West Wing gets it right (as in correct)

While watching an old episode of The West Wing the other day (I plan on doing this and pretending it's real until we have an administration that doesn't give me nightmares), I saw the president lecture a Dr. Laura-like radio host who points out that the Bible says homosexuality is "an abomination." He reminds her that the Bible also says that death is the appropriate punishment for working on the sabbath, touching the skin of a dead pig and wearing clothes made with two different kinds of thread. Of course, the character in the show had no response to this. As a matter of fact, I've never heard anyone on the right, real or fictional, explain this.

I'm also still waiting for someone to explain to me how my marriage is damaged when gay people get married.

More dumb abstinence stuff

The administration also has budgeted another $241.5 million for abstinence-only programs in 2007. Kirby compared California and Texas, two states he said were similarly populous and were home to many Hispanics, a group whose teen pregnancy rates are high.

"California took a very progressive approach," he said. "Texas pushed abstinence and made it a little more difficult for teens to receive contraceptives. Pregnancy did go down between 1991 and 2004, but Texas had the second-lowest decline of all states, 19 percent. California had the second-greatest decrease, 46 percent.

"What's really sad is that Bush is trying to take some of the policies that didn't work in Texas and implement them nationwide."

...

Claire Brindis, a professor of pediatrics and health policy at UCSF ... believes comprehensive sex education should be required, rather than merely permitted, by the state.

"Because there are so many myths out there," Brindis said, and teens grow up in a culture dense with sexualized mass media.

"One myth I've heard is that a person can't get pregnant the first time, and by the way, 20 percent of teens do. I've heard that if your boyfriend drinks Mountain Dew you won't get pregnant, or if you have sex standing up. Or if you sit on a cold sidewalk after you have sex -- I heard that in Southern California.

"I see in my work how early childbearing is both a result of poverty and how it contributes to an endless cycle of poverty. There's a lot of people who believe knowledge is dangerous, that if you give kids more information about condoms they'll go out and have sex.

"But isn't it better," Brindis asked, "to give young people and our large immigrant population the tools to plan? I can't think of anything more moral."

Shocking.

Most Americans have had premarital sex.

Even more shocking is the fact that someone from the Bush administration spoke conflicting statements!

This from today's article:

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ... insisted there was no federal mission against premarital sex among adults.

"Absolutely not," Horn said. "The Bush administration does not believe the government should be regulating or stigmatizing the behavior of adults."

Then there's this, from a couple months ago:

"The message is 'It's better to wait until you're married to bear or father children,' " Horn said. "The only 100% effective way of getting there is abstinence."

The revised guidelines specify that states seeking grants are "to identify groups ... most likely to bear children out-of-wedlock, targeting adolescents and/or adults within the 12- through 29-year-old age range." Previous guidelines didn't mention targeting of an age group.

No sex for anyone

This is, um, interesting.