funding aimed at reducing teen pregnancy rates to programs that teach abstinence. 

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Friday the availability of grants through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, (TPPP) a grant program created under former President Obama that funds organizations and programs working to reduce teen pregnancy rates. 

Trump's HHS announced, however, that unlike under the Obama administration, grants will be geared toward organizations that teach abstinence education to teens instead of the comprehensive sex ed approach the previous administration supported. In a funding announcement released Friday, the administration announced two tiers of funds for the TPP program. 

"Projects will clearly communicate that teen sex is a risk behavior for both the physical consequences of pregnancy and sexual transmitted infections; as well as sociological, economic and other related risks," the funding announcement reads. "Both risk avoidance and risk reduction approaches can and should include skills associated with helping youth delay sex as well as skills to help those youth already engaged in sexual risk to return toward risk-free choices in the future."

Well I think we can all look forward to a dramatic spike in teen pregnancy. 

As the product of a teen pregnancy, I can attest to the fact that the "just say no" approach is deeply flawed.

Trump Administration bringing back abstinence only education in public schools. Man the hits just keep on coming.

Courtesy of The Hill:

Abstinence-only education — encouraging adolescents to wait until marriage for sex — is making a comeback under President Trump. 

In a marked departure from the previous administration, conservatives at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are putting an emphasis on abstinence to reduce teen pregnancy rates. 

“We definitely are seeing a shift,” said Kelly Marcum, a government affairs legislative assistant at the Family Research Council in Washington, which supports abstinence-only education. 

“We’re really excited to see that the administration is giving some tools back to us to keep pushing that fight.” 

So far, the administration has encouraged organizations applying for Title X federal family planning funds to include in their programs a “meaningful emphasis” on “the benefits of avoiding sex” when communicating with adolescents and to use programs that don’t “normalize sexual risk behaviors.” 

The Trump administration also plans to release its first report early this summer as part of a $10 million research project looking at ways to improve sex education programs, with a focus on the impact of “sexual delay.”

Yeah because that whole "wait until marriage" thing worked out so well in the past.

Telling kids that they cannot do something only makes that something even more desirable.

Anybody who has ever had, or ever been, a teenager knows that.

And if this approach is at all similar to past approaches it will focus mostly on shaming the girls, and give the guys a pass because they are not considered the gatekeepers of abstinence.

But hey if they are looking for an effective deterrent to sexual activity just show that image of Trump at the top of the page to the students.

One look at that and NOBODY is horny anymore.

President Obama's 2017 budget cuts all funding to Abstinence Only education in this country.

Just a little something I threw together for the kids.

Courtesy of SEICUS:  

Earlier today, February 9, 2016, the president released his fiscal year (FY) 2017 budget, the final budget of his administration, which continues to demonstrate his strong commitment to supporting the sexual health of our nation’s youth through age-appropriate, medically accurate, and science-based programs. In addition, the President has shown leadership in efforts to rid our nation of abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) funding once and for all by not only eliminating the competitive AOUM program, but also including a legislative proposal to eliminate the Title V AOUM state grant program currently authorized at $75 million for FY 2017. 

Choosing instead to focus on investing in programs that support youth access to the information and education they need to lead sexually healthy lives, the president’s FY 2017 budget request proposes increased investment in the Office of Adolescent Health’s (OAH) Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP) and maintains current funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH).

Can I just mention how great it is to have a President to recognizes science and understands that shaming teenagers into not having sex has NEVER been an effective method of preventing teen pregnancy or the spread of disease.

Of course as we know this is the very same budget that the Republicans rejected before they even saw it.

Still if the President manages to make these changes, and let's face it he is getting more done these days than ever before, it will be good news indeed for the young people of this country.

Okay well maybe not ALL of the young people of this country.

But let's face it, it's too late for this one anyway.

Tim Tebow screws up relationship by being too religious to screw. Currently unmarried and pregnant Bristol Palin tweets her support.

Courtesy of the New York Daily News:

 For once, it's not Tim Tebow who's having trouble scoring - it's his girlfriend. 

Confidenti@l is told the QB's model squeeze Olivia Culpo has dumped him after a two-month relationship - because he won't have sex with her. 

The former Miss USA, who was first reported to be seeing Tebow in early October, has told friends that she can't deal with the famously abstinent star's nookie-less lifestyle.

First off I really don't understand this whole marriage before sex thing, If I had adhered to that philosophy my sex life would never have been nearly as epic.

Secondly this is Olivia Culpo.

I know, right?

The only way religion would have kept me from having sex with a woman like that was if somebody were slamming me in the groin with the Bible every time I looked in her direction. And to be honest that probably would not have stopped me either.

Now as comical as all of this is, it gets even better.

You see former abstinence spokesperson, and current baby factory, Bristol Palin felt the need to offer her support.

Tim Tebow’s 5 reasons for not having sex before marriage https://t.co/3wcYxbO2ZO via @DaveWillis

— Bristol Palin (@BristolsBlog) November 30, 2015

Now it is of course possible, and probable, that this Twitter account is also controlled by Nancy French. But that in no way makes this any less bizarre and hypocritical.

In fact it makes it more so. 

Texas school teaches abstinence only sex education. Chlamydia arrives to teach them the error of their ways.

Courtesy of KRMG: 

The superintendent of schools in Crane, Texas is rethinking the districts sexual education curriculum, after learning that 20 of the high schools 300 students have tested positive for chlamydia. 

Jim Rummage told television station KFOR, "We do have an abstinence curriculum, and that evidently ain’t working. We need to do all we can, although it’s the parents’ responsibility to educate their kids on sexual education.” 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention isn't mincing any words, calling the outbreak a health issue of epidemic proportions.

I love this part about the abstinence program, "That evidently ain't working."

Gee ya think?

There is already exhaustive research which proves that abstinence education does not work and yet due to mostly religiously driven fears sexuality people are still buying into the idea that telling a hormonal teenager not to let their naughty bits touch will actually work.

It does not work, and it never has.

Hell, I'M proof of that.

It is just too bad that so many of these kids had to come down with STDs before the adults in their lives were able to recognize their ignorance.

Bristol Palin finally finds somebody in the media to defend her so there you liberal haterz!!!!!!!

After being mercilessly mocked by the media, and becoming so incensed that Nancy French had to post in an angry voice for her on her blog, Bristol has finally found a journalist to take her side:

Thanks, Federalist, for being more even handed than the other publications.

I mean sure the reporter is a conservative mouth piece, who graduated from an Evangelical college which mostly takes home schoolers, and has recently been in the news due to a sexual assault, but hey at least it was positive.

Or was it?

From The Federalist: 

Granted, Palin isn’t the best person to be a spokesperson for an abstinence advocacy organization, as clearly she isn’t practicing what she preaches, but that doesn’t strip her of the right to have a say on the reproductive process. 

The reporter,  Bre Payton, then goes on to agree with many of the misstatements made by Nancy/Bristol/Sarah in that initial piece, but of course since she is a conservative religious fundamentalist she kind of has to.

However it is hard to see this is as much of an endorsement of Bristol as a conservative spokesperson if the reporter also has to include her personal failings. 

I mean the point that many of the articles made while calling Palin out was that not only did she have her facts wrong, but that she herself was not the right person to deliver them for public consumption.

Bre Payton argues that Bristol has the right to have an opinion, and that is true.

However other media outlets also have the right to argue that her opinion is not worth anything based on her life choices, lack of education, and hypocrisy. 

And then if you add to that the fact that Bristol is not even the one really writing these posts, well then you turn the hypocrisy up to eleven.

Currently, thanks to the efforts of Nancy French and her employer Sarah Palin, Bristol is everyone's favorite punching bag.

If she does not like that, and based on that recent post about being called an idiot she must not, then Bristol knows what she needs to do about it.

And she might want to hurry, because Wonkette is already having another field day with that idiot post.

Such a good point.

And before all you Christians start getting all riled up, keep this in mind:

Paul, the earliest New Testament author, never mentions the virgin birth. For someone who we rely upon for much of Christian theology, it is an odd omission. Paul refers to Jesus’ birth twice (Rom 1:3; Gal 4:4) and never says he was born of a virgin or of different means than anyone else. You’d think that would be important. 

The virgin birth is also not in Mark, the earliest gospel, or in John, the only other gospel not based on Mark. Why is such an important story left out of all the early sources? Probably because it hadn’t been made up yet. 

Why would the story be made up? Perhaps to fulfill an old prophecy of a virgin birth, which the Gospel of Matthew cites: 

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14) 

Some scholars say “virgin” was a mistranslation in the Septuagint (the Greek translation the gospel writers used), and should have been translated “young woman.” That means the story might have been based on a mistranslation! 

It seems likely the virgin birth was created to boost the authority of Christianity through prophecy and compete with rival gods who were born of virgins.

When I was younger I used to love to trot this out to my Christian pals just to see how red they got in the face.

I am a little less combative these days, but it is still something that I like to introduce into the conversation once in awhile. 

You know just to keep everybody on their toes.

WTF Arizona?

Apparently this from a high school in Arizona.

Here is more courtesy of Addicting Info: 

At this time it should be noted again that this is not meant to be used in a sexual education class; this is for students’ biology textbooks. Discussing the scientific reality of things like birth control and STDs are apparently too much. And in fact, this was the conservative school board’s idea of a “compromise.” They had originally wanted to quite literally cut out the pages of the science book that made mention of abortion. 

Last school year, Gilbert’s administrators proposed “editing” the textbook to align it with Arizona’s conservative views on abortion and abstinence. “The cheapest, least disruptive way to solve the problem is to remove the page,” said one board member, apparently unaware that science doesn’t just cease to exist if you hide it. 

Several months later, they had second thoughts. For one thing, slicing out pages of copyrighted textbooks is probably illegal. For another, it would have cost a fortune. Instead, the conservative board members decided to utilize a common creationist tactic: stickers that tell students to ignore their own textbooks because of how dangerous it is.

This is so many shades of fucked up that I don't even know where to begin.

Hell no wonder teachers are leaving the profession in droves.

John Oliver on sex education in America, and how abstinence only shames young women.

Okay I know I have shared these videos with you before, and they are all great, but seriously this one is amazing!

In fact I would like to see this shown to high school kids during their human development class as part of the curriculum, it is THAT good.

Flashback Monday. Bristol Palin assures the world that she is never going to have premarital sex or get pregnant out of wedlock again.

For real, for real, for real, I cannot understand how this Candie's advertisement did not result in a ton of acting gigs for Bristol.

I mean she's a natural to play a woman coming out of a coma, a victim of a serious head injury, or a mentally impaired woman-child trying to pass herself off as knowledgeable about birth control.

Now see THIS illustrates exactly why Bristol was so unmercifully mocked after news of this second pregnancy broke.

It was not slut shaming, it was simply hypocrite shaming, and she deserved every bit of it.

MTV star and sex education vlogger addresses Bristol Palin's most recent pregnancy.

Courtesy of MTV:  

Bristol Palin, the daughter of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, travels around the country getting paid (a lot) to speak about abstinence, and it was recently revealed that she’s accidentally pregnant. For the second time. 

On this week’s episode of “Braless,” Laci Green discusses Bristol and the dangers of abstinence-only sex-ed. “The fact that Bristol is pregnant AGAIN is a massive face-palm of hypocrisy,” Laci says, “but it also stands as yet another testament to how well abstinence-only programs really work. …It nearly always fails people who need it the most — including Bristol herself.”

Laci Green is a rather well known video blogger, or "vlogger," who focuses on sex and sex education.

I thought what she had to say about abstinence, and Bristol Palin in particular, was very interesting because she is essentially speaking for, and to, the same demographic that the folks who paid Bristol were hoping SHE would reach.

As Green points out abstinence only sex education is really an anti-sex campaign masquerading as health campaign.

Raw Story article explains why it is really the conservative Christians who are responsible for the majority of abortions in this country.

The article used their own picture of Bristol by way of illustration, but I like this one better.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

America’s high rate of abortion can be directly attributed to conservative Christianity’s obsession with controlling and suppressing sexuality. 

The most effective way to reduce abortion is to de-stigmatize sexuality, improve sexual education, and ensure broad access to excellent contraceptives. In the highly secular Netherlands, this formula has knocked abortion down to 7 per 1000 women annually, one third the U.S. rate.

That is obviously a valid point which is hard to argue with, if you rely on logic that is.  Which of course we all know is not how fundamentalists frame their argument.

Raw Story then goes on to lay out four aspects of conservative Christianity which promotes accidental pregnancies:

1) Pro-natalism. One of Christianity’s competitive strategies is to drive up the birth rate of believers. The Old Testament describes an estimated 1.2 million deaths at the hand of Yahweh or his servants, which makes it hard to argue that Christianity is pro-life. It is, however, pro-birth. Be fruitful and multiply, says the writer of Genesis (Genesis 1:28); Women will be saved through childbearing, echoes a New Testament writer centuries later (1 Timothy 2:15). Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation, bluntly put it in his own words: “If a woman grows weary and at last dies from childbearing, it matters not. Let her only die from bearing; she is there to do it.”Treating women as breeders, a strategy for increasing adherents, is at the heart of the Catholic anti-contraceptive stance and the Protestant Quiverfull movement. Historically, these attitudes may have driven up the number of Christians, but thanks to the Religious Right meddling in politics and education, today they drive up accidental pregnancy and abortion for Americans across the religious spectrum.

Remember during the time of the Bible, and in the early years of the church, religious, economic, and military superiority was a numbers game. The more babies you made, the more Christians you could send into battle, work on your farms, and spread your religion.

2) Obsession with Sexual Sin. “Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe”–we all know what it means. By the Iron Age, when Judaism emerged, the male determination to know which babies were whose had taken the form of men owning women. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. (Exodus 20:17) Women caught in adultery (or missing their hymens) were killed by the ancient Hebrews, just as they are by conservative Muslims today.Christianity’s obsession with sexual sin or rather with female virginity has produced the American purity myth, which makes candid conversations and education about sexuality a challenge. 

In modern times this of course has led to abstinence only education and the shaming of women for allowing boys into their beds before they are wed. Women may no longer be property, but according to conservative Christians they should still know their place.

3) Emphasis on Righteousness over Compassion. Traditional Christianity is about right belief. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. (Acts 16:31). (Contrast this with the central virtue of Buddhism, ahimsa, or non-harm.) The focus on being right has caused Christianity to fracture into over 38,000 denominations. But schism is just one of many negative consequences that come from valuing right belief over compassionate living. Many believers would rather be right (and righteous) than loving. They’d rather be right than solve problems. They would rather condemn abortion from a position of righteous superiority than solve the complicated conditions that cause women to terminate pregnancies. They’d rather judge from the sidelines than get their hands dirty.

I don't think I really need to add anything more to that.

4) Structuring Society for Fantasy Perfect Humans Rather than Real Humans. In the ideal fantasy world of Evangelical Christianity, teenagers wouldn’t have sex. In fact nobody would ever have sex unless they were married and ready to have a baby. In this fantasy world all we need to do is teach teens to abstain (and then shame and punish the ones who don’t) and voila, teen pregnancy will go away. This is the worldview that produced the painful story of Bristol Palin, who earned a quarter of a million dollars promoting abstinence only to find herself awkwardly announcing a second pregnancy.In the real world, the most dramatic improvements in teen pregnancy and family flourishing come when young people have excellent information about their own bodies and access to top tier contraceptives.

And now you know why they chose Bristol for their  abstinence only example at the top of their article.

Of course Bristol is by no means an accurate example of what most young unwed mothers go through after giving birth. Her famous name and access to well paying job opportunities have kept her off of the streets, and out of minimum paying jobs, though it seems just barely.

However I think most of us believe that Bristol's lack of proper sex education have resulted in far more brushes with pregnancy than have ever been made public.

Which in some ways makes her perhaps the perfect example of the dangers of a conservative Christian message about sex.

Radar Online calls bullshit on Bristol Palin's claims that she was never paid to be an abstinence spokesperson.

Courtesy of Radar Online:

Just days after announcing her second pregnancy out of wedlock, mama bear Bristol Palin was back on the defensive, addressing the wave of critics who have called the former abstinence advocate a hypocrite in a blistering blog post. “I have never been paid as an ‘abstinence spokesperson,'” she said, although RadarOnline.com has learned she earned more than $300,000 spreading that very message. 

Palin admits she was employed by “the great people at the Candies Foundation [sic],” and according to tax records obtained by Radar, she was paid $262,5000 in 2009 for her work as an advocate, and $70,000 the year after. 

While Palin insists that her focus, and that of the organization’s, was simply to prevent teen pregnancy, her statements in those years were stridently pro-abstinence. 

In 2009, she told Good Morning America, “regardless of what I did personally, I just think that abstinence is the only … 100 percent foolproof way to prevent pregnancy,” and promised a magazine in that year, “I’m not going to have sex until I’m married: I can guarantee it.” 

And when Palin made an appearance with the head of the Candie’s Foundation on Greta Van Susteren‘s On The Record in 2010, Van Susteren introduced her by saying, “”Bristol is promoting abstinence for the Candie’s Foundation.” What’s more, her listing on the webpage for the Single Source Speakers Agency lists “abstinence” as the very first topic of her expertise.

This is obviously bullshit, and Bristol is an idiot to deny the facts when they are so easily to locate online.  

In fact the folks at the Inquisitr have determined that Bristol made somewhere in the vicinity of one million dollars as a direct result of her time as a abstinence spokesperson.

By the way if you want to hear Bristol Palin delivering a speech to a pro-life group in 2010 as a direct result of her work as an abstinence spokesperson then here you go. (However I must warn you that she is an absolutely TERRIBLE speaker.)

You will notice that Bristol had no problem lying to these people about "accidentally" becoming pregnant when we all know that she planned that pregnancy as well.

P.S. This is the most recent post on Bristol's Instagram:

 Here is what she wrote to go along with it: 

AKA every negative comment on my IG 😂 .. Don't people have work? Or kids? Or hobbies other than trolling? #mustbeafulltimejob

Really not doing herself any favors here is she?

Cartoon of the day.

True that.

Bristol Palin's message to her critics is childish, as usual.

Courtesy of Brancy's blog:  

This is still how much I care about anything negative … 

#prolife ❤️ God is good, happy Friday!!

Oh look she even got a pro-life pander in there. 

Cause remember she's not a former abstinence spokesperson who is publicly knocked up again without benefit of a spouse because she is a slut who doesn't understand how birth control works. She's a former abstinence spokesperson who is publicly knocked up again without benefit of a spouse because she is a good Christian who supports a pro-life agenda.

So there !

Sadly for her not a whole lot of people are buying it.

In response to her demand for "no lectures" Slate decided to tally up some of the times that she, and her ghostwriter Nancy French, felt free to lecture....well just about everybody.

And the International Business Times decided to focus on the amount she hypocritically made as a spokesperson for abstinence.

However on the plus side Candies. who paid Bristol for telling women that becoming a teen mother was bad while raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars for being a teen mother, are standing by her:

"In 2011, when she was just 19, Bristol Palin was enormously helpful to The Candie's Foundation in our mission to educate teenagers about the devastating consequences of teen pregnancy." 

That is CYA 101.

You know I think that if you believe that Bristol Palin convinced even one teenage girl that getting pregnant was not glamorous and a ticket to fame and fortune you are a special kind of stupid. 

By the way Wasilla folks (Or Palin family members who are tired of this shit.) if you happen to know who the daddy is, I know some tabloids who are willing to pay big bucks for that information. 

Bristol Palin baby bump day two.

So yesterday we learned that Bristol has learned absolutely NOTHING about birth control in the six and a half years since Tripp's birth. (Wow! Are there really over 700 comments on that post?)

Sometime after the initial spate of giggles died down people began focusing on the fact mentioned in the above graphic of Bristol's almost shocking hypocrisy. (Some of the best comments can be found here on this comment thread from Reddit.)

Columnist Dan Savage also mentioned the hypocrisy of the Right Wing and in particular Fox News:

If Bristol Palin's last name was "Obama" the whole Hee Haw gang at Fox News would spend half of every day for the next nine months telling us that Bristol Obama has terrible parents—"Maybe Michelle should be less concerned with what your kids are eating and more concerned with what her kids are doing!"—and the other half of the day pretending to fret over the terrible example that Bristol Obama was setting for other African American women and girls. But unplanned pregnancies and kids in fatherless homes and two different children by two different fathers? 

This obvious and accurate point seems to have irritated Geraldo Rivera, who tweeted this concerning the story "fxck you jerk off. Fox news doesn't have a reaction to anyone's pregnancy."

(Yes, of course as we know Fox News always takes the high road.)

A little closer to home I have been receiving a lot of incoming missives from people here in Alaska saying that there is NO WAY the baby is Dakota's and that Bristol is setting him up to pay years of unnecessary child support.

I agree 100% so I sent that Radar Online link to Dakota's Facebook page along with advice to demand a blood test, where it now remains the top comment out of 56 replies to his initial post promoting some company.

My hope is that Dakota will say something publicly about the pregnancy, which would be both awesome and kind of necessary for him if he wants to dodge this particular bullet. 

As of this writing Sarah has not yet bothered to weigh in, though I cannot imagine her staying silent for much longer.

That will also be pretty awesome.

Parents file lawsuit against California school for teaching abstinence only sex education classes, and they win!

Courtesy of HuffPo:

A judge in Fresno County, California, has ruled against an abstinence-only sex education program, saying a school district violated state law by failing to provide adequate instruction on sexual health and HIV prevention. 

Fresno County Superior Court Judge Donald Black said a lawsuit against Clovis Unified School District was justified because the district failed to offer "comprehensive, medically accurate, objective and bias-free" education, in violation of the California Comprehensive Sexual Health & HIV/AIDS Prevention Act, adopted in 2003. The law requires public schools to "provide a pupil with the knowledge and skills necessary to protect his or her sexual and reproductive health from unintended pregnancy and STDs." 

"Given the high social cost of teen pregnancy and similar toll on society of HIV/ADIS [sic] and other sexually transmitted diseases, the rights vindicated by this suit, access to medically, and socially appropriate sexual education, is an important public right," Black wrote.

I have to admit that I was both shocked, and amazed by this ruling.

You mean there is a state in this country that is so reasonable that it is against the law to teach sex education courses to children which slut shames teenage girls and attacks contraceptive products as ineffective?

What madness is this?

You know I would say that this makes California the perfect place for liberals to raise your children if it wasn't for the fact that the state is always on fire and dry as a bone.

I only hope that this is going to set a precedent, and that other states will soon start suing schools that provide misinformation about contraception and lies to kids about sex.

Bristol Palin: Nothing to see here, let's move along.

This showed up on Brancy's blog the other day with this caption:

My mom made homemade cinnamon rolls! #weddingprep #onemonth

If this seems very familiar it's probably because we discussed this pic here on IM over a month ago.

One has to wonder why Nancy French would recycle an old photo off of Bristol's Instagram account and attempt to make a new post, when she has spent most of her time attacking Hillary Clinton, or pushing a Christian or military agenda.

I of course have a theory.

After all that post about Bristol's exotic friend garnered almost 500 comments and seems to have changed the narrative quite a bit.

Kind of hard to sell yourself as a former abstinence spokesperson and born again virgin, about to marry a war hero, with connections to a friend like this:

Who has videos available online like this, and this.

And it's not like Bristol can do anything to hide their friendship.

Which once again is no big deal, UNLESS her mother wants to continue marketing Bristol as a proponent of family values, a Christian blogger, and the wife of a future Senator or Congressman.

Because you KNOW that is where this whole thing is heading.

They have even started to transform Tripp into a new version of Track.

(Possibly the most disturbing picture so far.)

Mom attends son's class on abstinence. Sends out horrified tweets in response to what she hears.

Courtesy of As It Happens:

Every parent is curious about what their kids learn in sex education class. 

But when Michigan mom Alice Dreger found out that abstinence was the subject of her son's upcoming lesson, she was so curious, she decided to go back to school.

With her son's permission - and the school's -- she sat in the back of the class last week. 

The medical humanities and bioethics professor teaches at Northwestern University and does research on sex. The plan was to sit quietly in the back while the state-required course on abstinence was taught. 

But that all changed when the lesson started. 

"They were teaching the kids through a game....that one out of six times a man and woman have intercourse, that the condom will fail and the woman will get pregnant...and they were handed a paper baby." Eventually, the whole class had babies. (Actually when used properly condoms only fail around 2% of the time. A better use of time in a sex education class would be to demonstrate how to use them correctly.)

"Almost from the beginning...It was clear to me what they were going to impart in that classroom was the story of how you can abstain from sex and have a delightful life or you can not abstain and have a terrible life and that's exactly what went on to happen." 

A guest speaker told the class he only found happiness after he met a girl who led an "abstinence lifestyle."  (Of course I'm assuming that he banged everything with a pulse until he met this girl.)

"The lesson was...that when you meet a girl who says no that's the woman you want, basically slut-shaming the girls who might say yes," Dreger says.

Because of course it is always left up to the woman to take responsibility for the consequences of sex. Men are simply excused as being unable to control their animal like impulses.

 That's the problem with allowing parents who are educators monitor your ignorant class, they are going to notice how deep the bullshit is.

Texas Republican's new budget amendment would pull 3 million dollars from HIV prevention and apply it to abstinence education.

Worst Texas doctor EVER.

Courtesy of ABC News:  

Texas would cut $3 million from programs to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases and spend that money instead on abstinence education under a contentious Republican-sponsored measure tucked into the state budget Tuesday night. 

The GOP-controlled House overwhelmingly approved the budget amendment, but not before a tense exchange with Democrats that veered into the unusually personal. 

Republican state Rep. Stuart Spitzer, a doctor and the amendment's sponsor, at one point defended the change by telling the Texas House that he practiced abstinence until marriage. The first-term lawmaker said he hopes schoolchildren follow his example, saying, "What's good for me is good for a lot of people."

My favorite part of the article is this exchange:  

Democrat state Rep. Harold Dutton asked Spitzer if abstinence worked for him. 

"It did," Spitzer replied. "I've had sex with one woman in my life and that's my wife." 

"Is that the first woman you asked?" Dutton replied. 

Shouts of "Decorum!" soon echoed on the House floor as the back-and-forth intensified. Efforts by Democrats to put the debate in writing for the record - usually a perfunctory request - failed.

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that exchange.

Once again here are Republicans taking money from a prevention plan whose effectiveness has been proven, and attempting to apply to a program that is doomed to fail.

And the fact that his amendment was sponsored by a doctor, just makes it all the more egregious.

According to the article this amendment is far from being passed, but I would suggest to these Texas lawmakers that before they put it to a final vote they give Indiana a call and find out how things worked for them when THEY took the focus off of HIV testing.