According to a report recently released by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS), the Bush administration is funding three sex education programs that provide misinformation and foster fear and confusion. The three curriculums SIECUS reviewed are “Passion and Principles,” “Worth the Wait,” and “Navigator.” Since President Bush took office these three programs have received $4 million in federal funding. The programs are presently being taught in public high schools in more than 12 states.

 

All three of the programs promote abstinence until marriage and exclude any meaningful discussion of safer sex. As SIECUS notes in their report, the curriculums argue against the use of condoms, promote fear and guilt in adolescents, and contain blatant religious messages. In the last five years the Bush administration has channeled more than $600 million dollars into abstinence-until-marriage sex education programs. Yet no scientific study has demonstrated that curriculums that only promote abstinence curtail teenage sex.

 

These sex education programs all rely on messages of fear and guilt. The curriculums are predicated on the assumption that adolescents can be scared into refraining from sex, rather than making educated decisions. The Passion and Principles program tells students that if they contract AIDS, “You’re heading to the grave. No Cure.” It also warns, “A physical downward spiral happens once one starts engaging in sexual activities.” The Worth the Wait curriculum cautions students that sex is an uncontrollable force of nature, in that, “First, you start kissing and then hands start roaming and then, oops! Sex just kind of happens.”

 

The Navigator program asks students to contemplate possible consequences of having sex before marriage. It then suggests possibilities including AIDS, cervical cancer, depression, loneliness, stress, worry, having a bad reputation, and loosing friends. As SEICUS points out, all of these programs are designed to frighten students into avoiding sex. And the curriculums are condescending in that they depict adolescents who engage in sexual activity as lacking self-control and being irresponsible. Given that recent studies indicate that almost half of all high school students have engaged in sexual intercourse, sex education programs should provide information on both abstinence and safer sex.

 

The three programs contain unambiguous religious messages, despite the fact that they are used in public schools. Passion and Principles encourages teachers to “…teach the students that sex is the glue that ultimately links them to someone for the rest of their lives within a biblical marriage relationship.” Even more brazenly, this curriculum quotes the New Testament book of Matthew, chapter six, verse 22: “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good your whole body will be full of light.” This biblical verse references a segment in Passion and Principles on pornography that advises, “Pornography, like sin, promises to please me and serve me BUT its only desire is to enslave and dominate.”

 

These curriculums take a dim view of the use of condoms and offer misleading and inaccurate medical information. Passion and Principles warns students that, “Condoms provide little or no protection [from Chlamydia] due to skin to skin transmittal.” It also advises, “Nearly 1 in 3 will contract AIDS from infected partners with 100% condom use.” However, countless scientific studies have documented that when condoms are used accurately they can reduce the spread of Chlamydia and prevent HIV transmission, even from an infected partner.

 

Worth the Wait tells adolescents, “Condoms can never protect someone from the emotional problems that can result from multiple sexual partners and premature sexual activity.” The Navigator curriculum presents a fictitious teenage female who, while engaged in sexual intercourse, realizes “…that a condom wasn’t going to do anything to blunt the emotional hurt she was experiencing.” All of the programs operate on the false assumption that if students can be convinced that condoms do not work they will simply decide not to have sex. In reality, it is equally likely that adolescents will engage in sexual activity and simply not use condoms, since they have been told that they are not effective.

 

The worst of the programs is Worth the Wait. It asks students to sign a pledge promising to abstain from sexual activity until marriage, “…as this is the only proven way to protect myself from out-out-wedlock pregnancy and STDs.” However, in 2001 the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development released a comprehensive study of almost 100,000 teenagers who had taken a virginity pledge. The study determined that after 18 months most broke the pledge and engaged in sexual intercourse, and since they didn’t plan on doing so, a majority did not use contraception. Clearly, encouraging teenagers to pledge to abstain from sex until marriage puts them at an increased risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

 

These supposed sex education programs pose a number of significant issues. The Bush administration is violating the separation of church and state, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, by spending federal tax dollars on the programs. And the curriculums provide false and misleading information to many high school students. A competent sex education program furnishes adolescents with factual, unbiased information and encourages them to make smart choices. These programs do neither. 

 

 

Gene C. Gerard is a contributing author to the forthcoming book “Americans at War,” by Greenwood Press.

 

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