WAKE COUNTY, NC, January 7, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Wake county school board members voted Tuesday to revise the current sex-education policy there.  “Comprehensive” sex-ed electives were dropped from the curriculum of high schools in the district, in favour of a revised “abstinence until marriage” message.  The revision is a mandatory requirement for all teachers to “promote abstinence until marriage as the expected standard for all students.”  Supporters of the new policy say that the new message is about more than just saying no to sex.  It also educates students about sexually transmitted diseases and the “effectiveness and failure rates of contraceptives.”  Commenting on the “massive” increase in sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies among adolescents in the UK, Dr. Trevor Stammers, a professor in general practice and commentator on sexual health, wrote in the British Medical Journal:  “Contraception as the cornerstone of sexual health promotion for adolescents has manifestly failed. In almost 15 years of general practice I have never seen a single case of unplanned pregnancy resulting from ignorance about or unavailability of contraception.” He cites studies indicating that “up to 80% of unplanned pregnancies result from failed contraception” and “data from 1975-91 show a positive correlation between increasing rates of use of condoms at first intercourse and higher rates of teenage conceptions.” He warns that “oral contraceptives, while providing the greatest protection from unplanned pregnancy, offer no protection against sexually transmitted diseases.”  Stammers cites American studies proving that abstinence education works.

The Wake County vote also threw out mandatory education promoting tolerance towards homosexual lifestyles for grade-schoolers from grades six through nine.  Read the news-observer coverage of the Wake County vote at:  http://www.news-observer.com/news/story/3189565p-2868884c.html   Read LifeSiteNews.com coverage of the soaring teen STD rate in Britain at:  http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2000/dec/00121502.html