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.

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.

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.

Christian sex education course tells high school girls that too much sex will break their "chemical bond."

Courtesy of The Age:  

Year 7 girls have been warned not to have multiple sex partners or risk becoming like overused sticky tape, in a Christian sex education program at a public Victorian high school. 

The students at Fairhills High School, in Knoxfield in Melbourne's outer east, were also told that a chemical released in females' brains made them more needy than boys. 

A booklet titled 'Science & Facts', that was given to the students, said that "girls are needier than guys in a relationship and always want to be close".  (Wait, the booklet is called "Science & Facts?"  Is that like calling Fox News "Fair & Balanced?")


It said that a chemical called oxytocin, is released when "two people touch", and was produced by women more than men, making them needier. (By  the way Oxytocin is a hormone released by the pituitary gland to help regulate breastfeeding and childbirth. It is not released when girls simply touch a boy.)

"If a woman becomes physically close and hugs a guy for 20 seconds it will trigger the bonding process, creating a greater desire to be near him. Then if the guy wants to take the relationship further it will become harder for her to say no," the booklet said. (Why is it always the female's job to say no?)

It warned that having too many relationships could break "this special chemical bond" and harm a woman's capacity to form future relationships. 

"Having multiple sex partners is almost like tape that loses its stickiness after being applied and removed multiple times. So the more you have the harder it is to bond to the next," it said.

Yes too much sex will make it much harder to use women to hold things together. Makes perfect sense.

This particular school is in Knoxfield, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, but you know this same type of garbage is being introduced in public schools here in America as well. And in many private schools it is undoubtedly the ONLY curriculum available.

Since this article was first published the church was forced to apologize, but I think we all know they  will continue distributing this false information until all of the schools car them from their campuses.

Once again this kind of misinformation and shaming of girls is just another type of child abuse, and simply should not be tolerated in ANY educational setting.

Semen causes cancer. lust is emotional gangrene, and other "facts" you can only learn from the Duggar family's homeschool curriculum.

All of the following courtesy of Gawker.

Did you know that non-spousal sperm causes cancer? Well according to materials from the Advanced Training Institute's homeschool curriculum, which the Duggar family used to learn all about sex and its many dangers, it does it totally does: 

Doctors have discovered that the seed of the man is an alien substance to the woman. It triggered responses similar to those of an “allergic” reaction. A woman who has a husband is able to develop “immunity” to this reaction; however, a promiscuous woman’s immune system becomes confused and unable to distinguish alien substances. This confusion is a key to the development of cancer.

I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that this refers to HPV which can in fact cause cervical cancer. However this is not due to the fact that a man's seed is "alien" to woman but rather due to the fact that the man picked up a dose from one of the other woman who he was sharing that seed with.

Of course all of this potential cancer is caused by lust. And lust is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. (It really helps if you read that in the voice of Gomer Pyle.)

Armor of God, does that work better than a condom?

And medical diseases and diseases of the soul are linked.

Diseases of the body usually have their counterpart in diseases of the soul. There is, in fact, an intimate relationship between the health of the soul and the health of the body. 

By understanding the workings of a disease in one realm we can often gain significant insight to a corresponding disease in the other realm.

Ah, the old "bad things happen to sinners" argument. 

This was a popular idea in like the 16th century. Hard to believe that it is being taught to children in the 21st.

And remember men are not to blame for becoming all rapey, cause you know the gangrene of lust and all:

When a man looks lustfully at a woman, a flood of impulses travels through the optic nerve to the back of the brain. As a result, the glands and other bodily functions are activated, and the level of testosterone increases. 

Recent studies revealed a significant correlation between high testosterone levels and those who commit violent crimes.

You know that is exactly the same rational used in Muslim countries to convince women that an exposed elbow or ankle will drive a perfectly reasonable man crazy and fill him with the urge to rape the crap out of her.

It's never the man's fault after all.

There is of course much more over at Gawker but I think we now get a pretty good idea of exactly how the Duggar family received their education concerning sex.

Of course in no way does this excuse Josh Duggar's behaviors but it does help to explain the irrational environment in which he was raised.  

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.

Colorado proves that education, not slut shaming, is the best way to prevent teen pregnancies.

Courtesy of Pew Charitable Trusts:  

President Barack Obama hailed a landmark achievement in his State of the Union address last month: Teen pregnancies in the U.S. have hit an all-time low. But the U.S. still has a teen birthrate of 31.2 per 1,000 teens, nearly one-and-a-half times the rate in the United Kingdom, which has one of the highest rates in Western Europe. 

Colorado may have found a way to close the gap. The state’s teen birthrate dropped 40 percent between 2009 and 2013, driven largely by a public health initiative that gives low-income young women across the state long-acting contraceptives such as intrauterine devices (IUDs) and hormonal implants. 

Backed by $23.5 million from the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, Colorado attracted national recognition for its program after Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper announced the results of a cost-savings study last summer. The state saved $42.5 million in 2010 alone, an average return of $5.85 in avoided Medicaid costs for prenatal, delivery and first year of infant care for every $1 spent on the program. 

More important, Hickenlooper said, the initiative “has helped thousands of young Colorado women continue their education, pursue their professional goals and postpone pregnancy until they are ready to start a family.”

But wait, according to the conservatives the best way to avoid teen pregnancy is by keeping sex ed out of public school classroom, get rid of Planned Parenthood, and dress your daughters like puritans?

So gee simply educating both teen boys and teen girls about sex and providing access to birth control can bring teen pregnancy rates down by almost half, and allow young women to live full and productive lives while choosing parenthood on THEIR terms.

Whoda thunk it?

Oklahoma county introduces science based comprehensive sex education, teen birth rate drops 20 percent in one year. Funny how that works.

Courtesy of Tulsa World:  

Tulsa County’s teen birth rate fell 20 percent from 2012 to 2013, according to statistics released recently by the Oklahoma State Department of Health. 

That far outpaced the rate statewide, where the rate fell 9 percent, according to the department. 

Kim Schutz, executive director of the Tulsa Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, said programs such as evidence-based, comprehensive sex education at schools have helped teenagers in Tulsa County get the messages needed to prevent pregnancy, she said. 

“It comes down to teens making better decisions,” she said. 

The teen birth rate in Tulsa County was 37.5 per 1,000 teenage girls ages 15 to 19 in 2013, down from 46.8 per 1,000 the year before, Schutz said.

Not exactly shocking to learn that having comprehensive sex education has a bigger impact on preventing teen pregnancy than simply telling kids to say no.

Of course you cannot tell some people that.

 Good for Tulsa County in embracing an educational program that actually helps their community rather than one that is supported by religious fundamentalists who believe that virginity is more precious than gold and that sex is something women must endure in order to trap a husband and live in an upscale neighborhood.

Canadian teenager fights, and wins, to have a "sexual purity" course taught by conservative Christians removed from her school's curriculum.

Courtesy of Think Progress:

 After a Canadian high school student filed a human rights complaint against her school district, saying that her rights as a nonbeliever were violated by being required to attend a course on sexual purity taught by a conservative Christian group, school officials agreed to reconsider the curriculum. The anti-abortion group that taught that abstinence education course, Pregnancy Care Centre, won’t be invited back next year. 

Emily Dawson and her mother, Kathy, lodged a formal complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission after Emily was required to attend a two-day abstinence class in order to graduate. The complaint alleges that the Pregnancy Care Centre’s course used scare tactics, like misleading information about STDs and negative stereotypes about single parent homes, to dissuade students from having sex. The Dawsons identify as agnostics and were offended that they had no option to opt out of a course taught by a conservative religious organization with an explicit agenda. 

Now, thanks to the public backlash sparked by their allegations, Emily’s school district is looking for new speakers to cover topics related to sex ed. 

“We’ve heard a lot of concerns expressed from the public over the last several days about guest speakers invited to present on the topic of sexual health education,” the board wrote in a statement released Friday. “We are asking our schools in the fall to use different presenters so that we can continue this conversation, and focus on meeting the needs of students and parents.”

Well good for Emily! That is incredibly brave of her to fight for her right not to be exposed to religious indoctrination and misinformation is her classroom.

How the school did not know realize that the America based anti-abortion, pro-abstinence group would be selling their children slut shaming snake oil is a little beyond me.

The Pregnancy Care Centre is affiliated with a network of right-wing “crisis pregnancy centers” in the United States called Care-Net. Both groups are opposed to abortion and advocate for sexual abstinence until marriage. In an interview with CBC News, a researcher at the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada said it’s somewhat surprising that a Canadian public school would use a sexual health curriculum from a U.S. group, since Canada has been “far ahead of the U.S. when it comes to teaching about sexual health free of ideology or religion.”

Yeah America has a history of outsourcing our religious zealotry to other countries. Just look what we have done in Uganda.

Republican lawmaker helps to cripple Hawaii's sex education program because he claims it "normalizes" homosexuality.

Hawaii State Representative Bob McDermott clearly very upset that he never gets in any of this.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

Hawaii’s state Department of Education announced on Saturday that its middle school sexual education program would only be taught to students whose parents explicitly opted-in. 

The announcement was a victory for Hawaii State Representative Bob McDermott, who claimed that the program would “normalize” homosexuality. Rep. McDermott has long fought against sexual education programs like Pono Choices, which was developed by the University of Hawaii at Mānoa’s Center on Disability Studies using funding from the federal Office of Adolescent Health. (“Pono” is a Hawaiian word typically translated as “righteous.”) 

“I am a little uncomfortable saying this, but this is what your children, your 11-year-old children, are being taught. To me, this is outrageous because it robs them of their innocence and it’s not appropriate,” McDermott said about the program late last year. 

“I can assure you my 11-year-old girl knows nothing about anal sex, and one of the reasons is because she’s not exposed to Pono Choices.” (Yeah, well I can assure this uptight prick that his daughter knows all about anal sex, and could probably teach him a thing or two. These kids are NEVER as innocent as their parents think they are.)


After he made that statement, the Department of Education temporarily suspended the program until it could determine the curriculum’s “appropriateness.” It found that “the cirriculum meets department standards” and “is a culturally responsive curriculum that has resulted in positive outcomes for students.”

However the program was only reinstated on an "opt in" basis which means that parents have to sign a paper allowing their children to attend instruction, rather than the usual method of "opting out." Of course the result of this approach is that more children will miss the opportunity to learn and that is not good for fighting STD's and keeping teen pregnancy stats low.

Personally I am a little surprised that Hawaii is still struggling with this kind of thing.

Not only did they recently pass a law allowing gay marriage, but in my experience it is just about the gayest place on the planet.

Not to mention that everybody is dressed in brightly colored garb, wearing flowers around their neck, and that they have a long standing tradition of young men who dress like women to have sex with other men, called the Mahus.

Historically the Mahus are widely accepted in Hawaiian culture, and are also revered for their dancing and sexual abilities.

But leave it to some uptight haole to screw things up for the people of Hawaii.

Teabagger who claims to be "homeschooling expert" says that sex education is a liberal plot to create more Democrats. Wait, what?

Marjorie Holsten thinks sex ed is a Democratic plot.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

A conservative activist, who has been billed as a homeschooling expert by tea party groups, warned over the weekend that sex-ed courses were a plot to increase the number of Democratic voters by destroying marriages. 

In an interview with radio host Jan Markell, Marjorie Holsten argued that the only way that schools could teach sexual education in the Common Core curriculum would be to waive obscenity laws in many states. 

“People say to me, why would they teach such awful things to our children?” she remarked. “If you go deep down and you connect those dots, you see that when children are desensitized to sexual things, that affects their ability at a later date to bond with a spouse.” 

“And so if you have somebody who can’t bond, they’re not going to have a stable marriage. When you have unstable, broken households, how do they vote? Democrat. So this has a very evil underlying intent.”

Okay I am really confused by this.

How does understanding how procreation works, and how to prevent pregnancy and STD's, change a person's political outlook?

Is this woman admitting that the only way to keep making new Republicans is to have ignorant teenagers popping out kids before they learn any better? After all teen moms don't usually make it to college, and remain undereducated for the rest of their lives.

So THAT'S their plan!

And just how does this woman expect children to learn about sex if they do not have the opportunity to learn about it in school?  

Oh, she has an answer for that?


“They should learn it the way I did, by watching animals do it on the street,” Williams joked. 

“Actually, that was how I taught my children,” Holsten admitted. “We started with a boy guinea pig…” 

“What? You taught your kids sex-ed with guinea pigs?” Williams interrupted. 

“Well, we had a boy and a girl guinea pig that clearly liked each other,” Holsten said. “You really couldn’t see anything because they’re big, furry little fuzzball things. I mean, that’s why there isn’t guinea pig porn movies.”

She does understand that there is some difference between how human beings make the beast with two backs, and how guinea pigs do it right? Or maybe she doesn't.

You don't think she does that squealing thing during.....never mind. 

By the way I have not yet done the Google search but I would not be so quick to suggest that there is NO guinea pig porn out there.

I know I'M not going to look, but it just might exist.

Mississippi abstinence only sex education course compares girls to dirty peppermint patties. No longer "clean and valuable" after she had been handled.

Courtesy of the LA Times:  

Marie Barnard was delighted when, after decades of silence on the topic, Mississippi passed a law requiring school districts to teach sex education. But the lesson involving the Peppermint Pattie wasn't what she had in mind for her sons. 

The curricula adopted by the school district in Oxford called on students to unwrap a piece of chocolate, pass it around class and observe how dirty it became. 

"They're using the Peppermint Pattie to show that a girl is no longer clean or valuable after she's had sex — that she's been used," said Barnard, who works in public health. "That shouldn't be the lesson we send kids about sex." 

She and other parents lobbied the district to teach about contraception, not just abstinence. After all, as she and other parents noted, 76% of Mississippi teenagers report having sex before the end of high school. 

Mississippi has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country, with 50 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19 in 2011 — compared with 31 per 1,000 nationally. A third of all babies born in Mississippi are to teenage mothers. Access to contraceptives is low, especially in some rural areas where drug stores have been known to refuse to sell condoms to minors. 

Once again it is so helpful of religion to forever leave the burden of chastity with the woman, while giving men a free pass.

A girl who engages in consensual sex before marriage, is a dirty piece of mint filled confection, that is now all disgusting and unfit for love. While a man who sticks his willie in every piece of tail that passes his way, is considered experienced and celebrated by his peers.

A boy who has sex becomes a man. A girl who does the same becomes a slut.

In this day and age the hypocrisy is almost impossible to believe, and yet in some communities it as unchanged as it was back in the days when young men bartered with fathers for the virginity of their daughters, as one would barter for a for any other piece of property or livestock.

However there are a valiant few who desperately try to bring the ignorant into the 21st Century with the rest of us.

Sanford Johnson, deputy outreach coordinator for Mississippi First, an education policy group, encountered these values while addressing the school board in Hollandale, a dusty, rural community with a dilapidated downtown of shuttered stores and peeling paint. 

Johnson thought he had made a good case for contraception education when he shared disturbing statistics: The local birthrate was 73 out of 1,000 females between 15 and 19; the national rate is 29.4 per 1,000. 

He encountered the usual gasps of shock when he revealed that the rate of chlamydia, at 1,346.8 per 100,000 people, was nearly double the rest of Mississippi, and approaching triple the U.S. rate. 

But later Johnson got a call from someone who had attended the board meeting — telling him that people who have sex before marriage don't go to heaven. The board voted for abstinence-only. 

 "People who have sex before marriage don't go to heaven."

And that my friends is when you stand up and walk away.

Because despite the rash of teen pregnancies and the chlamydia epidemic there is no hope of convincing these idiots of anything.

For them all they need to know about love, marriage, and sex, is contained in a misogynistic text, written thousands of years ago, by a group of men who clearly feared and despised women. 

New coalition of American religious leaders are speaking up in favor of abortions rights, contraception, and sexual education. Yeah, you heard that right!

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

On Wednesday, several religious leaders are launching a new campaign to reorient the conversation around religion and sexuality. Specifically, the coalition of faith groups is interested in speaking up in favor of abortion rights, contraception access, and comprehensive sex ed. They’re encouraging their fellow religious Americans to join them. 

At a press conference on Wednesday morning, representatives from several faith traditions will join with advocates from secular reproductive justice groups to kick off “It’s Time To Talk,” an effort to model a new way forward on these issues. 

A religious call for reproductive rights may seem like a contradiction. Many Americans assume that these issues are always in conflict with faith, particularly when it comes to Christianity. But Rev. Harry Knox, the president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), doesn’t think that’s true. 

“Part of the conversation is not getting out there in this country,” Knox explained in an interview with ThinkProgress. “For too long, the extreme Religious Right has dominated the public conversation about religion and sexuality. But the truth is that most people of faith, like the majority of Americans overall, support access to contraception, comprehensive sexuality education, and reproductive health care — including abortion.” 

Indeed, the majority of religious groups don’t actually support overturning Roe v. Wade. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, many religious Americans are able to separate their own beliefs from other women’s bodily autonomy — so even though they’re personally opposed to abortion, they don’t want to make the medical procedure unavailable. Some faith traditions officially recognize a woman’s right to choose. And some churches even teach sex ed on Sunday mornings. 

Okay what just happened here?

Are Christians in America REALLY going to buck the trend and start speaking out for the rights of women, and access to education about sex and birth control? Is that even possible?

Oh I can hardly wait until Fox News gets wind of this!

Experts attribute lowest number of California teen births in 20 years to sex education course in high school. Fundamentalists respond by plugging their ears and yelling "We can't hear you!"

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

California’s teen birth rate has plummeted to the lowest level that it’s been in the past 20 years, according to new data from the state’s health department. The state’s rate now stands at 28 births for every 1,000 teenage girls — a 60 percent drop since 1991, when the rate peaked at 70.9 births for every 1,000 girls. 

Public health experts directly attribute this success to state laws that require California’s public schools to offer comprehensive sex ed classes with scientifically accurate information about birth control. State officials also credited family planning programs that provide community-based resources to teens. “We do believe that our programs are behind these numbers,” Karen Ramstrom, the chief of the program standards branch at the California Department of Public Health’s maternal child and adolescent health division, told the Los Angeles Times. 

That’s in line with national trends. As a whole, the United States’ teen pregnancy rate has been plummeting to record lows, largely because teens are gaining better access to contraceptive methods and opting to use birth control as soon as they become sexually active. And research suggests that community-based youth programs are one of the most effective strategies of instilling teens with healthy attitudes and safe approaches toward sexuality. 

But progress in this area isn’t uniform across every area of the country. While states like California are making huge gains, the teen pregnancy rate remains stubbornly high in the South. Adolescents there tend to receive ineffective abstinence education, and they’re more likely to lack access to birth control resources.

Gee who da thunk it?

Providing comprehensive education AND access to birth control actually LOWERS the teen birth rate? Amazing.

As we well know these statistics will have little impact on the conservatives whose four part strategy will essentially remain, "No, no, no don't do that!"

Followed by, "Oh well now you've done it!"

And then of course, "Nope, gotta have it!"

And then finally, "No we will not help you. We only care about the fetus BEFORE it is born. Good luck slut"

Texas Republican states, on audio, that attending a sex education class taught by Planned Parenthood gets kids "hot and bothered" and results in pregnancy.

Courtesy of Little Green Footballs:

Check out the audio clip of the conversation among state Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, state Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, and state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin. The three were speaking just minutes after the House State Affairs Committee approved legislation with extreme abortion restrictions that could cause most of the state’s clinics to close. Rep. Howard was explaining to her colleagues that responsible sex education, including information on birth control, would lower the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions. Rep. Toth didn’t agree: 

“My wife worked at a home for unwed moms, and one of the little kids that was born, his name is David. David came about as a result of his mom and dad, who were just 16 at the time, going to a Planned Parenthood deal where they taught them how to use contraceptives. They were not sexually active at that point. They got into the car, and they were so hot and bothered from this deal, he couldn’t even get the condom on.” 

If you listen to the rest of the clip, you’ll hear an exasperated Rep. Howard asking her colleagues to move beyond absurd anecdotes and provide some real data to back up their arguments. Needless to say, they have no data to provide. Rep. Toth and Rep. Zedler, like so many of their colleagues at the Capitol, apparently prefer to legislate by anecdote. But we can point to some real facts on sex education: 

A 2012 study found no evidence that formal sex education leads teens to initiate sexual activity earlier or to engage in greater risk taking. 

A November 2007 report explained that “two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavioral effects.” Many either delayed or reduced sexual activity, reduced the number of sexual partners, or increased condom or contraceptive use. None of the comprehensive programs hastened the initiation of sex or increased the frequency of sex. Access to effective contraception dramatically reduces unplanned pregnancy and abortion.

Here is the audio tape for those who cannot believe that this level of ignorance exists:

You know I have been to women's clinics a few items in my live, including Planned Parenthood, and I cannot remember ANYTHING in the educational materials which got my engine revving.

And this includes when I was sixteen years old, and I got an erection if a female simply bit her lip. arched her back, or flicked her hair out of her face.

This is just more of these ridiculous attacks against Planned Parenthood which the GOP now sees as the root of all evil. You know that and Obamacare.

Female California Republican leader says " percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it's an act of violence." I didn't know Todd Akin had a sister!

Oh that Marco Rubio! Always surrounding himself with the best of the Republican party!

Courtesy of the Daily Democrat:

A California Republican leader may have inadvertently revived the controversial subject of rape and pregnancy. 

Before arriving at the state GOP's spring convention here, Celeste Greig told this newspaper that pregnancies by rape are rare "because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized." 

Grieg is the president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, the state's oldest and largest GOP volunteer organization. Ronald Reagan once called it "the conscience of the Republican Party." 

Ironically, Greig was in the midst of criticizing former Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin for saying that victims of "legitimate rape" rarely get pregnant because "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." It was a remark that many believe led not only to his defeat in November but also helped tarnish the Republican brand around the country. 

"That was an insensitive remark," Greig said. "I'm sure he regretted it. He should have come back and apologized." 

Greig, however, went on to say: "Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized. I don't know what percentage of pregnancies are due to the violence of rape. Because of the trauma the body goes through, I don't know what percentage of pregnancy results from the act."

You know perhaps we ought to take our focus off of teaching sex ed classes to kids, and instead start offering them to Republican politicians. 

Hey maybe THIS is why their are fewer and fewer Republicans these days, They don't understand how reproduction works!