{"id":6217,"date":"2010-01-22T14:19:53","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T14:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/abstinence-makes-your-parts-grow-fondler-bad-astronomy\/"},"modified":"2010-01-22T14:19:53","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T14:19:53","slug":"abstinence-makes-your-parts-grow-fondler-bad-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/abstinence-makes-your-parts-grow-fondler-bad-astronomy.php","title":{"rendered":"Abstinence makes your parts grow fondler | Bad Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a parent, I spend a lot of time worrying about my daughter. That&rsquo;s part of the job description. But what they don&rsquo;t tell you is exactly how to figure out <em>what<\/em> to worry about. <\/p><p>I suspect that in Fluvanna County, Virginia, that&rsquo;s a problem too. It&rsquo;s there, you see, that a bunch of parents are upset about an abstinence-only sex education class. Now, I&rsquo;d certainly be upset if they offered such nonsense in my daughter&rsquo;s school, since <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2007\/11\/19\/just-say-no-to-just-say-no\/\">it has been shown repeatedly<\/a> that sexual education based on abstinence only doesn&rsquo;t work at all.<\/p><p>But that&rsquo;s not what has Fluvanna County parents unhappy. Instead, it&rsquo;s that <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newsplex.com\/home\/headlines\/81576132.html%20target=\">students in the class were asked to fill out a survey without first notifying the parents<\/a>. That&rsquo;s against the school district rules, not surprisingly. And, to be fair, I&rsquo;d want to be notified as well so I could look at the survey. <\/p><p>But really, that&rsquo;s a minor, minor point compared to the fact that their children are not only <strong>not<\/strong> getting a real sexual education, but by taking an abstinence-only class <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2008\/12\/29\/whut-teenagers-like-s-e-x-zomg\/\">they will be more open to STDs and teen pregnancies<\/a>. <\/p><p>The program in question is called Worth Your Wait. I looked over their website, and will readily admit that <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.worthyourwait.org\/educators-public-school-curriculum.html\">a lot of the advice they give<\/a> is fine: self-control is important, it&rsquo;s best to wait until you&rsquo;re ready, and so on. But that hardly matters, since the very basis of what they&rsquo;re saying is known not to work. It&rsquo;s like having a website saying drinking a glass a water a day will cure AIDS, and it&rsquo;ll also hydrate you. Sure, the latter is true, but the overall message is bunk.<\/p><p>It&rsquo;s too bad, because it&rsquo;s an enticing idea: teach your kids to not have sex, and like magic, they won&rsquo;t! But it&rsquo;s a crock. It&rsquo;s worse than that, really, because study after study show this very clearly: kids still get pregnant, kids still get STDs, and in fact with abstinence-only education they tend <em>not<\/em> to get educated on how to practice safe sex, <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/americanaffairs.suite101.com\/article.cfm\/high_std_rates_abstinence_ed_link\">so pregnancies and incidents of STDs actually go up for AO educated children<\/a>.<\/p><p>But why let research and reality get in the way of dogma?<\/p><p><em><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/NoisyAstronomer\/status\/7927288034\">Tip o&rsquo; the chastity belt to Nicole Gluggerflurnaven<\/a><\/em>.<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/qFcl7Nw_5C2X7tWeo3dQrgyLx2U\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/bc42c_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/qFcl7Nw_5C2X7tWeo3dQrgyLx2U\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/bc42c_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/bc42c_JXNP3gM7zzo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/91b1e_dgKxh28UoLo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a parent, I spend a lot of time worrying about my daughter. That&rsquo;s part of the job description. But what they don&rsquo;t tell you is exactly how to figure out what to worry about. I suspect that in Fluvanna &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/abstinence-makes-your-parts-grow-fondler-bad-astronomy.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}