Thanks to bartblog.bartcop.com
Evidently, there was a bit of a kerfuffle at the VMA's about the Jonas Brothers wearing abstinence promise rings. (I love the word 'kerfuffle', it reminds me of 'fluffernutter')
So, ever the hip and progressive program, the Today Show took time out of its busy schedule of telling me I'm too fat, too broke and too sloppy to have the founder of "The Silver Ring Thing," Denny Pattyn, on the show this morning. There was also an expert in sexual health. Her primary role was to sit next to him and be appalled.
The basic goal of "The Silver Ring Thing" is to prevent teenagers from having sex before marriage. I find this to be an admirable (I think?) goal. Though, personally I think if more people got out and kicked the tires before buying the car, there would be less divorce in the world. My humble opinion is that Jesus hates premarital sex much less than he hates people trying to kill each other during an ugly divorce after having children. Maybe that's misguided.
I digress.
Currently, you can see the promise ring piece on the Today Show site. You should check it out if you think I'm exaggerating.
Mr. Pattyn in his own words to CBS News:
"[If] My own daughter, my 16-year-old daughter, tells me she’s going to be sexually active. I would not tell her to use a condom," says Pattyn. "I don't think it'll protect her. It won’t protect her heart. It won’t protect her emotional life. And it’s not going to protect her. I don’t want her to get out there and think that she’s going to be protected using a condom."
The general thrust (if you will) of these programs is that condoms do not work (!) and they give kids a false sense of security. However, these programs give kids about 18 months of intercourse-free living according to most studies. Now, 18 months is an eternity in teen-years. But the "everything but" game still goes on in full force.
The problem arises when these teens DO eventually engage in actual intercourse. Meridith Viera pointed out to Mr. Pattyn that multiple studies have shown that these kids go on to riskier sex than their unwashed counterparts. His response? "Those studies are flawed. It's not true."
Here's what a real-live sexual health expert has to say:
"The downside is that, when they have sex, pledgers are one-third less likely to use condoms," says [Columbia University’s Peter Bearman, who co-authored the most comprehensive study ever done on adolescent health and sexuality]. "So all of the benefit of the delay in terms of pregnancy-risk and in terms of STD acquisition -- poof -- it just disappears because they’re so much less likely to use a condom."
"They’ve been taught that condoms don’t work; they’re fearful of them. They don’t know how to use them," says Bearman. "Their peers don’t use them. They have no experience with them. They don’t know how to get them. They’re hard to get access to. For whatever reason they don’t use them, that has long-term consequences."
"The Silver Ring Thing" program collected $1.2 million dollars in two years from the government before their funding was pulled in 2005 for being a primarily religious program. Furthermore, in the first five years of the Bush Administration alone, $1 billion was spent on abstinence-only education.
What are Denny Pattyn's qualifications? Is he a sexual health expert? A psychologist? An educator? Well, you know darn right well what Denny Pattyn's occupation will be, don't you? Ordained minister.
What's wrong with kids having their own convictions? What's wrong with raising them the way you'd like, then allowing them to make their own *personal* promises to themselves, you as a parent or Jesus? What wrong with arming them with the best information?
This is an emotional and spiritual chastity belt, not a health policy. Sex is personal, no matter how old you are. It's not something to hang around your neck (or finger) like a rotting albatross waiting for you to slip up. What ever happened to sex being fun or healthy? Those rings should come with a free coupon for therapy later in life, not to mention a child care voucher.
So, because this is OS, you know what's coming next.
Hey, Governor Palin...
HOW'S THAT WORKIN' OUT FOR 'YA?
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Ryan Soberg
Colony of Losers
astrid.in.lala.land
franishnonspeaker
Linnnn
vanessa seijo
Salon.com
Comments
I lost this post TWICE. If your log-in expires while you're writing and you hit "Save Draft & Preview" all the pretty words go away. It also inexplicably happens for no good reason sometimes.
That makes me sad.
You don't want me to be sad, do you?
LOL.
Actually, I don't find it all that admirable. Sex is a natural part of life. And as uncomfortable as it makes parents we should remember that human beings are biologically 'ready' for sex by our early-to-mid teens. It's not admirable, it's unnatural.
That sexual health doc is right: abstinence programmes don't work. They don't work because the sexual lives of each individual are determined by--surprise!--that individual for him/herself. We must come to terms with the fact that sex is deeply personal, to the point that one's inherited morality may play a smaller rôle in how (and when) we choose to have it. A teen's sex life does NOT belong to his/her mother or father, period.
We should be arming our kids with the knowledge to make the right choices--to give them a fighting chance--not making them ignorant fools who fear what comes naturally to most of us.
Besides, I don't trust anyone else (no offense, Kerry and Joan) to safeguard my stuff in transit. I've lost stuff before (not here) like that.
RC - Great points. Kids are trying to operate inside several spheres of influence at once. Parents, school, church, etc., each have a different set of expectations. They *must* be allowed to anchor themselves in their own personal ethical framework which can be carried throughout (and into adulthood).
Temporarily socially castrating a teen does not serve any purpose. Every parent would like to see their child wait to have sex until they are emotionally ready, but a false limitation like this only serves to stunt their growth, leading to poor choices later.
Bill - It'll show my age, but I miss AmiPro! I started to try to write it in Word, then got stuck trying to put in the links. I think I'll write first and link later in the future. Lesson learned!
"They’ve been taught that condoms don’t work; they’re fearful of them. They don’t know how to use them," says Bearman. "Their peers don’t use them. They have no experience with them. They don’t know how to get them. They’re hard to get access to. For whatever reason they don’t use them, that has long-term consequences."
Here are a few other reasons sexually-active teens who have been taught abstinence only do not use contraceptives:
1) planning for and preparing for sexual activity means it is a "pre-meditated" sin as opposed to an impulsive act
2) many engage in "anything-but-intercourse" for a long time prior to having intercourse
3) girls mistakenly believe there is no STD danger, based on an idea that she is "the only one". this may be universal, but in a repressed society that does not talk openly about sexual activity nor recognize it as something that teenagers actually do and enjoy, I think it is exacerbated.
4) back to #1 - girls who use contraception are considered "bad girls"; girls who don't and get pregnant by mistake are considered "good girls" and...
if they keep their babies and get married, we are "proud of them."
I'm no expert, but I grew up going to Catholic shools, where abstinence only was taught. Only abstinence, no "what if", no "but, what about mistakes?", no information, no discussion.
End of story.
Put the first one over your entire head without breaking it, before you go on a date. You'll never need the second one, but you'll have it just in case.
I just made this up, but I bet it would really work.
I have daughters, one who has expressed interest in both women and men, and I hope we've done a good job of letting her know that her sex life is hers to manage, with frank talk about what can go wrong. She just went to college for the first time this week and now it's completely in her hands. That whole abstinence ring thing is very foreign to me.
Or something like that.
I really don't get why so many parents preface their comments about their sexually active kids with "I'd rather then didn't..." Navigating sex, love, broken hearts, etc. is part of life. It has to begin sometime, and if we all delayed it until we were fully mature, no one would have sex until they were, say, 79.
Truer words were never spoken! Grrrrr.....
Also, nice post!
LOL."
I totally agree with the LOL but for different reasons, I think. Is this really what you think marriage is? 'Buying the car?' So marriage is merely a celebration of sex.....it's merely making an acquisition that you can 'take for a drive' every night. THIS is why there's so much divorce, NOT because people don't check out the hardware and bang their prospective mates before tying the knot... You can argue otherwise, but marriage is sacred, and it encompasses a whole lot of relational aspects that are meant to exist only between 2 people that enter it together. Sex is merely one aspect. If you need a divorce because you're not enjoying the sex enough, you've obviously missed the whole point.
I agree abstinence only programs are adept at missing their mark, but I think it is irrational to say that a better option is to promote illicit sex and hand out condoms. It's true, ya know...condoms don't work all the time, so really what you're saying here is "well let's just let them make their bad decisions now, because having them make them later would be worse." Doesn't seem any better to me...
I think the real problem lies in the "sex is natural, and we should do it whenever we want" approach. It cheapens the act and the connection and makes it meaningless, simply because 'we wanna do what feels good!' Plain and simple, sex is about 2 people becoming 1. You think you're ready to make that kind of commitment in your early teens? You want to make that kind of commitment to every hot chick you come across in a bar in college? I'd hope not...
But, I'll play along.
Condoms fail. This is true.
But they are better than nothing.
No one is advocating that we teach our children to have sex with everything that moves. These programs put children in danger by depending on guilt rather than information to protect them.
I'm advocating the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy. The numbers don't lie. People have premarital sex. I don't think it's something that should kill you.
Condoms are better than nothing. Agreed. If young people are going to be sexually active, then they should use some sort of protection.
People are going to have premarital sex. Also granted. Just like people are going to lie, steal, and kill. That doesn't mean we should accept it make sure they don't feel guilty about it. This is where the "responsibility" part comes in...We say "well they're just gonna do it anyway...so we might as well make it easy for them. Best to give them some condoms and make sure they won't feel guilty because it's natural." Sure the urges are natural - we see a hot babe, naturally we become lustful. But so are the urges to take a bat to the head of the guy who just cut you off in traffic. Who would condone the latter simply because it's natural and maybe people do it? The whole process is self-defeating. We say we want to promote responsible sex, so the logical follow-up to this is to hand out condoms to high schoolers and say "be responsible"? Right. Next let's hand out clean syringes with the same message so kids stop passing diseases doing drugs with dirty needles...we're treating the symptom, not the disease.
I totally agree with you...I'm completely for the prevention of std's and teenage pregnancy. The only foolproof way to do so is REAL responsibility, something that most teens today, left to their own vices, have little grasp of. We've told kids it's not their fault that they're pregnant or have herpes, while this is pure cause/effect from their decisions about sexual activity. But we'd rather just take care of it with a nice clean partial birth abortion and some meds during breakouts. That's what I call taking responsibility for your actions...
Saying that they're "better than nothing" implies that they are closer to nothing than to something. Condoms are something, something important. Teaching teen-agers to use them responsibly -- even nimbly -- is a social good.
Tom: So making people feel guilty about having premarital sex is good? Because, perhaps, their "connection" is not quite up to your standards? Do you allow for any shades of gray between appropriate and inappropriate sexual behavior in others, even if it is clear-cut for you, personally?
I totally agree. Condoms are the most powerful tool we have to fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS and other STDs. They prevent pregnancy and are generally dependable.
Scare tactics only work as long as people are scared.
:)
I was informed by my Department Head (an LDO - prior enlisted guy who had been in the Navy longer than I had been alive) that I had to give the "condom/STD" talk to my Division before they could go out on liberty.
I gave him the "deer in the headlights" look. What did he mean I had to go stand in front of 30 odd sailors (most of whom were older than me) and give them instruction on how to properly don a condom! STD's? Didn't they already know about them? This was the Navy, damnit, we had professional films and people who did this!
Turned out the "trained people" was me, a 22 year old who had not had a sex ed class since the the 6th grade. (It was a good class though, with the school nurse and filled with lots of laughing and anonymous questions.)
So I went with the old faithful. Lots of condoms and bananas for all. I found out real fast why there is such a "high failure" rate with condoms. Out of my entire Division, NOT A SINGLE GUY DID IT CORRECTLY!
Yeah, that's right, not one. So here is a news flash. Condoms fail at a high rate when people do not don them, and use them, correctly.
I know, it is a revelation. Condoms break/fail when you use them wrong.
Want to prevent STD's and teen pregranacy? Don't demonize the contraceptive device. Teaching people how to use them right. Every member of my division left that room KNOWING how to don and use a condom.
Telling a bunch of kids to practice abstinence is about as effective as my telling my sailors to go ashore and skip the bars and brothels in favor of the local tent revival. At least my guys went with as much accurate information as possible. Not one of them came down with an STD.
"Condoms will break, but I can sure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms."
And then, on politicians promoting abstinence-only education:
"They are boycotting common sense."
Never were truer words spoken.
do i think making people feel guilty about premarital sex is good? yes. because then that lessens the chances of them doing it again. same way i think that people who lie should feel guilty about it - all simply based on the fact that you're not supposed to do it. i have no authority to guage the veracity of their 'connection,' but i what's right and what is not. in that sense, it is clear cut. don't drive until you have a license and don't have sex until you're married.
to remove the guilt removes the weight. people who can lie with no guilt whatsoever and people who act the same concerning sex have bigger problems than birth control to sort through..
A vow of abstinence will break ONLY as easy as your will to keep it. if your will is weaker than a condom....dag, sucks to be you. maybe if we weren't raising a generation of fat, whiny, punk-ass pansies we wouldn't have that problem. and maybe if we weren't so adamantly arguing that kids should allowed to be the aforementioned perverted punk-ass pansies we wouldn't be raising a generation of them. all it takes is to teach your kids wrong vs. right and some responsibility before they go off to college, but no..that's inconvenient. i'd rather just let the school give them condoms...
you tell me.
Abstinence until marriage may have good intentions, but it just doesn't work. With all of the marriages falling apart now, it's hard to believe that it's sacred, no? This "sacred" joining of two people is too easily destroyed and the rules too easily changed to be considered a high and mighty union. On the other side of the coin, just throwing condoms at people is a bad idea also, since the people that'll come after us won't know what to do with them. As much as it scares us to think it, there's a point when we have to stop trying to engineer our offspring's lives. They'll make their own decisions eventually, and I think it's best to make sure they have a good head on their shoulders when the decisions have to be made.
Thanks for keeping me thinking, Jodi.
Yeah yeah, we all know that unprotected sex could lead to STIs or pregnancy but what people don't realize is that by not talking to your teenager or having someone "cool" talk to your teenager about these problems, they're still going to exist!
It's like those lousy potholes, you keep putting sand, gravel, and patches on hole but eventually it gets larger and you have to repave the road. How can we keep those potholes from occurring--seal the cracks in the road when they start forming! What we need to do is provide them with alternatives to sex and sit them down explaining the actual responsibility of their actions. Being open, honest, and allowing for some privacy is also important and being a ROLE MODEL will also help. It's kind of hard to listen to a parent who's bitching all the time or cheating on the other parent!
Of course, there were always be teen pregnancy or STIs...people just need to accept it.
Throwing condoms, the pill, abortion, or even sheer ignorance or scaring them will not addressing the issue, these children (which they still are until they're 18) will continue to make poor choices.
A lot of the time, these teens think that they will be with their significant other for the rest of their life or at least the fun won't stop and/or they won't get hurt.
I'm 20, so there is obviously a lifetime of learning for me but I can at least tell when people are neglecting to actually address the issue.
When I have children this what I'll say to them when they are 12, 13, 14, 15, 16,17 and when they start dating a new person:
"You'll be a teenager soon or are a teenager, so a time will come when you find someone very special to you and you want to share the most intimate portions with in a sexual way. I understand it; however you need to know that there are serious consequences and responsibilities that come with it. If you choose to use certain protection, that will be your choice; remember the moral consequences of it. You must know that if that protection fails, you will be held responsible for your actions and by having sexual relations you will accept any consequences that arise."