A Looking into the Mind of a Proponent of Abstinence-Only Sex Education

Turns out, it's pretty empty. Recently, Governor Rick Perry (R-Texas), who is currently running for President of the United States, was asked by one of his constituents why Texas continues abstinence-only sex education when it clearly isn't effective at preventing unintended pregnancies or STIs. To say that Perry stumbled is, well, an understatement. The transcript:

Moderator: Why does Texas continue with abstinence education programs, when they don’t seem to be working? In fact, I think we [in Texas] have the third-highest teen-pregnancy rate in the country right now.
Perry:  Abstinence works. (audience laughs)
Moderator: But we have the third-highest teen teen-pregnancy rate among all states in the country. The questioner’s point is, it doesn’t seem to be working.
Perry: It — it works.

As of January 2010, Texas actually has fourth-highest unintended pregnancy rate, the second-highest teen pregnancy numbers, and the highest teenage birthrates at 62 per 1,000 live births (the moderator incorrectly reported Texas as having the third-highest teen pregnancy rate). If results like these are Governor Perry's idea of something that's working, I'm terribly afraid to see what his idea of something that's not working is! (Perry must grade on a curve.)

So, the empirical, peer-reviewed fact is that abstinence-only sex education is not working in Texas (or anywhere else, for that matter, but that's for another post). How, then, does Perry justify these facts with his goal of maintaining abstinence-only sex education? He doesn't:

Perry: Maybe it's the way it's being taught? Or maybe it's the way it's being applied out there? But the fact of the matter is, it is the best form of, to teach our children.

 Ok, so Perry is convinced that the "best form" of sex education is abstinence-only education, but, still addressing the first question from the moderatore, why?! This is where things get weird:

Perry: I'm sorry, I'm just going to tell you from my own personal life, abstinence works.

What? So, essentially, Governor Perry asserts that abstinence-only sex education works for everyone in Texas because it worked for him. Unfortunately, Perry seems to be totally unaware that his experience is not a universal one, as not everyone in Texas is a white, 61-year-old Evangelical with enough spare cash and political connections to fund a presidential campaign. Thus, Perry's position on abstinence-only sex education is ultimately a celebrity testimonial no greater than Brooke Shields for Latisse, Drew Barrymore for Covergirl, or Mike Rowe for every product that even hints they could use his endorsement.

 Steve Benen from the Washington Monthly makes a very thoughtful assessment of this situation: "The problem here isn’t just that Perry has the wrong answer. The more meaningful problem is that Perry doesn’t seem to know how to even formulate an answer. He starts with a proposition in his mind (abstinence-only education is effective), and when confronted with evidence that the proposition appears false (high teen-pregnancy rates), the governor simply hangs onto his belief, untroubled by evidence." Paul Waldman builds on this argument when he notes that Perry's position is "95 percent moral and 5 percent practical," meaning that Perry "doesn't have a practical argument [for maintaining abstinence-only sex education] because he's probably never thought about it in those terms, and doesn't much care."

It's this last part about proponents of AOSE - that they don't care about the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only education because pushing their morality unto others is more important than preventing some of the dire consequences of unintended pregnancy or STI transmission - that worries me. Abstinence-only sex education, at its core, is theoretically education, the process of making people more capable of interpreting and managing the world around them through the sharing of knowledge. AOSE's goal, then, should be simple: to educate. However, because abstinence-only education specifically seeks to hide knowledge by not talking about the potentially-threatened things young people might face, it is not, in fact, education at all; it's propaganda.

Yes, I am making the claim that "abstinence-only sex education" is a misnomer, and at worst, a scam. In a schema in which real-world results (like infection with HIV) are unimportant to those who create curricula, the very purpose behind education is lost. Furthermore, people who would throw children to lions that they never saw coming are either so unaware themselves that they are reckless or so apathetic that they are cruel. And I surely don't want someone like that educating my peers or running my country.