Abstinence-Only Federal Constraint to Go Away

Somebody forwarded me this article from the Congressional Quarterly's website CQ Today.

It will be nice to see this particular political atrocity wither away quietly.

Democrats plan to let a federal abstinence-education program die quietly next month, demonstrating that pursuit of their legislative agenda can sometimes be passive.

The authorization for Title V abstinence-education grants expires at the end of June, and those on both sides of the sex-education debate agree that the $50 million-a-year mandatory-spending program — which draws an additional $37.5 million match from the states — stands little chance of winning an extension from a Democratic-controlled Congress.

Democrats generally favor a broader approach to sex education, but the issue is a tricky one politically. So Democrats are not calling attention to the impending demise of the abstinence-only approach, which was established under the 1996 welfare overhaul (PL 104-193) and is now operating under a six-month extension (PL 109-432) — or to the possibility that a $110 million discretionary-spending abstinence program funded through the Department of Health and Human Services may be zeroed out for fiscal 2008. End of the Line Is Near for Federal Funding of Abstinence-Only Sex Education

It's a "tricky one politically" because it is so easy to make it sound bad. After years of dealing with the CRC, I can just hear them saying "Liberals want to encourage children to have promiscuous sex and get abortions."

This soundbite problem is at the core of a lot of the crazy things that have happened in recent years. You take something sensible on one hand, and take its soundbite refutation on the other, and because people are too busy to pay attention the soundbite ends up having some effect. They don't think about what's going on, they just hear some agreeable words and go with the flow.

In Montgomery County, we've heard people say things like "The new curriculum encourages children to engage in promiscuous sex," or "The classes force children as young as twelve to declare their sexual orientation publicly." It's not hard to follow a couple of links, for instance at the top left corner of our Resources page here, and see that the new curriculum does no such thing. But people don't usually bother to do that. Either they accept what they're being told -- which most people in our county don't -- or they write groups like the CRC off as extremists. (This latter option is especially easy when the soundbites are ridiculous.)

I am curious to see what the next stage will be. Not-paying-attention has been very costly for America. We have lost our prestige in the world. We have spent billions of dollars wastefully instead of improving our lives. Well, I'm not going to list all the steps backwards we have taken. But I am curious to see if people will start thinking critically, or if they will just hook up with a different set of soundbites now. OK, I admit it, I'm old and cynical, I know what the answer to that question is.

One of the biggest steps backwards was the federal government's restriction that it would only fund abstinence-only sex ed. There were a bunch of rules about what you couldn't include if you wanted federal support. These rules weren't what the majority of Americans wanted, most people want a nice, comprehensive, straight-ahead curriculum so young people know what sex is about, including how to protect themselves from disease when they become sexually active.

It wasn't what people wanted, but it makes an easy soundbite. Everybody wants teenagers to wait, nobody wants to see young people behaving irresponsibly. So there's no resistance when somebody argues that teens should be abstinent, I mean, what's to argue with, huh? But ... when you take the next step, and act like teens will be abstinent, and therefore don't need to know anything about sex, you have committed a terrible mistake.

Easy soundbite, bad policy. We're not sorry to see this one go away.