I don’t usually include a rant with my toons, but I wanted to share a story with you.
My daughter is in the Upward Bound program, which is designed to help kids get to college. The first year that she attended, the Saturday morning classes consisted entirely of abstinence-only sessions. One day she complained about how boring and stupid these “classes” were, so the very next Saturday I went to class with her.
I had to agree that it was boring. I watched three propaganda films which had little to do with factual education. There was nothing technically incorrect about them, but the real kicker came when the program director started spinning the information.
She emphasized the fact that condoms do not provide very much protection against HPV (Humpan Papilloma Virus). This is technically true, since HPV can be transmitted via any skin-to-skin contact. But then she proceeded to drill into these kids’ heads that, because of this, “condoms are a joke.” And that’s what they took away from this one class – the idea that it doesn’t do any good to use a condom because they don’t protect you.
I was livid, and immediately pulled my daughter from this part of the program. As a father, I don’t like the idea of my little girl having sex, but even less palatable is the idea of her contracting a fatal or debilitating disease that could have been easily prevented.
So why does this program, designed for helping kids get to college, include such a harmful element? Funding, my friends. The Bush Administration has been trying to kill programs like Upward Bound by cutting off the money, but abstinence-only programs are fully funded by the federal government.
But in the ensuing power-play, our kids are being sacrificed like pawns.
The federal govt has no business in sex education of any form. The states and locals are very capable. How many millions of bureaucrats in washinigton D.C. get paid good salaries and excellent bennies to push paper that has to do with education? And how goddamn awful have the state run schools (with fed funding) become?
As a conservative, I want less govt, and this is a good example of why.
Comment by grimgold — November 14, 2007 @ 5:05 pm
This is a perfect example of reactionary thinking. There are some programs which are effective in preventing STDs and pregnancy among teens. But those programs lost all funding when Bush took office. The CDC used to publish a report on their website, citing which programs were effective and which were not. That page was taken down as soon as Bush took office.
Government can be used effectively, or it can be used to push a religious agenda. You want to take government out of the equation entirely and leave everything up to the benevolence private industry or charity. It just doesn’t work that way, Grimmy. Corporations will grind you under their heel given half a chance, and charity just can’t keep up with the aftereffects.
Comment by Peregrin — November 15, 2007 @ 2:46 am