By Peter J. Smith
WASHINGTON, October 5, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The National Education Association has announced a review of three abstinence programs that encourage teens to wait until marriage for sex and which are meant to provide “an excellent portrait” of the types of abstinence programs funded by the federal government. However, NEA, an aggressive promoter of sex-education and condom instruction for children, says that the abstinence curricula “are riddled with messages of fear and shame, gender stereotypes, and medical misinformation that put young people at risk.”
According to an NEA, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS) reviewed three federally funded abstinence programs: WAIT (Why Am I Tempted?) Training, Why kNOw, and Heritage Keepers; all programs that encourage teenagers to wait until marriage to have sexual intercourse.
The three programs are meant to represent how abstinence-only educators make references to the Bible about true love; challenge the perpetuated myth of the condom’s well known failure of “100% effectiveness”; indicate that men and women are biologically different; emphasize that modesty promotes respect for the differences between men and women; state that procreation is a natural part of sex – all unmentionable facts for both the NEA and SIECUS.
For the “best guideline about love ever written”, the Why kNOw gives a paraphrased Biblical quotation of 1 Corinthians 13:4. “Real Love: is patient; is kind; does not envy; does not boast; is not proud; is not rude; is not self-seeking; is not easily angered; keeps no record of wrongs; does not delight in evil; rejoices with the truth; always protects; always trusts; always hopes; always lasts; (and) never fails.”
Another program, WAIT Training has a unit described as being “…designed to help teens comprehend all of the consequences-not just the physical ones-of premarital sex including the intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, and financial ramifications.” It also mentions that “a condom is actually setting a teen up for failure when we realize, as adults, that condoms won’t be used ‘consistently and correctly’ every single time.”
The NEA said that the last group cited by SIECUS, Heritage Keepers, went so far as to indicate that sex could lead to the creation of “an entirely new person – a living human being; a son or daughter.” SIECUS insisted the unit uses “leading questions” such as “How did the Preview of a Birth video make you feel about the wonder of a new human life forming?”
The NEA press release about the reviews, however, only served to further illustrate how far the NEA and its associates have ventured to the periphery of American values. The press release concluded that “Curricula that instill fear and shame in young people, disparage condom use, perpetuate gender stereotypes, and contain anti-abortion messages have no place in any program for school- aged young people, let alone programs sanctioned by the federal government, and paid for with hard-earned tax dollars.”
However, the real issue may be that the $800 million federal dollars allotted to abstinence-until-marriage programs by President Bush has been causing a change in youth behavior. Although sexual activity in teens is still high, a 2004 report from the Center for Disease Control entitled “Teenagers in the United States: Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use, and Childbearing, 2002”, indicates the number of teenagers having sex is declining, especially in males age 15-19. The majority of teens reported receiving formal instruction on how to refuse sexual advances.