BOTL: Now with More Tebow, More Abstinence, More Kerfuffle

A laundry list of items, and the sun isn't even up yet.

The Daily Star ran an editorial the New York Times flung out on Sunday, which I missed at the time.

A letter sent to CBS by the Women's Media Center and other groups argues that the commercial "uses one family's story to dictate morality to the American public, and encourages young women to disregard medical advice, putting their lives at risk" - a lame attempt to portray the ad as life-threatening.

The would-be censors are on the wrong track.

Instead of trying to silence an opponent, advocates for allowing women to make their own decisions about whether to have a child should be using the Super Bowl spotlight to convey what their movement is all about: protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices.

The editorial notes that the Tebows' story is being brought to you by Focus on the Family, but conveniently omits the fact that FoF works tirelessly--with nearly bottomless funding from their adherents--to increasingly restrict women's rights to make choices about their pregnancies, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the choice of abortion altogether, as well as eliminating many forms of contraception as well. Pam Tebow ostensibly had a choice (although abortion for any reason has been illegal since 1930 in the Phillippines, where Tim was born, it's questionable whether she actually had the choice she claims to have made), and she's shilling the story of that choice on behalf of an organization that is committed to removing the same choice from other women. Nice job on nuance, NYT and Daily Star!

Next up, abstinence!

A new study shows for the first time that a sex-education class emphasizing abstinence only - ignoring moral implications of sexual activity - can reduce sexual activity by nearly a third in 12- and 13-year-olds compared with students who received no sex education.

"This study, in our view, is game-changing science," said Bill Albert, chief program officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C.

"It provides for the first time evidence that abstinence-only intervention helped young teens delay sexual activity."

The study reported here covered 600+ low-income African-American 12- and 13-year-olds in the Northeast, who were split into four groups who received different eight hour courses in 8th grade. The control group got generic healthy living, the first test group got abstinence-only, the second safe sex (excluding abstinence), and the third got a combination of safe sex and abstinence. Over the following two years, half the safe-sex kids reported sexual activity, while only a third of the abstinence-only kids did; the comprehensive group was in the middle.

Okay, so abstinence-only education was tops at keeping 12- and 13-year-olds from having sex before they turned 14 or 15. Fair enough. But is there a kicker?

None of the classes appeared to influence the use of condoms or other birth control when the students did have sex. The children thus remained at risk of pregnancy and venereal disease.

About 8.8 percent of participants in the comprehensive class reported activity with multiple partners, compared with 14.1 percent in the control group, indicating that the comprehensive class reduced the risk of disease. Neither diseases nor pregnancies were monitored, however.

Ding ding ding! Maybe abstinence should be hammered at the younger kids--this study certainly suggests it's an effective tactic--but I have to ask if 55 kids (33% of the control group) having sex at 14 with no understanding of contraception is really a preferable outcome to 86 kids having sex at 14 after at least having been taught about condoms. The difference is statistically significant, but in terms of actual lives, 55 and 86 are pretty much a wash. If anything, the study does make it horribly clear that a huge unresolved problem is how to convince kids to use the goddamn condoms and other contraception once they've learned about them. Too bad disease and pregnancy were not monitored; since those are the two conditions abstinence-only and comprehensive sex ed agree need to be minimized, those are the outcomes that would seem to be the most salient.

Oh, and on the teeny tiny kerfuffle of the NYT gays-aren't-monogamous story? A few commenters elsewhere have read my objections as being objections to open relationships and rational thinking about partnering, and possibly to gay men as well. No, no, no. Got no problem with people negotiating relationship parameters that work for them, and am not unaware of the high incidence of infidelity in hetero marriages and the problems that causes when couples don't write external affairs into their rules but go on to have them anyway. Nor do I think all gay partnerships must hew to the mythological Ozzie-and-Harriet model in order for us to have a chance at marriage equality; what works for me might not work for you, and that's fine. I just despair when I see glosses reported as science, particularly when I know exactly the kinds of bozos in my own state and possibly own family who will pounce on the pronouncement that half of all gay relationships incorporate non-monogamy and use it as the only justification they will ever need to keep voting against full civil rights for us and to keep throwing money at organizations that think we should all be executed, or jailed, or maybe just subjected to compulsory reparative therapy.

Governor Notices Arizona Only Ranks 5th in Nation on Teen Birthrates, Acts Accordingly

Arizona's teens are currently getting their collective birth-giving asses handed to them by the kids in Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas, and Arkansas, so Governor Jan Brewer is springing into action by opening the floodgates to the federal abstinence-only funding that her rational predecessor, Janet Napolitano, said uh, no to.

"This governor believes that abstinence education is the right path to take," said gubernatorial spokesman Paul Senseman. He said the fact the program won't cost the state anything only bolsters Brewer's belief that it makes sense.

See? It's free! What's not to like? Oh.

Napolitano, in refusing to take more federal funding last year, cited a study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It found that teens in abstinence-only programs "were no more likely than youth who were assigned to the 'services as usual' control group to have abstained from sex."

Acting state health director Will Humble (no relation to state environmental quality "commissioner" Benjamin Grumbles) likes the abstinence-only curriculum because it promotes self-esteem and decision-making for teenagers, at least when that decision is to not have sex. Interestingly, while Humble thinks pairing those inarguably important skills with actual information about contraceptive would be a good idea, he's not even inching out onto that limb when it comes to his official job of, I don't know, safeguarding kids' health.

Humble also said he personally believes that birth control "probably should" be part of a high school curriculum. None of these funds, however, can be used to tell those teens who are going to be sexually active how to prevent pregnancy or avoid sexually transmitted diseases.

Yeah, "probably." But with contraception off the table, what kinds of things, then, will the federal dollars allow teachers to tell Arizona children?

Federal regulations say the dollars can be used only for programs teaching that abstinence from sex outside of marriage is the "expected standard for all school-age children." Programs also must teach that sex outside of marriage "is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects..."

In other words, the federal funding cannot be used to provide factual information about preventing pregnancy and life-threatening diseases, but it can be used to tell kids lies. Because nothing prepares kids for healthy adult sexual relationships like instilling the belief that a gold ring will magically protect them from whatever viruses their spouses might have picked up before the second or third time they renewed their virginity by making yet another purity vow, or will miraculously transform an abusive or exploitative relationship into the stuff dreamed by rainbow unicorns who breathe whipped cream with sprinkles. And, honestly, the greatest part of that funding by necessity will have to go toward busy-work modules that can be stretched to cover an entire semester's worth of classtime, since abstinence education can be boiled down to "no sex before marriage because it will make you insane and then kill you; the end," which can be communicated in just about as much time as it took you to read the sixteen words between the quotation marks there. Even allowing an extra second's dramatic pause there to accomodate the semicolon, it leaves an awful lot of instructional time to fill. And when you can't talk about things like biology or contraception, well, worksheets all around! Don't color outside the lines, kids!

The state of Illinois is re-evaluating abstinence programs this week too, with, not surprisingly, the same sets of arguments and data at loggerheads there as well, with the difference that sex-ed curricula are determined by local school districts rather than being standardized by the state education department. Roughly 40 percent of Illinois students get the abstinence-only classes, and the patchwork of lessons taught in middle schools makes high school health teachers pull their hair out.

Joliet Central High School teacher Susan Cailteux is reminded of how varied the sex education curriculum is at the elementary and middle school level every time she begins a unit with a 25-point quiz on the reproductive system.

"I'll get kids with a 5. They don't even get the uterus right," said Cailteux, who teaches high school sophomores about both abstinence and contraception. "It's very frustrating at times because you expect them to know the basics, but the basics have not been taught."

Sophomore Tim Nemec, 16, of Joliet acknowledged that he never learned much about reproduction or the risk of infections until he took the health course required of all sophomores at Joliet Central. After that, he noticed a shift in some classmates' attitudes.

"There were some kids who went in like, 'I don't care. I'll do what I want,' " Nemec said. "But after a while, they were sort of like, 'Wow, I don't know if this person is clean or not,' or, 'I could actually get someone pregnant.' "

In a country where two-thirds of high school seniors report being sexually active, with one in five of those reporting more than three partners, the need for universally taught, accurate information would seem to be self-evident, but too many people favor the fingers-tightly-in-ears, eyes-closed, la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you approach to their kids' *shudder* sexuality.

Abstinence-only advocates contend that, just as adults drill teens not to drink and drive, educators should teach them to avoid risk by maintaining celibacy until marriage.

They have their metaphors slightly out of focus. Providing accurate data about biology and contraceptives is not. the. same. as tossing your 16-year-old the car keys and a fifth of Jack. No, we don't want kids driving drunk. So we tell them not to drink, but we also tell them that if they do drink, or if the person they're riding with drinks, that they can call us for a ride home with no questions asked. We put a cab company's number in their cell phones and give them a twenty to keep in their wallets so they'll have a safe way out if they get into that situation. That in no way equates to saying well, I know you're going to drink anyway, so go ahead and take the Mustang! Driving drunk does not equate to having sex, but it does equate to having unprotected, stupid sex you're not mature enough to handle. So we do tell our kids that the only surefire way to avoid pregnancy is to keep penises far, far away from vaginas, and the only surefire way to avoid every STD is to not touch anyone ever, but then we also equip them with knowledge and the means to protect themselves when reality asserts itself. Because to do otherwise is to willfully punish them for their humanity by letting their lives get really fucked up by unwanted pregnancies and unwanted viruses, whether they're married at the time or not. And no amount of federal freebies--or the prospect of Arizona being NUMBER ONE!--can ever make that a good bargain.

In Other News: Water Wet; Fire Hot

Abstinence-only Sex Ed Ineffective, Study Finds

Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.

"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."

The study flatly contradicts the usual bogeymen trotted out by the abstinence crowd that giving teenagers accurate information about physiology, reproduction, and sexual health is akin to shoving them into a room with a rotating bed, mirrored ceiling, and chucka chucka bwow music playing. Kids who get that information actually tend to wait longer before having sex and use contraception when they do.

What's this tell us? Besides the fact that knowledge is the first, best line of defense against the crap life throws at you, it's instructive--at least to me-- in another direction I don't often see commented on. While federally funded abstinence-only instruction cannot include explicitly religious content, it places a great deal of emphasis on moral imperatives regarding sexuality and is most fervently supported by (and adopted primarily in areas that are home to) evangelical Christians.

The problem.

When kids from conservative Christian backgrounds stray from what they've been taught and have sex, a lot of them don't bother with contraception. The overwhelming reason for this is likely because they haven't learned accurate facts about their options, but instead have been told that condoms don't work to prevent pregnancy and work even less to prevent HIV. I suspect that a contributing factor, however, is the belief that simply hitting your knees after the deed and telling God you're sorry gives you a great big do-over that wipes your slate, penis, and uterus clean along with your soul.

The abstinence movement likes to be a big tent operation that welcomes even non-virgin people in, which is a good thing since it has to be in order to guarantee its continuing solvency in the face of the sky-high rates of teen sex, pregnancy, and repeat teenage pregnancy posted by its adherents. If you're not a physiological virgin, you can still re-pledge abstinence and get your virginity back in the eyes of God. While extending the olive branch to less-than-perfect people and declining to kick them out of the club for behaving like sexually functional beings is laudable, the availability of nightly get-right-with-God sessions likely goes a long way toward the development of a consequences-free mindset when it comes to sex.

We saw it with David "I Have Requested And Received Forgiveness From God" Vitter. We saw it with Ted "I Am One Hundred Percent Heterosexual" Haggard. We see it in statements from kids who regret past promiscuity and promise Jesus to be virgins forever this time, really. Until the next time. I have had conversations with people who readily admit to all manner of minor sins every day--'cause nobody's perfect--but believe they are washed clean each night because they tell God they're really, really, really sorry. Preventative measures don't go very far against that mindset.

Tucson Purity Week!

You know, I must be getting jaded. I open the paper this morning to see this above the fold...

Dads help daughters pledge 'sexual purity'

J., 13, shows the price tag on a dress to her father, Tom, during a shopping trip to find something to wear to the Fifth Annual Purity Ball. "It's not about a bunch of rules, about bolting a chastity belt on them. That would really not be a successful approach," Tom says of the ball concept. PHOTOS BY Mamta Popat / arizona daily star

...and I just think, eh. The purity thing is reported fairly uncritically; the concerns that have been raised by the non-purity-vow camp are briefly summarized and dismissed with the verbal equivalent of a hand-wave.

They've heard what critics say, that the Purity Ball concept puts a girl's virginity in a metaphorical lockbox to which Daddy holds the key. But they say that's a misinterpretation of the event's purpose.

"It's not about a bunch of rules, about bolting a chastity belt on them," said the twins' father, Tom Worcester, 47, a Raytheon engineer. "That would really not be a successful approach. It's about a choice a young lady can make and stick with."

Oh. Okay.

There's the requisite talk about the importance of the father in a girl's life, plenty of stories of happy fathers and daughters, and the requisite mention of Motherboy "Knight to Remember" mother-son events. Little craw-stickers for the cynics among us are the reporter's dutiful adoption of "purity" and "pure" for "abstinence" and "abstinent," as well as this little gem from the Family Research Council's Randy Wilson:

"We believe a girl's identity and self-worth comes from the father. "If the father is not there," Wilson added, "she will wander outside the home and look for the answer to whether she is beautiful and worthy of being pursued."

...because Daddy's all the pursuit she should need? Snark aside, why the consistent reduction of a girl to her genitals, with her ascribed value derived solely from whether those genitals have come in contact with someone else's, reserving them for the day when, ultimately, she is finally penetrated married? Stupid question, I know; the reduction of people to their sexuality--whether it's Teh Gay or female virgins--is what this camp does best.

Because Everybody's Doing It

Talking about purity balls, that is. If you missed my previous posts about these pseudo-incestuous horrorshows, you can get caught up here and here. And if you've missed the myriad links to the new video, go to Pandagon right now and view it. Particularly if you're in need of some appetite suppression.

Not Much Else Going On, So How About Some Abstinence Talk?

Aimee Short (of the BreakDown abstinence Shorts, as ABB might say) is back. She left a lengthy comment while I was away, so I've not gotten around to responding until now. I'll give her this much; she's persistent.

Now about the blog posted on June 18th in response to my comment. It is encouraging to know that the blogger is not heartless and has the ability to step away from her strong opinions and see not just the values of another person, but the PERSON behind those values. It's easy to put another person into a box that they do not deserve when you know very little about them or what they really do. I have been guilty of that myself from time to time. But, I do not, nor does BreakDown as an organization fit into the "abstinence" box.

There is one major difficulty that I have with this blog. It is stated as a fact that "Ms. Short offers no solution beyond don't have sex." Now how would you know that? Have you been to a high school classroom with me anytime over the last 6 years while I am teaching a 5 hour course on sex, abstinence and relationships? How can you be so sure that I say "just say no" for 5 hours and throw a ring or a pledge card at the students as they are running as fast as they can from my class? Let me answer my own question. Because you put me, and the entire "abstinence movement" into a tiny little box.

Well, like you are with your responses to the postings and comments on my blog, I'm only going with the information I have. The newspaper articles I referenced didn't give details about the curriculum of your five-hour classes; they focused on encouraging abstinence through dancing and positive messages about self-worth. If I came away with the impression that your abstinence program presented an overly simplified view of human sexuality, it's because that's how it was presented.

You are correct when you say that sex is a powerful, powerful thing. I agree wholeheartedly. That's why I do what I do. Because sex is so powerful it has the potential to be so painful. 2 minutes of sex can destroy a lifetime. Young people usually find this out the hard way. I just want to be the voice of encouragement that inspires some young people to avoid the consequences all together, possibly even save their lives. People can write what they want and criticize, but I for one do not want to be remembered for sitting back and allowing the young people around me to have the accuse that nobody cared enough to tell them the truth and that they are worth more than our society gives them credit for. I want to be one who offers hope of a better way, inspires young people to believe in and value themselves, their bodies and their futures.

I'm all over that. Seriously, I am. Could it be that you've done your own bit of box-building, assuming that people like me, who object to abstinence-only education, are hedonists trying to rid society of the last remaining strictures against personal pleasure at all costs? I think abstinence is absolutely necessary for the vast majority of teenagers. Hell, there are plenty of emotionally immature or unstable adults who would do well to take a vow fo chastity until they get their personal shit together.

My objection has never been to the idea of abstinence for kids, but to the school of thought that demands abstinence education be completely devoid of accurate information about physiology and birth control methods. Let's face it--if you communicate your message of abstinence effectively enough, if it really takes root in a kid's head, the additional knowledge about condoms and less risky sexual behaviors is not going to compel him to run out and have sex despite truly believing he shouldn't. If your message doesn't convince a kid to remain abstinent until marriage, accurate information about safer sex practices will greatly reduce the risk of him impregnating someone or contracting a disease. I mean, it was drilled into me fairly early in life that shooting people is wrong. Subsequently learning to fire a rifle when I was in high school didn't make me more disposed to chuck my moral framework and start plinking folks from a clock tower.

I fail to understand how presenting the full spectrum of information necessary for healthy sexual behavior falls into the category of disrespecting kids, or is somehow designed to convince them their intrinsic worth is less than if we don't bother to teach them about condoms, or mutual masturbation, or piggybacking barrier contraception with the pill.

Yes, I understand that abstinence is the best way to avoid pregnancy and STDs. I truly hope that your curriculum does all you claim, that you present kids with realistic, workable options for making good choices and protecting themselves against coercion. I simply don't believe that withholding information about protection is morally defensible, given human nature and the extent to which teenagers are hard-wired to get it on. Yes, I believe that humans can rise above their instincts, if you want to look at it that way, and that teaching kids accurately about the risks of sexual behavior should and can make them decide to put it off until they're physically and emotionally ready. But knowledge about contraception has to be there as a backup. Withholding that knowledge puts kids at sea without a life raft, and I find that unconscionable.

Good old anecdotal evidence can prove anything you want it to, but I was fully versed in the physiology of reproduction from a young age. The sex ed curriculum in my grammar school covered the range of contraception available at that time, along with the effectiveness rates of each when used correctly. It also talked about the emotional risks of becoming sexually active too early. I decided I wasn't ready to do something that had even the remotest chance of landing me in the spot my parents found themselves in as teenagers (namely, pregnant with me and frog-marched to the altar). I made it through high school with my virginity intact, and when I later became sexually active, it was a carefully considered decision fortified with highly reliable, properly used birth control. My sole pregnancy was carefully planned, the baby wanted. Storybook. And in that storybook, knowledge is power.

So keep fighting your good fight, Aimee. I hope you can understand why those of us on this side of the fence think your curriculum should be augmented with precise instruction on what to do should the individual's informed conscience lead him or her into sexual activity before marriage.

Massive Sunday Morning: A Response to Aimee Short

Last month I wrote a post that mentioned a Christian abstinence-promoting teen dance group that plans to travel to Uganda to help Ugandans find God and swear off sex until marriage (please ignore the maddening formatting-that-didn't-quite-take and just read). I was less than optimistic about their chances of success and more than a little cynical about the entire aggressive abstinence movement as a whole.

The founder of the Tucson chapter of the group, one Aimee Short, took the time to leave a lengthy comment on the entry, so I'll return the favor and respond to the points she raised.

I was a virgin on my wedding night. If you knew what happened with my marriage you would feel like a jerk for even attempting to presume I did anything wrong. And just so everyone knows, I will not have sex again until I am married.

I respect Ms. Short's intention to not have sex until she gets married again, and am genuinely sorry for whatever hurt she experienced that makes this even more imperative for her than just religious conviction. I know too many women who have experienced sexual and emotional abuse to ever belittle someone's personal experience, so I do apologize for seemingly callous remarks.

Nobody is trying to deny any young person of having fun or "getting their freak on" as you put it. We ARE trying to help young people avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, STDs, and the emotional heartbreak associated with pre-marital sex.

I am not even going to try and convince the readers of this blog (which I am sure already share your viewpoint, however uneducated it may be) that what we do helps teenagers and that it is effective.

My viewpoint may have come across as a bit snarky, so I'll try to explain it clearly. While I simply do not believe that all people need to abstain from sex until they're married, I do believe that it's a big mistake to be sexually active before you're emotionally mature enough to handle it. Our brains are hard-wired to go, go, go, and what seemed like a great idea at the time can come back to bite you in the ass the next morning, or even five minutes later, if you went into it thinking true love and the other person was just looking to get off.

Sex can be a powerful, powerful thing and has the potential to create emotional trauma. It can be bad enough when you make a mistake that's just centered on you (damn, that was stupid, he/she was just using me; crap, I was drunk, I hope she doesn't call me back). It can be a hundred times worse when your mistake also means you broke a sacred vow you signed your name to, let down your parents who thought you were great because you were a virgin, and pissed off your god.

And it can be a million billion gazillion times worse when all of the above happens and--because your abstinence education didn't provide it and your personal abstinence pledge gave you a compelling reason not to research it--you either didn't use protection or used it incorrectly because you had no idea how it works. And that's where the problem lies. Ms. Short says she's trying to help kids avoid pregnancy and STDs, but offers no solutions beyond "don't have sex."

That advice is golden in a perfect world, but does exactly nothing to protect people who get caught up in the moment, or in situations they have zero preparation for because they were told--and told themselves--that they simply would never do that. The membership of Short's own group belies that assumption; at least one guy, quoted anonymously in the original newspaper article this story came from, admitted to losing his virginity at 14, although he's since re-committed himself to abstinence. Did he use a condom? The paper didn't say. If any of the other BreakDown dancers get carried away at some point and have a sexual encounter, will they know how to protect themselves? Look at the numbers of abstinence-pledge kids who engage in oral or anal sex because they don't think it's the "real sex" that their pledges proscribe. I don't think those activities are inherently immoral, but they are risky from a physical health perspective and carry the same potential for emotional trauma good old penis-vagina sex does.

The other problem I have with the abstinence movement is the need of its proponents to formalize the decision and cover it with so many symbolic and ritualistic trappings that it moves into the realm of the sacramental--which comes with its own attendant problems (my, I'm feeling self-referential today). I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of kids wearing jewelry serving as a prominent statement about their sexuality. Deciding you're not going to engage in sex for recreation is admirable, but wearing the locket or ring every day seems, in my heathen opinion, to put an inappropriate emphasis on a kid's sexuality, to draw more attention to it--even when it's in the negative sense--than is warranted. But that's just me.

Where this becomes troublesome in my mind is when the kid who has made such a huge deal about being abstinent stumbles and does something. When the girl who's gone to the Purity Ball with her dad, or done the Silver Ring Thing and made her pledge in front of the group and wears the ring ends up having sex anyway. Hard enough to wake up the next morning after doing something you feel violates your own personal principles, your own private promise to yourself. Throw in betraying your community and all hell breaks loose.

I suppose that's the point; fear of tribal approbation keeps most people in line to some extent. And, the Abstainers might argue, if there's no threat of shame or other consequence hanging over your head, what's the point of making a promise in the first place? I simply prefer to see more holistic approaches taken that do not require perfection in order to be effective, and that includes acknowledging, accepting, and being honest about realities that don't conform to your ideal world. Vaginal sex doesn't always result in pregnancy or STD--but it can, so you need to be prepared. Oral and anal sex don't always result in STD--but they can, so you need to be prepared. Pre-marital sex does not always result in heartbreak--but it can be very messy indeed, so yes, you need to be abstinent if you're not emotionally mature enough to handle the potential trainwreck.

The last point the Abstince Movement regularly fails to acknowledge is that a marriage license and minister's blessing don't magically make you immune to either STDs or heartbreak. A woman can be a virgin who's never been with a man unaccompanied and still end up with a nasty virus on her wedding night if her husband was neither "pure" nor careful in his youth. Sexual abuse still happens within marriage, as does sexual incompatibility. In short, human sexuality is maddeningly and wonderfully complicated. Just saying no before marriage will solve some problems, but it ain't a magic fix for everything, and it isn't free of its own unintended side effects.

Endnote: My concern that BreakDown's message is overly simplistic for Uganda stands. Emphasizing self-esteem and self-worth as reasons to decline sex outside of a committed relationship, especially for teenagers, and especially for girls, is a praise-worthy goal. But it's hard enough to make that kind of thinking stick in America. I'm not sure that trying to transplant that model wholesale onto another culture will be hugely successful without simultaneously (or first) addressing the issues of gender inequality, the sexual expression of male power and dominance, and poverty.

Special Report: Purity Pledges and Rape Reporting

When pressed for time and needing to gather your thoughts (World Cup starts in 45 minutes! Ex gets re-married in 30 hours!), post stuff from your dailyKos diary. Sure recipe for success. So now I reach back to April and rescue a piece I apparently never got around to putting up here...

Continuing the theme of purity pledges and a level of paternal involvement in pre-adolescent girls' sexuality, we turn to the wide world of chastity jewelry, divergent symbolism for girls and boys, and some of the unsettling implications for those kids' lives once they grow up. This was spurred by yet another Digby post, this one discussing the purity jewelry offered by a guy loosely connected to Operation Rescue’s Randall Terry.

The Heart to Heart jewelry guy provides the material manifestation of the queasy pseudo-incest imagery suggested by the Purity Ball's vows between daughter and father involving (1) saving the girl's purity as a gift to the future husband and (2) the father "covering" his daughter and protecting her purity until handing her off to the husband. Visitors to the H2H website can find a heart-shaped locket with a key for Daddy to keep until the wedding day, at which point he gives the key to the groom, who inserts it in his wife's keyhole (wink, nudge) and opens her heart. As a nifty bonus, the locket is designed to hold a note written by the girl to her future husband, promising to love and serve him faithfully despite never having laid eyes on him at the time the note was written. At least there's a "masculine cross" option for boys, giving equal time to genitalia depictions now adopted as symbols of religious sexual purity. No similar note-writing provision is made for the boy's locket, however; while his future bride will be given the key to the cross, the boy isn't expected to literally commit himself on paper to a woman he won't meet for several years.

Pumpkinseed Press carries even more incongruous gender-specific jewelry to go with their complete purity ceremony in a box. For the girls, a heart-shaped ring with a keyhole in the middle. For dad, a key-shaped lapel pin for him "to wear until the wedding day in which he places it on the lapel of the groom, signifying transition of protection and authority." Also included is a pre-printed covenant for father and daughter to sign. And for the boys? They get a wristwatch. Printed with "I will wait for God's timing." No accompanying symbol of parental control, no totem to be transferred to his future wife, no covenant to sign. Just... a watch. And the implicit assumption that, having decided to remain chaste, the boy is perfectly capable of seeing after that himself. Or not; apparently it doesn't matter much given the lack of a public vow and corroborating paperwork.

In both cases, the fathers are given the power and control over the girl's sexuality; the Heart to Heart folks at least make a half-hearted stab at trusting the boy's key to both parents. While the protection aspect is certainly appopriate in thinking about young children--as well as, let's admit it, the emotionally unready portion of the teenage population--the model falls apart when extended to adults of marriageable age. In fact, the entire program and the movement behind it looks geared to a social system that moves children directly from school to marriage. Explicitly--the "masculine cross" aside--it is a system designed to move a girl directly from her father's home to her husband's, with no intervening alone time during which she may venture out into the world, be exposed to dangerous new ideas, and, even worse, risk sullying her purity, which would render her potential as a gift to her husband void.

How does this translate to a world in which a girl graduates high school, graduates from college, and gets a job for a few years before settling down with Mr. Right? She is no longer a girl. She is a woman, an independent adult. Unfortunately for her, she is also an adult whose parents still claim sole authority to her sexuality, a claim they are likely to expect to see reinforced by the girl-woman continuing to wear the locket that only Daddy can open. What happens when this putatively independent adult woman runs into situations she was unprepared for or is unable to control?

I wasn't able to find anything dealing with how these newbie women cope when they find themselves in a guilt-inducing but nonetheless consensual sexual relationship before marriage, but I did find two rape accounts that underscore the additional emotional burden the Purity mindset can bring to a sexual assault. One woman was raped by a short-term acquaintance she met at a campus church group in Texas, the other by a long-term friend in Illinois. Both are religious; both made statements about how much they valued their virginity and feared their parents' disapproval for having been compromised, although it is unclear whether either formally made a purity pledge. The Texan filed charges and went through the trial:

During opening statements Tuesday, defense attorney David Barron described a different scenario in which the woman was a willing participant who made up the rape claims in order to save her religious reputation... Meanwhile, Barron urged jurors to question the woman's credibility. He described her demeanor on the stand as "flippant" and said the presence of her father - a youth minister - in the courtroom motivated her to minimize her involvement that night...

The woman in Illinois did neither:

Maybe it was the embarrassment. "I wanted to tell my parents, I wanted to tell a lot of other people. But I knew that one of the things my mom and dad thought was really great about me was the fact that I was a virgin, and I was very ashamed that this happened to me."

The stories are admittedly anecdotal, and reliable documentation of the effects of chastity vows on rape reporting are scarce on the Web. In fact, documentation of all sexual assault regardless of individual victim attributes is uneven at best, given the lack of consensus on what percentage of rapes are reported and what percentage of those may be false claims (sources here and here). The second complicating factor is the relative youth of the abstinence movement; while religious and social conservatives have essentially always expected chastity from their daughters, that expectation has only recently become formalized in public displays through ritual and adornment with specific jewelry.

The anecdotes related here do demonstrate, however, two different potential unintended effects of the chastity program stemming from the same cause; the additional guilt and turmoil injected into an unwanted sexual encounted by heavy parental expectations and praise of virginity are argued, by different parties, to lead to either false reporting or no reporting at all. In each case, the male involved did not have his behavior constrained by similar expectations, even when he came from essentially the same religious demographic as the woman.

This is not an indictment of the purity program. My personal biases and family background make me highly skeptical that a promise made at ten years of age to remain sexually pure is anything but a naive fantasy that places unrealistic pressure on post-adolescent women who end up outside the protective barriers put in place by their families. In an age of plentiful and deadly STDs and ever-decreasing abortion (and, in some places, even contraception) availability, chastity is not an option to be snorted at. But it should be an option that is chosen based on the individual's informed conscience (yup, I broke from the Catholic Church long ago, but I've always found that phrasing very useful), irrespective of gender, rather than being coerced only from girls by symbolically giving their fathers the sole authority over their bodies.

Arizona Daily Star of Bethlehem

The Tucson Daily Star was purchased by Lee Enterprises some time ago, maybe a year, maybe a bit more, went through a couple of editors and format changes, and now appears to be seriously challenging the Phoenix paper for the coveted position as biggest religious trumpet in Arizona. Faced with so many choices for today's above-the-fold front page story, the editors bypassed the rising earthquake toll in Indonesia, the anti-American riots in Kabul, another 48+ dead in a Baghdad bombing, and the deaths and critical injuries suffered by a CBS news crew in a separate bombing for this story about a Christian teen abstinence dance group.

The real news was tucked away on page 2, conveniently flogged as "a second Page One" for national news, in the Star's quest to place local news more prominently. Yet again, a piece far more suited to the Accent section (if not the Sunday morning religion page) is popped into the hot spot, complete with links to more articles about faith.

Don't get me wrong. The fewer kids getting pregnant the better, and if taking an abstinence pledge contributes to that, great. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work that way, and the abstinence kids are at least as likely as the rest of us to engage in sexual activity before marriage; unlike the rest of us, they haven't--for the most part--been properly educated about the physiology of human reproduction, STD transmission, or barrier contraceptive methods. They're more likely to engage in oral or anal sex because they think only penis-vagina action is banned.

More disturbing is the fact that they're taking this act on the road in a huge way:

On July 14, BreakDown will travel to Kampala, Uganda, where it will connect with pastor and Pentecostal leader Alex Mitala with hopes of educating Ugandans about finding God and waiting until marriage to have sex.

Though they will not be promoting the use of condoms, group members hope their message, which is also anti-abortion, will help reduce the spread of the HIV virus that causes AIDS.

Phenomenal. I hope they include some mention of marital fidelity in their spiel, and perhaps also do something to disabuse men of the belief that sex with a virgin cures HIV, and maaaaaaybe clue the Ugandan women in on the fact that being married won't do shit to keep you healthy if your husband comes to the relationship already infected. I'm not holding my breath on that one, though.

The founder of the Tucson group is one Aimee Short.

Short's paying job is director of the Sexual Abstinence Values Education Program for Crisis Pregnancy Centers of Tucson, where her mother also works, and where Short said she practically grew up.

She practically grew up in a conservative Christian setting, so perhaps we should not be surprised that

Short, who was married briefly in her early 20s, also has re-pledged.

There seem to be plenty of those folks in this movement--they got their freak on as teenagers and young adults, but now get to "re-pledge" and become not just virgins again, but righteous virgins set on shaming other teenagers and young adults out of any sexual experience, set on reducing sex ed for these people to "don't." Maybe it's because the ringleaders of these movements know full well that they don't work, but will result in more pregnancies incurred by young women who have been taught that the only resolution to their shameful behavior is to have the babies and bring 'em up as succeeding generations of uninformed true believers who will beget prodigious numbers of their own uninformed progeny.

Anyway. Thank you, Daily Star, for the news that matters.

Promotion of Vice and Prevention of Virtue, Part Next

So, having written about the new parameters of the abstinence curriculum, I came across Digby's post on the Purity Ball--quite possibly the most unnerving manifestation of the movement I've yet seen. This event, recently held in South Dakota (courtesy of the Abstinence Clearinghouse), can pretty much be summed up as Ritualistic Surrender of My Sexuality to Daddy. Girls don prom dresses to be escorted by their fathers to a Dominionist's wet dream of a formal dance where dad and daughter pose for prom-style pictures under a heart-shaped arch of balloons.

The highlight is the exchange of vows part of the program where girls and fathers read pledges to each other. Here's the girl's part:

I pledge to remain sexually pure...until the day I give myself as a wedding gift to my husband. ... I know that God requires this of me.. that he loves me. and that he will reward me for my faithfulness.

And here's Dad's scripted reply:

I, (daughter’s name)’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.

(Let's review. This event is pushed by an organization that is deeply involved in providing sex ed abstinence curricula to schools. The highlight of the event has both parties involved invoking God. Please, if anyone tries to argue to you that abstinence is based on sound science and pursued in service of public health rather than proselytizing, please please please knock them upside the head. But I digress.)

With this creepy little ritual, the girl surrenders her sexuality to the protection and control of, first, her father, and second, to her future husband. She frames herself as an object to be given as a "gift" to a presumably unknown man in the future, a gift that will only be of worth if she has eschewed all sexual activity (apparently at any level of stimulation; see my previous post) beforehand. The father's place as not only the temporal head of the household, and not just the spiritual head, but the freakin' "high priest," is cemented. Trip-trap over to the Clearinghouse's website and look at the pictures. Many of the girls making these vows to father and God look to be barely out of the single digits, with likely only the faintest glimmer of recognition of what the script they're reading is really talking about.

The people who poo-poo the notion that abortion restrictions and abstinence movements are, at their cores, solely about controlling women's sexuality need to take a very close look at the laws and bizarre rituals growing out of those movements and try to come up with compelling arguments supporting their positions. They need to explain why there are no parallel rituals prescribing male purity prior to marriage, why females are being targeted not only as the commodity to be protected from sexual sullying but also, contradictorily, the very source of sexual pollution if left uncontrolled and unchecked by paternal intervention (thus the mindset manifested in the MO legislature's refusal to fund birth control for low-income women, on the grounds that it would lead to promiscuity).

What does the Purity Ball imply about the mother's role in her daughter's growth and development? How, exactly, is the father to "cover" his daughter in authority when it comes to matters of sex? If a purity pledge girl does engage in pre-marital sexual stimulation, what punishments befall her due to her violation of this added layer of accountability, not simply the God of Leviticus and St. Paul but now Daddy the High Priest as well?

Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, Part 937

Some tidbits I wish were random and unconnected, but which unfortunately line up neatly...

From the Feds, a clarified abstinence-only policy defining abstinence as eschewing not just fucking but "any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons" outside of marriage, which , of course, is explicitly defined as involving one man and one woman. No further explanation of "sexual stimulation" is offered, leaving some pretty hazy areas for neophyte pledgees to navigate. Does sexual stimulation include kissing? Phone sex? Smoky hot eye contact that twinges you so deeply you're happy to drop a fifty on the table, leaving the waiter a 200% tip, if it means you can get your date out to the car quickly so you don't have an orgasm right there in the restaurant? Or maybe the people who wrote this claptrap have never experienced anything like that, or--even more sadly--maybe they really think the capacity for sexual stimulation exists only in that narrow zone between the legs.

Left all but unsaid are the implications for gay kids. No sexual stimulation of any kind involving another person until you're married. Marriage is limited to opposite-sex pairs. Well, at least the official prohibition against masturbation hasn't come down yet, so, until then, here's your bottle of baby oil and a wad of kleenex, kid. Go nuts. Draw a smiley face on it and maybe you'll have a shot at a meaningful relationship one of these days.

Next up, a bill introduced by the Ohio legislature that not only would make it a felony for a woman to have an abortion, but also makes it a felony for her to travel to a different state for an abortion, or to transport or otherwise aid a woman in leaving the state to terminate a pregnancy. Never mind, for the moment, that this law (should it be ratified) doesn't have a chance in hell of passing Constitutional muster (niggling little details like the interstate commerce clause should eat it alive).

Just think about it for a second, and try to come up with a response other than what the fuck? What's the real purpose of this grandstanding? Is it some grotesque loyalty oath writ large for Ohio Republicans? What end can possibly justify these means that make the legislators look like ignorant rubes trying to out-idiot the legislatures in South Dakota, Mississippi, and Missouri? Why write a law with such shoddy (shoddiness barely escaping nonexistance) legal underpinnings? No state can hold its citizens accountable for state laws outside the borders of that state. It's pretty simple. It's why you can buy fireworks in Missouri and not be arrested for it when you get home in Illinois; it's why California highway patrolmen don't cruise I-10 east of Yuma nailing cars with CA tags that are abiding by Arizona's 5-mph-higher speed limit. Did these guys enter some secret contest giving a prize to the legislature that can write the most outrageously restrictive abortion legislation with nobody noticing? Sorry, fellas--we're noticing.

Remind me, again, why we're fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan (quick, somebody nudge W awake and remind him of his original war while we still have guys left to fight it). Remind me how the administration framed that one--not just to destroy the infrastructure that supported and fostered Al Qaeda, but to liberate the women of Afghanistan. Remember all that "W is for Women" crap? The Taliban have to be laughing their asses off right now. The adminstration is inspiring cultural change far more insidious and radical than the scruffy bearded guys over there in the caves ever could have dreamed of on their own.