Really? Is *not* lying to your kids too difficult for fundies to grasp?

What? What? What? I think I'm going to repeat that like a million times. I mean...I had fundie parents who refused to allow me access to sex ed, but there were books and adults to ask...and now there's the internet.

This is not to say that I don't think that comprehensive sex ed isn't necessary...it most certainly is, but holy cow. Bleach?

Now back when *I* was a kid we all knew that an asprin dissolved in coca cola would get you high...

I'm living proof the Mountain Dew theory doesn't work.

I personally was able to read about whatever I wanted to know about. Any good program should attempt to find out what people are being told about sex and address any deficientcies. Otherwise, every program will leave people without knowledge.

interesting to see how the mountain dew thing has morphed over time. when *i* was a kid in rural louisiana, it was commonly said that drinking a litre or more of mountain dew (by a guy) would kill sperm and make boys sterile because of the yellow #5. so a lot of boys in my middle school avoided drinking mountain dew.

There goes another proof that abstinence-only education only makes teens more ignorant about their own reality. It's sad.

Honestly conservatives, is this what you want?? Bleach-drinking and soda-douching teenagers procreating?

Conservatives probably think teens who have sex deserve to die from bleach poisoning.

I used to sneak onto Scarleteen when I was a teenager (cause the 'rents just handed me a bible).

"Honestly conservatives, is this what you want?? Bleach-drinking and soda-douching teenagers procreating?"

...as long as they're drinking bleach, douching with soda, and procreating within marriage...

Couldn't these ridiculous answers also be taken as evidence that mischievous teenagers like to fuck with teachers and other authority figures by giving idiotic answers on surveys?

I saw one where supposedly, kids in UK schools claimed that Winston Churchill was a fictional character, and that Battlestar Galactica was real.

I doubt they're inventing it for laughs Turk. That soda myth goes back to at least the 70s and I don't know the format of the survey but if it were open-ended/self-report than it isn't likely a bunch of teenagers would all make up the same things.

Way to go, Florida... In other Fla. news: Our House of Reps just passed a bill that requires women seeking abortions in the first trimester to have an ultrasound (there's already a law like that for the second and third trimesters). Hopefully it won't get by the Senate.

Yeah, I remember the yellow #5 thing. I've also heard "douching with Coke" and "doing it standing up." I sincerely doubt this was a prank.

It blows me away how little some teenagers know about their bodies. That the digestive system is connected enough to the reproductive system that drinking bleach would stop pregnancy just doesn't make sense to anyone who's, you know, looked at a diagram of the human body. I had a (Mormon, which might or might not be relevant) friend in HS who, when I asked her if she was giving blood at the campus blood drive, said, completely deadpan, "No, I'm on my period. I'm losing enough blood this week already." I swear that to this day I have no idea if she was being facetious or not. I really hope so.

What I don't understand about the abstinence folks is what mechanism do they posit for all the ill-effects of sex to disappear after marriage. If abstinence makes the heart grow fonder wouldn't it make sense to continue to be abstinent after marriage as well? You really wouldn't want things to grow less fond after marriage.

Same thing with those rose petals. It assumes there is a limited number of "petals" in your life and you lose one for each sexual encounter. So after marriage too once you have your 20 or so fucks with your husband you still end up with a bare stem.

Yoshimi,
Many Mormons are ignorant about a lot of things, but that was just regular teen ignorance. (or she was being facetious.)

Yoshimi,
Many Mormons are ignorant about a lot of things, but that was just regular ignorance. (or she was being facetious.)

I would think that injecting Mountain Dew into your vein would have some serious health effects. I've heard injecting nutmeg will usually kill you. I don't even want to know what drinking bleach might do to you.

I wasn't the one who made that comment :) -Yoshimi

"I used to sneak onto Scarleteen when I was a teenager (cause the 'rents just handed me a bible)."

I love that site! I had some sex ed in middle school, but even in college I learned a lot from that site!

Bleach? Really? Improved education would fix that belief, but it wouldn't address the underlying problem of being stupid enough to believe that in the first place. Alternatively, we could start rumors that drinking a gallon of bleach will prevent AIDS permanently.

That would also fix the problem, and we wouldn't even be lying.

I used to work as a sex educator in Montana, and I would bring up the Mountain Dew thing in discussions of myths about birth control - "Has anyone heard about Mountain Dew?" Blank looks. "Yellow #5?" They'd all start nodding.

And it's all well and good to talk about the internet, but these were disadvantaged kids who probably didn't have regular access to the internet - and certainly not anywhere that a teacher or librarian wouldn't be peering over their shoulder.....

This is why the girls in my high school stuck with the anal sex;) (and I'm not even kidding about that).

Doesn't drinking any kind of bleach kill you? Or at least burn the hell out of your throat? I don't see how that one is even a possibility.

pardon me if I'm wrong, but I seem to be getting the impression that most of the readers on this thread believe that abstinence only education is harmful.

Aside from the strange in-doctrine that the schools in florida seem to be teaching their students, I thought that abstinence education in schools was a good thing.

I may be wrong, this is the first time that I've heard any negative opinions concerning abstinence education, but I have two older sisters in high school who abstain from pre marital sex and I actually think they're healthier that way because their is zero chances of them catching an infection.

again I may be wrong, I come from a very religious family that only believes in abstinence but I'm curious to hear more.

@Maggie Actually your friend was right, blood loss from menstruation can cause temporary anemia. This is one reason blood donor clinics check your iron level before they'll take a donation from you.

"I may be wrong, this is the first time that I've heard any negative opinions concerning abstinence education"

Really?! I'm really suprised. Abstinence only education is pretty controversial. Most of the people who aren't on the religious right object because, first and mostly, it doesn't work. Students who receive abstinence only education aren't any less likely to have sex outside of marriage in the long term and are much more likely to have unprotected sex. So it may actually help increase the numbers of STDs and unwanted pregnancies.

I find it darkly amusing that many pro-abstinence people in America are Christian, with one of their main arguments for abstience being that it is the only form of 100% reliable birth control, when their religion explicitly proclaims that it actually isn't.

There's a popular icon on LJ of the Virgin with text to that affect. Also, another with "Unwed Teenage Mother." I'm very fond of the both.

Every program is different in how effective it is. My high school had an ineffective abstinence education curriculum because the focus was on the STDs etc. Despite this education, starting in 6th grade, there were plenty of STDs in my suburban, mostly white school. The only way people will abstain from an activity is if they see themselves gaining from not doing it. Do schools have the ability to teach this? Probably not.

Well, injecting Mountain Dew won't just get end a pregnancy, it'll kill you.

And Maggie, I was in a similar situation where a group of volunteers asked me to donate blood. At the time I had been on my period for over three weeks and was severely anemic, so I had to abstain. If only there were some way to hook an IV up down there...

I had a Mormon boyfriend in high school who didn't know that women had something called a hymen that broke and bled when a woman lost her virginity. Furthermore, he didn't know that pre-ejaculate contained sperm. When I told him that he couldn't just pull out and not get a girl pregnant, and that (some) women had hymens, he was 18 and I was 15. A 15 year-old was telling an 18 year basic knowledge on human sexuality. Thank you abstinence-only education, for making my ex-boyfriend one of the biggest sexual ignoramouses (sp?) on the planet!

Hi, Vanillabeam. You're right, most of us here are against abstinence-only education. Feministing has a lot of information about it, you can search for it and find their posts on it. On my blog I just wrote a post on virginity and if you want to come talk about it, you're welcome to. I understand that it sounds good, because if someone actually does abstain from all sex, they are completely protected except from rape. But there are downsides to it, like misinformation, the likelihood that kids will have some kind of sex and not know how to protect themselves, and the propagation of gender roles that many of us think are harmful.

"Students who receive abstinence only education aren't any less likely to have sex outside of marriage in the long term and are much more likely to have unprotected sex. So it may actually help increase the numbers of STDs and unwanted pregnancies."

It can also help increase the numbers of unwanted pregnancies because even if one does abstain from premarital sex, that abstinance does nothing to protect her or him from unwanted conception during marital sex later.

Abstinence only education is pretty controversial.

Heh, I would go further Bitty, and just call it near-universally derided. I think it's pretty much the only situation where an "education" leaves you knowing no more than when you started out.

"Abstinence only education is pretty controversial.

"Heh, I would go further Bitty, and just call it near-universally derided."

Totally. Lots of us criticize it for teaching too little, and some other people out there criticize it for teaching too much...

That's awfully depressing, and as someone who lives in Florida I feel kind of ashamed. I'm a college student now, and while I don't remember ever being taught about condoms, birth control, etc. in school, I DO remember being lectured about STDs and drugs a whole hell of a lot. But- and maybe this is just because I went to a "nice" high school- nobody ever seemed ill-informed about sex and pregnancy prevention. And now that I'm at a really small, liberal Florida college, everyone is ah... EXTREMELY well-informed.

That statistic burns, though. Being insulated in my nice little college world, I forget how back-asswards most of Florida actually is.

Did none of you ever mess with surveys/teachers for laughs in middle school? I have a hard time believing all of this is legit. We definitely joked around on anything without a name, and I doubt this phenomenon was isolated to our middle school in the 90s.

@Vanillabeam:

There's a difference between abstinence-only education and celibacy. You can learn about safe sex and still remain a virgin if you choose.

I personally think that teenagers should wait to have sex until they are older -- they'll be better able to handle the emotional and literal consequences of sex. But I also think that teenagers should still be taught about safe sex since many will go ahead and have sex anyway. :)

Students who receive abstinence only education aren't any less likely to have sex outside of marriage in the long term and are much more likely to have unprotected sex. So it may actually help increase the numbers of STDs and unwanted pregnancies.

Not to mention the harmfully stereotypes that generally accompany abstinence-only education, like girls/women are the gate-keepers of morality and boys/men are sex-starved and have a one track mind. Or, my favorite, that you will have nothing to offer your future spouse (assuming you want to marry) because you've given it all away; as if we are born with a finite amount of sexuality or that having sexuality is wrong (this is generally only taught to girls). Abstinence-only education continues the incredibly destructive idea that sex is a commodity to be given/taken or bought/sold instead of what it really is: a shared experience between human beings.

It also tends to be very hetero-normative by saying to kids: "save yourself for marriage" (and also framing all sex as female/male). What exactly are gay people supposed to do since they can't marry?

And, Vanillabeam, just so we clear, our objection is to abstinence-only education. We completely support comprehensive sex ed that includes abstinence education. Not to say that you didn't get that, but we get misunderstood on the subject a lot. We just want young people (all people, actually) to get the correct and proper information so they are prepared no matter what decision they make.

I'm a Christian. And I think sex is GREAT! And I'm not married. When I was in high school, I assumed that the kind of education I got was the only kind there was. Where they teach you about STDs and birth control and all that. I never thought that being educated conflicted with my religious views. Still don't.
People forcing their beliefs and values on others (i.e. abstinence only education) has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with fear of those who are different, and straight up ignorance.

"I personally think that teenagers should wait to have sex until they are older -- they'll be better able to handle the emotional and literal consequences of sex."

...and better able to choose how much privacy they have sex in. My parents aren't anti-premarital-sex but they did feel very responsible for the family's health. If I had a sex life when I lived with them, they'd probably have wanted more details of it than I'm confortable telling relatives...

"But I also think that teenagers should still be taught about safe sex since many will go ahead and have sex anyway. :)"

Including many of the ones who *do* successfully follow no-sex-outside-marriage advice.

"It also tends to be very hetero-normative by saying to kids: 'save yourself for marriage' (and also framing all sex as female/male). What exactly are gay people supposed to do since they can't marry?"

They can marry. However, it can be far more expensive (given the costs of moving) for the ones who don't already live in places like Massachusetts, South Africa, etc.

This just goes to show you that ignorance is not bliss.
Teens need to be taught the truth about sex. If parents can't accept that, then they'll have to risk their kids following these ridiculous claims. It seems like it would be a lot easier to just have the truth be known, rather than to hide it. It may be tough to accept, but teenagers are going to have sex, so we might as well tell them the facts. By giving them comprehensive sex education, it doesn't mean that all kids are going to rush out and have sex. While providing an abstinence-only education may work for a few students, it definitely won’t work for all. Parents still have the choice to instill morals and beliefs in their children, now whether or not the kids follow them is a different story...

SarahMC,

This is a bit off-topic but thanks for the link to Scarleteen. I'm in grade 10, and while my school offers very comprehensive sex education through a class called Career and Life Management, I haven't taken the class yet. (It's a course necessary to graduate, but we can choose what year we take it in.) This website is very informative, thanks!