Major abstinance group no longer eligible for federal funding

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U.S. agrees not to fund abstinence program
By JAY LINDSAY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BOSTON -- The federal government agreed to stop funding a nationwide program that promotes teen abstinence to settle a lawsuit alleging the money was used for Christian proselytizing.

The agreement was reached Wednesday between the Department of Health and Human Services and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Under the deal, the Silver Ring Thing program won't be eligible for more funding unless it ensures the money won't be used for religious purposes.
"Public funds were being used to fund a road show, really, to convert teens to Christianity," said Julie Sternberg, an ACLU attorney.

She said the ACLU supports the program's right to offer religious content, but not with taxpayer money.

Joel Oster of the Alliance Defense Fund, which represented the program in court, said it was "pleased that abstinence-based sex education programs like Silver Ring Thing will continue to have the right to seek federal funding."
The Silver Ring Thing program, related to a Christian ministry based in the Pittsburgh suburbs, has received more than $1 million in federal funding during the past three years.


The program puts on shows at churches that include comedy skits, music videos and a message of abstinence. Young people are given a silver ring and decide whether they want to pledge to abstain from sex.

In its federal lawsuit in May, the ACLU complained that the ring was inscribed with a Biblical verse exhorting Christians to remain holy and refrain from sexual sin. It also alleged that group members testified how accepting Jesus improved their lives.

An attorney for the organization has said teens can chose between religious or secular programs and that the program's religious teachings have taken place separately from anything the government funds.

The government terminated the grant effective Jan. 31. A call to an HHS spokesman Thursday was not immediately returned.
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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Abstinence_Suit.html

Reminds me of an article I was reading yesterday:

In a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) documentary, American Virgins, Silver Ring Thing executive director Dennis Pattyn explained what motivates him. "I believe that the end of the world is approaching very quickly, and I believe that Christ will come back," he said. The BBC reporter seemed surprised. If the end of the world is so close, then should we be all that worried about abstinence? Pattyn didn't miss a beat. "We're not really putting our energy into abstinence as much as we're putting it into faith," he explained. "Abstinence is the tool that we're using to reach children." For those looking for considered answers on how to navigate the sexual pressures of adolescence, you'd better buckle your seat belts. Sexual dalliance, like a failure to accept Christ, leads to a bumpy ride straight to hell, courtesy of taxpayer dollars. "In hell nonbelievers will be doomed to exist in unending torment with the Devil and his demons. … [N]onbelievers will spend eternity in agony," Silver Ring Thingers learn. If you have chosen to reject Christ, then your final destination will be the lake of fire. In August 2005, in response to the complaint over inappropriate use of taxpayer money, the Department of Health and Human Services suspended funding to the group.
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http://www.alternet.org/rights/32367/

Now if we can just get money back to the comprehensive sex education programs where it belongs.
 
Hopefully we can soon put an end to this reverse-progress initiative from the administration. Abstinence-only, intelligent design, no child left behind,...
 
[quote name='E-Z-B']Hopefully we can soon put an end to this reverse-progress initiative from the administration. Abstinence-only, intelligent design, no child left behind,...[/QUOTE]
Hopefully we can put an end to this administration.
 
I wonder what portion of "faith-based initiatives" would be declared ineligible, if this is the criteria? I don't argue with the criteria (though I will argue with whatever bag of hammers appropriated money to a program statistically proven to not be of any use in regards to sex, and actually makes it more dangerous), but I argue with anyone who would find themselves surprised by this.

A religious organization tells kids to praise jesus? Say it ain't so!
 
[quote name='Quackzilla']How can you wait until you get married?

That's why people are marrying so early and getting divorced.[/QUOTE]

...which is typical in the bible belt states.
 
[quote name='alonzomourning23']Now if we can just get money back to the comprehensive sex education programs where it belongs.[/QUOTE]

Now if we could only get the government to focus on reading and math instead of sex we may be better off still.
 
[quote name='bmulligan']Now if we could only get the government to focus on reading and math instead of sex we may be better off still.[/quote]

Math and science helps to improve the education and futures of students. Sex-education does the same, as pregnant teens are much less likely to get get those academic benefits, are more likely to live and poverty, and their kids will deal with issues that may have been avoidable if the mother had used protection and had children later.

Also, an uneducated person is much less of a danger to society than a person with a disease such as HIV. Due to the dangers that unprotected sex has, and the risk to the population as a whole, it's really a public health issue.
 
[quote name='bmulligan']Now if we could only get the government to focus on reading and math instead of sex we may be better off still.[/quote]

What are you talking about? The state should not only teach sexual education, it should be given full authority to raise our children the right way. Children are far too precious a resource to be left up to the individual parents.
 
[quote name='bmulligan']Now if we could only get the government to focus on reading and math instead of sex we may be better off still.[/quote]

It's human biology BMulligan.

Unless you want public schools to teach storks, virgin births, fertility gods, etc
 
[quote name='camoor']It's human biology BMulligan.

Unless you want public schools to teach storks, virgin births, fertility gods, etc[/QUOTE]

No, I want public schools to teach kids how to read, write, and do 'rithmatic. That's their job, not teaching them what to do with their penis.

[quote name='Ace']
What are you talking about? The state should not only teach sexual education, it should be given full authority to raise our children the right way. Children are far too precious a resource to be left up to the individual parents.[/QUOTE]

Good one Ace, it's too bad most around here would rather be wards of the state (and probably are).
 
[quote name='alonzomourning23']Math and science helps to improve the education and futures of students. Sex-education does the same, as pregnant teens are much less likely to get get those academic benefits, are more likely to live and poverty, and their kids will deal with issues that may have been avoidable if the mother had used protection and had children later.

Also, an uneducated person is much less of a danger to society than a person with a disease such as HIV. Due to the dangers that unprotected sex has, and the risk to the population as a whole, it's really a public health issue.[/QUOTE]

I'd love to see your facts that tell us state sexually educated teens are less likely to get pregnant. I'm sure you can point to a directly proportional relationship.

If anything, you have bolstered my own point that focusing on educating the basics does much more to prevent pregnancy that showing teens how to put on a rubber.
 
[quote name='bmulligan']I'd love to see your facts that tell us state sexually educated teens are less likely to get pregnant. I'm sure you can point to a directly proportional relationship.

If anything, you have bolstered my own point that focusing on educating the basics does much more to prevent pregnancy that showing teens how to put on a rubber.[/quote]

People in the middle ages thought that babies lived in women all the time and that sperm fed them so they could grow in to humans.

If you don't teach kids about human biology, they'll pick up on sex but won't understand pregnancy, STDs, etc.

We all remember that you're a big man who was lucky enough not to have any unplanned surprises while he was "getting plenty" back in HS, but some of us want the kids to be responsible young adults to have all of the scientific facts before they do something without understanding the repercussions.
 
[quote name='bmulligan']I'd love to see your facts that tell us state sexually educated teens are less likely to get pregnant. I'm sure you can point to a directly proportional relationship.

If anything, you have bolstered my own point that focusing on educating the basics does much more to prevent pregnancy that showing teens how to put on a rubber.[/quote]

Typical black and white world. Suggesting that one thing is beneficial somehow you make into an argument that the other is not.

Internationally countries with comprehensive sex ed have sex later, lower std rates, and lower pregnancy rates. But what are you asking for? Are you asking for no sex ed in american schools vs abstinence and/or comprehensive sex? Or abstinence only vs comprehensive sex ed?
 
While it would be nice if parents would discuss these things with their kids, the problem is that they almost never do. When parents do talk to their kids about it it's usually not more than how it works and not to do it. Add to that the fact that a lot of parents now didn't get the education and don't know about STDs, etc. at the level that they're able to teach in a comprehensive sex ed class. Also taking into account the fact that it is human biology and an important public service, it only makes sense to teach it.

For some reason I don't think they'll learn a lot about sex in reading or math classes (although obviously one would have to be able to read in order to read information about sex :p).

Good riddance to shitty abstinence programs that only make things worse simply for the benefit of jesus groups.
 
[quote name='alonzomourning23']

Internationally countries with comprehensive sex ed have sex later, lower std rates, and lower pregnancy rates. [/QUOTE]

That happens for a variety of reasons though, you can't say it's all because of sex ed programs...

On a side note something nobody has really brought up, but I'd thought I'd mention, is that a number of teens, particularly in poorer parts of the country, don't always attend school and the ones that do often have a second rate school where they can hardly find enough books, materials, or teachers for english, math, or science in general let alone something like sex ed. Oddly enough the poorer parts of the country are also the ones that have some of the higher teen STD and pregnancy rates.

It's obviously still better to educate a few than none, but nobody learns anything about sex ed if they aren't there or if there are no teachers to teach them or books to read. However that's not to say schools shouldn't try a sex ed program, they certainly should (I was in a catholic high school and we even had one). But my point is while unlike Bmulligan I think sex ed def. has a place in schools, I do in fact think that when it comes to reforming education in America in general, reforming sexual education shouldn't be a first priority or even an urgent objective when compared to what needs to be done.
 
[quote name='Duo_Maxwell']That happens for a variety of reasons though, you can't say it's all because of sex ed programs...

On a side note something nobody has really brought up, but I'd thought I'd mention, is that a number of teens, particularly in poorer parts of the country, don't always attend school and the ones that do often have a second rate school where they can hardly find enough books, materials, or teachers for english, math, or science in general let alone something like sex ed. Oddly enough the poorer parts of the country are also the ones that have some of the higher teen STD and pregnancy rates.

It's obviously still better to educate a few than none, but nobody learns anything about sex ed if they aren't there or if there are no teachers to teach them or books to read. However that's not to say schools shouldn't try a sex ed program, they certainly should (I was in a catholic high school and we even had one). But my point is while unlike Bmulligan I think sex ed def. has a place in schools, I do in fact think that when it comes to reforming education in America in general, reforming sexual education shouldn't be a first priority or even an urgent objective when compared to what needs to be done.[/QUOTE]

QFT

I was going to comment on your first paragraph, as I originally misread your argument to be centered on poor schools in rural areas (and point out that you neglected poor urban areas). Upon rereading, you did nothing of the sort.
 
[quote name='bmulligan']I'd love to see your facts that tell us state sexually educated teens are less likely to get pregnant. I'm sure you can point to a directly proportional relationship.

If anything, you have bolstered my own point that focusing on educating the basics does much more to prevent pregnancy that showing teens how to put on a rubber.[/quote]


You're trying to say reading, writing and arithmatic are going to qwell the voracious appetite for teenage sex? C'mon, stop trying to act like you weren't 15 before, dork.
 
[quote name='Metal Boss']You're trying to say reading, writing and arithmatic are going to qwell the voracious appetite for teenage sex? C'mon, stop trying to act like you weren't 15 before, dork.[/QUOTE]

You mean like everyone else here who acts like they're 15 on a daily basis? I'd like Alonzo to spout off some bases in fact instead of postulating from the void between his ears. But, perhaps, he's at least spatulated a theory from the scrapings in that jar-head of his, a skill which, obviously, appears to you to be some sort of magic or voodoo.

What I'm saying is that the more developed and practiced the mind, the more one is able to control one's actions. With or without "sex-ed", whatever that really means, a more knowledgable child will seek answers and understand consequences better than an underdeveloped ignoramus who doesn't know where to put a comma or apostrophe, can't decipher shakspeare, and and can't make change in his head when he goes to the drugstore to buy a rubber.
 
[quote name='bmulligan']You mean like everyone else here who acts like they're 15 on a daily basis? I'd like Alonzo to spout off some bases in fact instead of postulating from the void between his ears. But, perhaps, he's at least spatulated a theory from the scrapings in that jar-head of his, a skill which, obviously, appears to you to be some sort of magic or voodoo. [/quote]

To many people here it seems like my opinions are about as tolerable as fingernails scratching down a chalkboard.

What I'm saying is that the more developed and practiced the mind, the more one is able to control one's actions. With or without "sex-ed", whatever that really means, a more knowledgable child will seek answers and understand consequences better than an underdeveloped ignoramus who doesn't know where to put a comma or apostrophe, can't decipher shakspeare, and and can't make change in his head when he goes to the drugstore to buy a rubber.
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Why do you think teaching a kid math will produce a child more knowledgable about sex, the risks etc. than teaching a kid about sex directly? Why don't you find it beneficial to teach kids all the ways to avoid pregnancy and STD's?

But I asked you what kind of statistics you want. I've seen them before, but I can't find those indicating differences between no sex ed and sex ed (without looking at international differences), but I can provide statistics for comprehensive sex ed vs abstinence. Considering they don't teach condoms use or anything, that does show a difference. I don't want to waste my time posting it if it will be ignored, since you already ignored my question of whether you wanted it.
 
[quote name='bmulligan']What I'm saying is that the more developed and practiced the mind, the more one is able to control one's actions. With or without "sex-ed", whatever that really means, a more knowledgable child will seek answers and understand consequences better than an underdeveloped ignoramus who doesn't know where to put a comma or apostrophe, can't decipher shakspeare, and and can't make change in his head when he goes to the drugstore to buy a rubber.[/quote]

If the ignormaus can't make change in his head, I'll gladly fund his rubber purchase/vasectomy/preferred birth control method. The last thing I want to see is another vote for those who follow in the footsteps of Bush W.
 
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