Thursday, April 28, 2005
Peer-reviewed study proves -- ABSTINENCE EDUCATION WORKS!
The Washington Times this morning published the results of a peer-reviewed study of the abstinence education program for young teen girls, BEST FRIENDS and its high school counterpart, DIAMOND GIRLS. The results were very encouraging.
"Girls who participate in the Best Friends abstinence program are substantially less likely to use drugs or engage in premarital sex than peers who are not in the program, a study says. The peer-reviewed study, published this month in the Institute for Youth Development's Adolescent & Family Health, also found extraordinary results among the Best Friends' high school participants, known as Diamond Girls. The Diamond Girls were more than 100 times less likely to engage in premarital sex than high school girls who were not in the program, study author Robert Lerner said yesterday. "
"The Best Friends program, in its 18th year, uses school-based curricula, fitness classes, mentoring, role models and community service to help girls in sixth through eighth grades make healthy choices during adolescence -- such as abstaining from drugs, alcohol, smoking and premarital sex. A companion program for boys, called Best Men, began in 2000. Best Friends, which recently won a three-year federal abstinence grant, does not teach girls about contraception. "
"Mr. Lerner found that Best Friends girls were eight times less likely... to use drugs and more than six times less likely to have premarital sex -- both strong outcomes."
Oh, I can hear our opponents jeering and screeching now, because of course, they can't abide by any program that actually encourages young teens to abstain. They think it is every teenager's God-given right (oops -- maybe not, sorry TTF!) to engage in sexual activity if they want to -- that is why all the fuss about opposing our efforts to make sure teens get all the facts about the dangers of early sexual experimentation -- what it can do to them physically, emotionally and yes, spiritually.
Programs like Best Friends, which has been around for 18 years, turn their arguments on their heads. Best Friends is a REAL abstinence program -- not just some lip service paid to satisfy state law or to placate us parents who want a REAL abstinence message. (And throwing the word abstinence around about 10 times in a 7 minute video does not qualify as a genuine abstinence message, no matter how much they want us to believe it.)
You know some people (who shall not be named) have been making a big deal about some news item that says that some teens who pledge to remain abstinent are more likely to be involved in other risky sexual behaviors. If there is the slightest bit of truth to that (and personally I do not believe that teens in a genuine abstinence education program would buy it) could it be that because of the efforts of groups such as SEICUS, GLSEN and Advocates for Youth to obliterate the ages old concept that hetersexuality is 'the norm', and their insistence on the message (as in the BOE's now famous video) that 'oral, anal and vaginal sex' are all co-equal --- that teenagers are growing up with the idea that this is the case?
You know, it used to be not so long ago (and I believe many if not most people would still agree) that anal sex was considered abberant behavior. Mostly homosexual behavior. Way out of the ordinary behavior. Erotic even. (Doesn't the COMAR prohibit teaching about erotic behaviors? Hmm.) Definately NOT something you need to know or practice in order to reproduce, right? (Who wants to argue THAT point?) The same with oral sex -- thanks go to Bill Clinton for bringing that out into the open. But because these groups want us to believe that AIDS is not a gay disease and that homosexuality is on a par with heterosexuality -- they also want us to believe that anal sex is normal and natural and should be just another sexual option -- for everybody. Do you see how insidious this is? These activists want our kids to believe that everything that used to be wrong is right, that everything that was considered abnormal is normal and that MCPS has the right to teach our kids these things whether we like it or not.
Well, I don't buy it.
But thanks to Patricia O'Neill and Sharon Cox and the Montgomery County Board of Education and of course Dr. Jerry Weast, our trusty Superintendent of Schools, parents like me now have to have a conversation with our kids about anal sex and try to undue the damage that this school board has done to the minds of our youth and quite possibly -- to their bodies as well.