Our
view
Budget
religiously biased
A mixed message is continuously sent to
America’s youth. Images on television, movies,
billboards and magazines show and tell people
that if you are not sexy then you are nothing.
Yet an undercurrent of tradition incorporated
in the American psyche constantly whispers
that sex is bad and participating in sex
before marriage, although widely practiced,
is immoral.
Part
of Bush’s proposed budget for fiscal year
2003 supports this negative image of sex
that is being shoved in the faces of American
youth.
Included
in President Bush’s recommended budget spending
for next year is a 33 percent increase on
abstinence-only education. That is $135
million on programs that exclusively educate
on the benefits of abstinence. According
to the American Civil Liberties Union’s
Web site, programs that incorporate any
education about contraception are not eligible
for any of this money.
According
to the ACLU, no federal money is being spent
on programs that include educating students
about contraception and the prevention of
sexually transmitted infections. We should
be concerned about whether youths are getting
the practical, medically sound information
that they need regarding sex.
We
all know that abstinence-only education
will not keep the vast majority of students
from abstaining from sex until marriage.
On the contrary, programs encouraging safe
sex and sex education have a better chance
of preventing early pregnancies and sexually
transmitted infections.
Aside
from the overall lack of effectiveness of
abstinence-only education, we must ask,
why is there such a focus on abstinence?
Any
halfway intelligent person will concede
that abstinence is the best way to prevent
pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections,
but these benefits are not the only reasons
being used when implementing abstinence-only
education.
According
to the ACLU Web site, abstinence-only programs
will be required to convey that “a mutually
faithful monogamous relationship in [the]
context of marriage is the expected standard
of human sexual activity and that sexual
activity outside of the context of marriage
is likely to have harmful psychological
and physical effects.”
Just
to call these programs ethnocentric is an
understatement. Not all people in the world
who would agree that monogamous relationships
within marriages are the standard of human
sexual activity. Where is the separation
of church and state here?
The
abstinence-only education programs push
ideas and traditions that come from specific
religious foundations into the schools and
into the minds of American youths. Abstinence
should be included as an option when sex
education is being taught, but $135 million
is an unnecessary and religiously biased
amount of money to spend on preaching about
abstinence and the immorality of sex.
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