Fundie Christians are, indeed, a bunch of control freaks. And much like their Middle Eastern sharia-loving counterparts, they won't be happy until marriages are arranged by parents without the parties concerned actually even meeting before the ceremony. I suppose this law, if passed, will result in hoards of flashlight-carrying Sex Police patrolling the local lovers' lanes.

But really, it's that they just can't bear the thought of someone having unpunished fun somewhere:

MEMPHIS, TN - (WMC-TV) - Tennessee senators approved an update to the state's abstinence-based sex education law that includes warnings against "gateway sexual activity."

In a new family life instructions bill, holding hands and kissing could be considered gateways to sex. Planned Parenthood said that allowing state government to define local sex education curriculum could backfire.

According to a 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Study, 61 percent of Memphis City high school students and 27 percent of middle school students have had sex. That's higher than the national average.

Planned Parenthood said these numbers are why a new sex education bill promoting abstinence is not realistic.

"If the state of Tennessee gets to create the curriculum, it has to create something that umbrella reflects everyone," said Planned Parenthood Director of Education Elokin CaPese.

Tennessee House Bill 3621 and Senate Bill 3310 are currently up for debate.

In the bill, a uniformed policy on sex education is defined with terms like "gateway sexual activity." Also listed are statewide instructions on how to teach family life curriculum.

[...] If an instructor goes beyond the curriculum, the bill gives parents more legal rights, stating, "The parent or legal guardian shall have a cause of action against the instructor or organization for actual damages."

Margaret and Helen: Bart, if you want to reduce abortions, vote to fully fund family planning and comprehensive sex education. Otherwise, shut the hell up.

Scott Horton: The Alternate Reality of Marc Thiesson (h/t Batocchio)

First Draft: The Other N Word: Nullification

Mock, Paper, Scissors: The Crazy is constant

Brilliant at Breakfast: Confederacy of Dunces, continued

The Satirical Political Report: GOP seeks federal mandate: Everyone must buy their bullsh*t

This isn't another item about how and why abstinence-only programs — championed by the Bush administration and conservatives everywhere — don’t work, waste money, mislead young people about reality, and undermine public health. Instead, it’s about Republicans’ reaction to the evidence on abstinence-only programs.

This week, for example, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the effectiveness of government-sponsored abstinence-only curricula. Not surprisingly, researchers, medical professionals, and scientists in the field explained to lawmakers that the evidence is overwhelming — abstinence-only doesn’t reduce teen pregnancies, doesn’t reduce sexually transmitted diseases, and doesn’t even lead minors to abstain from sex.

So far, so good. Then, of course, committee Republicans piped up.

Republicans said even if some abstinence-only programs do not work, others do, and it would be wrong to end the funding.

Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, said that it seems “rather elitist” that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate. “I don’t think it’s something we should abandon,” he said of abstinence-only funding.

Just a few weeks after the so-called “bittergate” story prompted a media frenzy, the right has already taken to defining “elitism” down — it’s now apparently “elitist” for qualified experts to tell federal officials about available evidence while they consider how to spend federal resources.

As John Cole put it: "Damned elitists with their facts and figures and numbers and statistics and fancy degrees. What do they know about public health that a regular Joe from Tennessee doesn’t?"

James Dobson’s Focus on the Family issued an alert to its membership yesterday with a banner headline: “Liberals Want Federal Abstinence Education Cut.” To which I thought, “It’s about time.” From the religious right group’s report:

President Bush’s 2009 budget proposal includes $204 million to support Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE), but dozens of liberals in Congress want all abstinence money axed from the budget.

Seventy-six representatives — all abortion supporters — have signed a letter sponsored by Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., asking the House Appropriations Committee to cut all abstinence-education funding. The letter follows another letter, sent by Reps. Lee Terry, R-Neb., and Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., urging support for CBAE funding and current guidelines.

The debate surfaces on the heels of a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that shows one in four teen girls in the U.S. has a sexually transmitted infection (STI).

I was especially struck by the notion that the timing of the CDC report was somehow helpful to the right’s efforts to promote abstinence-only funding. If anything, the opposite is true — as the rates of sexually-transmitted diseases go up, it’s all the more important to offer quality education on sexual health.

It’s quite simple: the evidence that abstinence-only is more effective doesn’t exist.

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The WaPo reported the other day that at least 14 states have “either notified the federal government that they will no longer be requesting [sex education] funds or are not expected to apply,” because the Bush administration mandates abstinence-only lessons in public schools receiving the funding.

“We’re concerned about this,” said Stan Koutstaal of the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the program. “My greatest concern about states dropping out is that these are valuable services and programs. It’s the youths in these states who are missing out.”

Actually, that’s backwards. The youths are better off with actual sex-ed.

Teenagers who have had formal sex education are far more likely to put off having sex, contradicting earlier studies on the effectiveness of such programs, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

They found teenage boys who had sex education in school were 71 percent less likely to have intercourse before age 15, and teen girls who had sex education were 59 percent less likely to have sex before age 15.

Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boys would use contraceptives the first time they had sex, according to the study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Whaddaya know; giving young people reliable, accurate information about sexual health leads to safer, more responsible behavior. Maybe someone get pass word along to the Bush administration.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather for vids)

On Tuesday's Live with Dan Abrams, Dan discussed with Air America's Rachel Maddow and National Abstinence Education Association's Valerie Huber (who has faced criticism for her anti-gay and religious overtones in pushing abstinence) the recent findings that the teen birth rate has risen:

In a troubling reversal, the nation's teen birth rate rose for the first time in 15 years, surprising government health officials and reviving the bitter debate about abstinence-only sex education.

The birth rate had been dropping since its peak in 1991, although the decline had slowed in recent years. On Wednesday, government statisticians said it rose 3 percent from 2005 to 2006.

However, some experts said they have been expecting a jump. They blamed it on increased federal funding for abstinence-only health education that doesn't teach teens how to use condoms and other contraception. Read on...

Add to that the rise in sexually transmitted diseases among our teens and you've got a Republican recipe for disaster for our kids.

Firedoglake has more... (thanks to Nicole for her assistance)

Those who are concerned with reality probably didn’t need more evidence that abstinence-only programs don't work, but we have some anyway. The nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy released the results of its latest research project this week.

“At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners” among teenagers, the study concluded. […]

The study found that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex education programs were having “positive outcomes” including teenagers “delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use.”

“Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavior effect,” said the report.

You mean, simply telling teenagers not to have sex doesn’t work? And quality, comprehensive education does? And the Bush administration insists on supporting the prior while rejecting the latter? You don’t say.

Posted by Courtney at Feministing:

FOX and CBS have both recently refused to air ads for condoms that emphasize their use as a birth control method. When interviewed by the New York Times, a FOX rep said, that the decision was based on their policy that condom ads "must stress health-related issues rather than the prevention of pregnancy." In other words, it is okay to educate consumers about STDs, but empowering them to make reproductive choices is beyond the purview of two of our nation's most sex-saturated networks.

You can read Courtney's full take on this at Alternet:

It is inexcusable that television networks, one of the best public sites for widespread education about safer sex, is acting coy at the cost of young women's fullest lives.

The first time I met 23-year-old Marvelyn Brown at a Washington, D.C., luncheon celebrating young women's achievements, she reached for her lemonade and I noticed a tiny red ribbon tattooed on her hand. Marvelyn and I got to talking, and I learned that she had been diagnosed with HIV at the age of 19. She contracted it from unprotected sex with a boy she described as "prince charming" back in her hometown of Nashville, Tenn. Her mother, whose only attempt at sex education was "just don't get pregnant," begged Marvelyn to tell everyone she had cancer instead. Read more...

You can also pick up a copy of the book "Full Frontal Feminism: A Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters" by Feministing's Jessica Valenti here.

AP Via Yahoo:

A judge on Monday voided a 10-year sentence for a man accused of having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. He instead gave Genarlow Wilson a 12-month misdemeanor sentence with credit for time already served.

Wilson's original sentence, for aggravated child molestation, was widely criticized on the grounds it was grossly disproportionate to the crime, and state lawmakers later passed a law to close the loophole that led to the 10-year sentence.

A jury found the honor student guilty in 2005 of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl during a 2003 New Year's Eve party involving alcohol and marijuana. Although the sex act was consensual it was illegal under Georgia law. Read more...

In the Bizarro World of Purity Balls and abstinence only sex education we live in, this was a positive sign of progress back to reality. The new sentence may save the day for this young man, but it will take him years to shake the stigma.

MotherJones:

The GAO released a legal opinion yesterday affirming that abstinence-only education materials must include accurate information on sexually transmitted infections and the effectiveness of condoms. To date, HHS had insisted that materials produced by abstinence grantees do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Public Health Service Act, which mandates as much. HHS has instead maintained that:

"Grantees may address issues related to [STIs] in communicating the importance of abstinence, they are to address these issues only within the broader context of abstinence education."

The GAO's legal review came at the request of Congressional dems including the ever-muckraking Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). Remember, it was Waxman's 2004 report on abstinence-only sex education curricula that found rampant inaccuracies. Read on...

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