martymankins “Here in Utah, the rule of thumb is if ‘you don’t talk about it, the teens won’t want to do it’ This applies to all aspects of sex education.”
It may help to remind them of the hi-jinx they got up to when they were kids. Then remind them that lying is a sin when they deny doing them.

Mr. Hyde Says “I hope this is a sign of hope to you that there are religious people out there who believe we should be educating kids about condoms, birth control, STD’s, and all sides of the sex equation.”
Kudos to you. Now, together, we just have to convince everybody else.

So, Neon Genesis and Martymankins, I hope this is a sign of hope to you that there are religious people out there who believe we should be educating kids about condoms, birth control, STD’s, and all sides of the sex equation. They need to be taught the information so they can make an educated (and hopefully wise) decision about their sexuality.

These distorted facts don’t help anyone except the religious right to keep people uninformed and following their every word.

It’s not about morals. It’s about controlling others.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to teach abstinence along with information about birth control and condoms?

Isn’t the Religious Right always saying we should “teach the controversy” too?

In an ideal world, teens would put the banana on the condom, learn about non-straight sex, and learn about pleasure and masturbation. I am not holding my breath, though, since they are reviewing sex ed text books next year in Texas, where apparently only one text book mentions the word “condom” once. As we all know, Texas influences the rest of the country when it comes to text books.

Modu, I think this is why Abs-Only fails (as well as Comp.). I think sex-ed in general fails because most people live under the false assumption that we only have to tell teenagers once in a class about sex and then they’ll get it. Not only that, teenagers are frustrated because they can never get a straight answer to a lot of their questions.

So WMDKitty is right about removing the mystery of sex. If parents would begin healthy discussions about sex and forgo their own discomforts that their child is growing up, then teenagers would have a much healthier view of sex and how to handle it.

Life is a fatal STD.

Joking aside, I’d like to add that comprehensive education removes the mystery of sex. It shouldn’t be this vague, mysterious, “thing that married people do.” Sex should be portrayed as a positive, pleasurable experience.

I believe that all teenagers should know, by the age of 14, what contraceptive options are available, how each one works, and how to protect themselves from disease.

Not so they’ll all go out and go crazy with it. But so they have the information available, and protect themselves, if or when they do decide to have sex.

“So I think there will be no way to truly know if Abstinence Only Education is effective.”
The consistent failure of Ab-Only versus the better but not great outcome from Comprehensive Sex-Ed lay bare that fib. Ab-Only has had ample time to demonstrate its effectiveness and has almost invariably succeeded only in failure. The best outcome it’s got is that some kids who take it delay having sex for up to 18 months over the Comprehensive sex-ed kids, if memory serves, but their lack of knowledge when they do “do it” (and they do) means that the consequences of their lack of knowledge exceed the mild benefit of the delay.
Excuse my language (it will hopefully make sense if you read the link, which deliberately uses “loaded language”) but ignoring or hand-waving away the fact that no matter what you do kids will fuck in no way changes the fact that kids fuck. When ideology and reality conflict, it’s not reality that’s wrong, and the reality is that ignorance is a clear path to a negative outcome.

“However, I don’t think we should be feeding them the lie that there is such a thing as safe sex. There are certain practices that reduce risk, but there is no such thing as safe sex.”
True, but the object of Comprehensive sex-ed isn’t harm elimination, it’s harm reduction. The object of Ab-only is harm elimination, but in the real world harm elimination is, frankly, utopian and unattainable.

However, I don’t think we should be feeding them the lie that there is such a thing as safe sex. There are certain practices that reduce risk, but there is no such thing as safe sex.