Part-Time Pundit

Why Abstinence Education Does Not Work (and It’s Not What You Think)

Every few months the abstinence education advocates and the comprehensive sex ed advocates trade studies back and forth. “Comprehensive sex ed works!” “Abstinence education works!” The back-and-forth clubbing of studies may make for good headlines but largely misses the point.

While it can be argued that comprehensive sex ed may increase sexual activity (much like the anti-drug program DARE has increased teen drug use in many cases), the success or failure of abstinence education relies on factors largely outside the classroom. Simplistic one-factor statistical analysis is not useful in dealing with a problem that involves more than one variable.

The fact is, teenage (and childhood) sexual activity is a new historical phenomena. Abstinence education was all that there was for centuries and it works. The spread of sexually transmitted disease, teenage motherhood, single motherhood, and broken homes being the norm has never been seen on this magnitude in the history of mankind. It is naïve to think that a 45 minute lecture will be all that is needed to reverse that tide in any meaningful way.

The problem found its biggest catalyst in the sixties under the guise of the “sexual revolution”. It is important to realize that it is the generation of youth in the sixties who are making the policy decision today. That generation steeped themselves in anti-authority rhetoric; it should come as no surprise that they now rail against parental involvement.

For some time, it has only been that generation who has been preaching the sexual liberation message from the rooftops. Those who held to chastity simply remained effectively silent out of a false sense of modesty. It was a “false sense” because modesty strives to put sexuality in its proper place, this reaction however was not modest, it was prudish which seeks to avoid all discussion to begin with. It is this prudishness cloaked in modesty that has led to one of the biggest criticisms of the chastity ideology… that it really is about “sex being a dirty thing.” I know of no one who believes in chastity that thinks sex is some dirty chore married people are bound to do from time to time.

It is important to also take into account all the messages children get about sex from sources outside the classroom. One only needs to watch a few sitcoms, listen to a few of the Billboard Top 40 songs, or look at a few magazines, and we see only one ideology of sex presented (i.e. loose and cheap sex). When no other message is conveyed, we should not be surprised that “kids will just have sex.” That is also why it is so invidious that organizations would use the hammer of the United States Constitution to drive out any competing ideas (or at least those that treat chastity seriously) out of the public square.

On a personal note, before I was married I had considered the priesthood. I found it quite telling that the most frequent response people had to that (including Catholics) was “but you can’t have sex!” It was as if they thought I didn’t already know that and the Church was hiding it from me. Hey, thanks for the hot tip guys!

However, the most important implication about those exclamations was that it was about sex. Not that I couldn’t have a wife, or a family, or that I could get lonely (and in fact, I never heard those objections). Celibacy, or more crudely not having sex, is viewed not as an acceptable sexual option but an outright heresy. Life without sex is a life not worth living, apparently.

The common social idea, even among adults, is that not having sex is a crime against humanity. Take a look at the number of people who insist that the Catholic Church should allow married priests even though they explicitly reject the Catholic Church and its doctrine outright. People who have no interest in the Church, her ministers or her teaching are passionately and loudly interested in the sexual freedom of her clerics.

Further, the reduction of sex to a “medical issue” has dehumanized it and drained it of its value. The comprehensive sex ed crowd describes their material as “medically accurate”. Abstinence education, the last time I checked, doesn’t try to rewrite our biological knowledge. When the only consequences considered are disease prevention and pregnancy, is it any wonder that men and women can’t relate to each other as well anymore?

This creates a situation where people are less free to choose to be chaste. Or more accurately, they are pressured to not be chaste. It’s an unacceptable lifestyle. It’s a socially intolerable lifestyle. People who don’t have sex are pariahs. Is it any wonder “kids just have sex?” Society insists nothing less. That’s why people will argue with a straight face that because X% of people have premarital sex that makes it okay and moral to do so.

Abstinence education will always be handicapped in a society that insists from every quarter that free sex is the only way to live. Until our movies, music, television, and magazines reflect a level of sexual maturity beyond that of a seventh grade boy, this trend will likely continue. Parents will have to display and engender the sexual morality they wish their children to have. In the meantime, those who can speak intelligently, passionately, and openly about chastity must be allowed their say in the public square. A free country requires nothing less.

May 4th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Culture, Pro-Life, Religion, Sex, The MSM | 3 comments

Ramming Values Down American Parents’ Throats

The war against abstinence education wages on across the country. The comprehensive sex ed crowd was apoplectic with the results of a Mathematica study that showed kids who had abstinence education programs were just as likely to engage in sexual activity with the same rates of “dangerous” behavior. The flip side of the study showed that abstinence education also “did no harm” in that the “risky” behaviors were just as frequent between both groups, but that got ignored. Predictably, the studies that show abstinence ed works also go ignored.

The study itself has recycled some of the same claims that come up every time someone objects to abstinence education. Representative Waxman did a study in 2004 that purported to show all the damage abstinence education does, but between outright stupid objections and showing that some programs do work, his attempt failed.

The push for comprehensive education is nothing more than an attempt to ram values down parents’ throats. The United States is a values pluralistic society that works precisely because other people’s values are respected and tolerated. Except in the narrow case of values that are criminal or quasi-criminal, the government shouldn’t start dictating to citizens what values they must have, religious or otherwise. In short, if government education programs are going to deal with sex (and it’s not clear that this is a necessary area for government to be involved in) they need to do so in a values neutral manner.

A reasonable position would be to allow comprehensive sex ed, abstinence ed, or no sex ed at all to be choices available at the sole discretion of the parents. Parents, as a rule, know their children the best and are best able to make the most informed decisions about them. However, far too often the government turns the school system into a parole office for which parents must issue an accounting of their decisions after committing the crime of conception.

Even the ACLU, an organization that allegedly exists solely to protect the bill of rights, demands that only comprehensive sex ed be taught because that’s supposedly the only legal way to do it. Apparently the Constitution requires nothing less than full and complete courses in sexual technique and pleasuring for six year olds.

The reason for forcing the government to present only comprehensive sex ed from the highest levels is clear when it is realized that parents want abstinence ed for their children by a 2:1 margin. The ACLU always stands ready to thwart the democratic process by forcing their values down the throats (and into the pants) of Americans by going to unelected judges to force the issue.

The message is clear, not only parents can’t be trusted to make this decision for children, but lawmakers cannot be trusted either. All that is left to do is for the ACLU to shop for the right judge to give them what they want judicially for what they could never win democratically.

Instead of looking at the reasons why children engage in sexual activity when and how they do, comprehensive sex ed advocates try to bypass parents to present cookie-cutter values without parental involvement. There are some interesting studies, for instance, that show that intelligent kids don’t have sex.

The school system in this country has enough problems producing students that can compete in a global economy. They certainly don’t need to have days taken out of their classes every year while they are already being left behind by the rest of the world academically. Schools should spend their time focusing on academics, not on being one-step social service agencies.

A constant refrain in politics is anger at the “Christian Right” forcing their values on American society. How about some reciprocity? Let’s leave the parenting to the parents.

May 3rd, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Education, Law / Legal Issues, Politics, Sex | 2 comments

Review: Emma’s Journal by Juli Loesch Wiley

As a male reading Emma’s Journal by Juli Loesch Wiley, I was somewhat uncomfortable. The book reads is if I picked up a diary of a woman who I did not know and started flipping through it. The account is a frank and open recollection of a 5 year period of the author’s life. That is, by far, the book’s biggest strength.

Juli is a vastly talented writer and it comes out in her book. She describes events and her inner struggles with wit and candor. She writes from the backdrop of the 80s as a peace activist and pro-life activist. That combination of activities when you include a serious and devout Catholic faith creates a unique life situation that comes out in the first few chapters.

The oddity that more a group or individual tends to take up social justice or peace activism, that they become less pro-life and less orthodox merits exploration (that is beyond the scope of the book). It’s rare that an individual synthesizes all those positions and you can’t help but feel the loneliness of someone who does, because they find themselves in “no one’s camp”.

The book is less a story of conversion (the author was a practicing Catholic at the time the journals begin), but a struggle of trying to live within the bounds of chastity in an environment and society that certainly isn’t built to foster that. The book retells events that seem to be familiar among other women I know, men who are out to simply bed women as if they were objects.

At points, the book does get somewhat detailed into various scenes of sexuality in the past of the author which could cause some to be a little squeamish. However, there needs to made a strong distinction between chastity and prudishness. Chastity seeks to put sexuality in its proper and sacred place; prudishness seeks suppression of any mention as if sexuality was some dirty and forbidden thing.

If the arguments for chastity are to make any inroads into society; people need to bare their souls and talk modestly about sexuality. That does not translate into an injunction against all discussion. Juli should be praised for her openness and courage in baring her soul in this way, much as Dawn Eden did in her book, Thrill of the Chaste. More books like these need to be written.

The book is an easy and enjoyable read along Juli’s 5 year journey chronicled in journals. I highly recommend it, particularly for Christian women, who are looking in frank personal testimonials in the trials and tribulations of being chaste in an unchaste country.

May 2nd, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Book Reviews, Features, Pro-Life, Religion, Sex | one comment

Column: Sex Out Loud - Celebrating Tragedy as Triumph

The following appeared as a guest column in today’s Daily Illini:

Sexuality, by its very nature, is a vulnerable thing. It involves letting someone share the deepest parts of one’s body, heart, and soul. It has pride of place as an expression of romantic love. In its natural form, there is no better practice of intimacy.

March 14th will be the annual Sex Out Loud fair put on by the Feminist Majority. The general point of this fair, falsely dubbed a “sexual health fair”, is that as long as the physical consequences of sex can be controlled, nothing else matters. If it [physically] feels good, do it. But sex isn’t solely a physical matter and by treating it as such, grave harm is done to women particularly.

“Control”, “safe”, “protection”, these are the words that the “sexual health” groups use for sex. These attitudes are usually solely directed at controlling the physical aspects of sex.

The problem is that our sexuality cuts across all dimensions of our personhood. We are physical, emotional, and spiritual beings. Sexuality embraces all of these dimensions. By shrinking sexuality to a merely physical act and then bringing the full weight of science to control the physical consequences, we’ve adopted a sexual mentality based on impenetrability.

With the mainstreaming of contraception in the early part of the 20th century and the invention of the pill in the 60s, sexuality began to be divorced from the natural consequences of sex. With the “consequence” of conception out of the way, people were “free” to be with anyone they wanted.

Women were supposed to be empowered to finally love as equals and have sex with as much disregard as men supposedly did. Women were now free to be with anyone, yet get close to no one. The result is that the sexual revolution has delivered grave harm to women. A “revolution” that began in hedonism has bred a generation of cynics.

Instead of vulnerability, people approach sex trying to protect themselves. Instead of an experience of a person at their deepest levels, it’s an experience of mere gratification. “Protected sex” is sex that satiates but does not satisfy. The human wreckage from this idea is vast and is felt most by women.

Since men are brought up in the “bottle it up” school of emotional development, they are better equipped to handle the isolation that is a result of this sexual pathology. Women, on the other hand, are unable to escape the inevitable loneliness, depression, and isolation that results from this disconnected sex.

One only needs to look at adultery to see the emotional consequences that can result from sex. Even in a “free sex” world, something about cheating on a partner still registers as one of the greatest betrayals possible.

After having experienced the empty promises of sexual freedom for two generations, people are rediscovering chastity and the promises it holds. Chastity isn’t a new concept, it is what we already know in our hearts but refuse to acknowledge with our lips. We want to be fully and deeply accepted by another person on all levels of our being and that is only possible be reserving oneself for that “special someone.”

In books such as “The Thrill of the Chaste” by Dawn Eden, women retell their conversion from “sexually liberated” to “chaste” and show through their own experience that “protected sex” does not lead to the fulfillment we really desire. In embracing the true meaning of our sexual desires, we are free to approach others in a way where we can truly be connected and not objectified. It requires vulnerability not impenetrability.

The voices of chastity are increasing as more and more people see the broken marriages, broken homes, and broken hearts that are a result of “liberated sexuality”. Only in vulnerability and chastity can we truly find sexual fulfillment and the intimacy our hearts desire.

Author Dawn Eden will be giving a talk at 7:30pm, March 13th in Newman Hall’s Lewis Lounge. She will also be at the chastity booth during Sex Out Loud on March 14th.

March 12th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, DailyIllini, Sex | 3 comments

The Culture of Permanent Boyhood

What do you think of when someone mentions “men’s entertainment?” Probably strip clubs, Playboy, pornography or other penis-centric activities. Behavior once characterized by a pubescent seventh-grader has been established as the gold standard of manhood.

This attitude pervades the sex-crazed Western world. When in Italy a few years ago I noticed frequent nudity during TV commercials. Almost every time a topless woman was show, the commercial was for a cell phone. I have yet to place the connection between naked women and text messaging. While commercials shown in the United States are not quite as exhibitionist, they still suffer from the same sexual pathology.

Almost every movie that attempts to cater to a male audience will include obviously gratuitous nudity. Commercials that market products to men will likely include some female model. As the saying goes, “sex sells.” Technology conferences that include product expos include the gratuitous “booth babes” that attract men by their pants instead of their minds. The same is true for auto expos.

It is easy to blame marketers for using women as cheap props and catering to the worst in men. The fact is, however, marketers would cease using sexuality in an instant if it didn’t work. Society has socialized men into being led around by their pants. The few men that speak out against such insipid nonsense are instantly labeled as dweebs.

Historically, this pattern of male over-sexualization has not been the norm. Men who openly lusted after women were derided and viewed as dishonorable. Those who engaged in premarital sex where shunned by their families and communities. Women, for their part, would simply not tolerate men who could not control their libidos. The rule didn’t necessarily hold for the cultural elite. Their morals have always been more flexible in every time and civilization. However, they still maintained the public façade of fidelity.

The rise of feminism and the sexual revolution has altered this dynamic. Previously, male sexual wanderlust was generally opposed by women. Women used their position to enforce, to some extent, male sexual fidelity. The sexual revolution and the brands of feminism that drove it dealt with the problem differently.

The anecdote most commonly heard is how unfair that a man who sleeps around is a “stud” and that a woman who does the same is a “slut.” The implication that generally follows is that a woman should be allowed to be just as promiscuous as men seem to be. It quietly assumed that the worst men among us were the model of manhood and then held up the model for women to emulate.

To be fair, feminism (or more precisely “Sex and the City feminism”) is not to blame for the boyish tendencies of the modern male. Those tendencies have existed since the beginning of time. However, by encouraging the behavior by labeling it normal and then encouraging women to do the same has made the problem epidemic.

The result has been nothing short of tragic. Young men and women simply do not know how to relate to each other outside the bedroom. When talking about women’s health, odds are the conversation is solely around birth control. Discussions on men’s health are more likely about sexual performance. Sex is meant to precede relationships, not flow naturally from them. Men have always been averse to commitment. Society now encourages this behavior.

The true brunt of this boyishness is felt by women. They are generally left raising children alone by men who refuse to commit. Most studies indicate men are more likely to cheat than women. Additional studies show the emotional devastation that women endure when they find their spouses are frequent purveyors of pornography (i.e. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 28, 198-206).

Men are harmed, albeit to a lesser degree. They are left unable to engage in an intimate relationship with a woman. They enter loveless after loveless relationship never able to look at their partner as anything more than an object. Over the long term, they begin to feel the brunt of loneliness and emptiness.

It is time that both men and women stand up and say enough is enough. Women, for their part, need to insist on sexual maturity from men they are or will be involved with. Men must not tolerate those among us to continue to act like pubescent 13-year-olds. Until more people stand up and treat sex as sacred instead of a worthless commodity to be traded without thought, the damage to women and men will continue.

January 2nd, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Culture, Sex | 2 comments

Column: You are More than Your Vagina

(Note: Published in Daily Illini as guest column)

Throughout history one of the main dynamics that has influenced relationships between men and women is what can be called the “vagina monopoly.” Men want them and only women have them. In fact, the world’s oldest profession was one that was originally only capable of being performed by women. That profession was the “renting” of women to men for sex. Most of the pathological aspects in male-female relationships revolve around the objectification of women as objects of sexual gratification.

Originally, feminism was about changing attitudes, particularly that women are of equal dignity as men. Women can be just as capable to become doctors, lawyers, CEOs or politicians. Far from being merely sperm receptacles, they are people entitled to the full balance of human dignity. The rallying call of these feminists was “love me for my mind, not just my body.”

Those days are long gone. Enter groups such as the Feminist Majority at the University of Illinois. The motto of this group and those like it can be described as “love me for my body … PLEASE!” The slogans they chose to put on their T-shirts revolve around sex toys and genitalia. In psychology this would be called a “fixation.”

Women traditionally have been looked upon as sexual objects. So what do these neofeminists do? Celebrate and proclaim liberation in being a sex object, of course. Frat boys on campus look at these poor girls as a vagina on two legs and they want to slap that idea on a T-shirt and sell it. They’ve gone one step further from the prostitution of women to preaching harlotry. The difference between a prostitute and a harlot is that the prostitute at least has enough self respect to demand payment for services rendered.

What the “patriarchy” has tried to establish for centuries is whole-heartedly embraced and celebrated, ironically, by self-styled icons of feminism. The results of such puerile notions have been nothing short of tragic.

Every study on the subject has shown that women who buy into the inner-slut mentality of neofeminism are devastated. They suffer from depression, low self-esteem, STDs, single motherhood and they generally feel rejected in life. They grow into jaded women who think that the path to fulfillment is in imitating the worst men among us.

College-aged women can entertain notions of promiscuity-as-fulfillment because society has always lusted after the young woman. However, as they age they find fewer and fewer partners. They’ve become “cold product” and are discarded in favor of “younger models.”

It has lead to the rejection of the biggest trait distinctive of women - motherhood. The senseless slaughter of children for the sake of sexual convenience (about 99 95 percent of all abortions according to the Guttmacher Institute) ranks first among the horrors in the history of humanity. More children have been murdered through abortion than any other genocide in human history. Abortion makes the Holocaust look like a petty crime in comparison.

It is time for a thorough re-evaluation of neofeminism in the light of the human wreckage strewn in its wake. Luckily there are women out there who are discovering that the path to fulfillment does not lie in the inner-slut myth.

Books such as Dawn Eden’s “Thrill of the Chaste,” Wendy Shalit’s “A Return to Modesty,” and others are reexamining the role of sexuality in a woman’s life and are finding that a sequence of unfulfilling anonymous sexual encounters are not at all empowering.

The case for sexual fidelity has never been stronger. Women are finding that sexual fulfillment isn’t found in anonymous sexual encounters or relationships that generate only from physically satisfying sexual escapades, but is found from the lifelong, permanent and complete union of marriage.

Being free from the Friday-night quests to the local syphilis buffet for Mr. Right Now means that women are free to pursue being doctors, lawyers, and being all-around great women. You know … all those opportunities that feminism was supposed to create.

UPDATE: Because so many people wanted sources here are a few.

From Guttmacher, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, you can read that rape is less than .5% of the most important causes for abortion, health of the mother is 4%. Now I don’t regard “health” of the mother as particularly indicative of anything because pregnancy is, by definition, a HUGE factor for the health of the mother and comes with no small share of risk. It’s used flippantly in debates and I have no reason to see the same crowd doesn’t use it flippantly in research. However, even assuming those are serious health considerations (a statement that no one is in any position to say one way or the other), that means 95.5% of abortions are for reasons of convenience. Ok, so here’s your correct, it’s not 99% (I was using old data), it’s 95%. I’m man enough to post corrections, are my critics?

As far as links to say depression on sex (particularly teen sex), see here, here, here, and there is plenty of good ones coming out of the hopper for adults as we speak. That was from a quick web search, I can find more. In fact, there was some interesting studyins on depression and anal sex, depression and gay sex, and so forth. But there are studies, including one that was in the very paper I was writing for not more than a month before.

November 30th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | DailyIllini, Politics, Religion, Sex | 7 comments