Opposing the Abstinence Only Fight

“I’m not going to give them a condom… No. Never. Cause they’re going to come back to me, and they’re going to say it didn’t work” stated Leslee Unruh in response to a question regarding the issue of safe sex education in America. As part of the Christian Nationalist, Unruh is among a large community of people that believe in reestablishing the Christian way in America. Part of their effort has been to rid American schools and public of safe sex education, in which people are informed of various contraceptives available to promote safe sex practices. In response the people of the Christian Nation believe that Abstinence-only programs are necessary if morality is to be restored in America. As this group of people establish Abstinence only programs they are using biased information and are endangering those they reach out too.
Abstinence-only programs focus on the idea of “no sex before marriage”, but do not offer any other options. As a result many adolescents that go through these programs are left unknowledgeable. It may delay the action, but based on research by Bearman and Bruckner, “ [teens] are more likely to have oral or anal sex, and that when they do lose their virginity, they’re less likely to use condoms and to seek treatment if they contract STD’s” (137 Goldberg). Not only does abstinence only programs offer little information regarding protecting one’s self it is not representative of the majority of Americans’ needs and wants. According to a “2004 report on "Public Support for Comprehensive Sexuality Education" indicates that 93 percent of parents of junior high school students and 91 percent of parents of high school students believe it is very or somewhat important to have sex education as part of the school curriculum” (Rose).
While abstinence-only programs continue to be a part of American society they continue to misinform people regarding the benefits of sex education. As stated in Kingdom Coming, by Goldberg many of the organizations associated with pro-abstinence education use manipulative tactics. For example, many “Crisis pregnancy centers, or CPC’s, have long, well-documented records of lying to women about their sexual health” (139). In many cases these organizations have deceived women into believing they were health clinics even though the people inside are not medical professionals, but anti-abortion activists (139).
Another problem with these organizations is that they use fear to convince adolescents to not have sex till marriage. In one program the video “No Second Chance” is shown in which a discussion regarding sex outside of marriage is shown while images of men dying from AIDS are also shown (Rose). Other programs use the method of fear as well, in a program by Leslee Unruh rubber viper snakes are used to teach the dangers of condoms.
The issue with these programs is not only that they are miss-informative and deceiving, but that they have received a great amount of support from the American government. According to a 2005 study, “Under the Bush administration, abstinence-only programs have expanded rapidly. While $170 million in federal funds have been slated for FY 2005, President Bush has allocated an additional $39 million for abstinence-until-married education programs, bringing the total request for FY 2006 to $205.5 million. This represents a 50 percent increase in funding since 2004 (Rose). As stated by Goldberg, “almost one billion dollars of government funds had been spent on chastity programs by the end of Bush’s first term” (137).
I do not believe the Christian Nation will ever fully succeed in removing sex education from American public, but they will continue to do whatever they see fit to try to. As we can see this group of people is determined to fulfill their belief in the God given right to “restore” America to the Christian way.

Goldberg, Michelle. Kingdom Coming. New York: Norton & Co, Inc., 2007.

Rose, Susan. "Going Too Far? Sex, Sin and Social Policy." Volume 84, Number 2, December 2005, 84.2 (2005): 1207-1232.