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Creep of the Week: North Carolina Family Policy Council

The gig is up when it comes to the war against comprehensive sex-education. Not only does abstinence-only education ignore the existence of LGBT people, it doesn't work despite the billions of taxpayer dollars funneled into it under the Bush administration.
In 2004 Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) investigated federally funded abstinence programs and found them full of "false, misleading, or distorted information."
"I have no objection talking about abstinence as a surefire way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases," Waxman told the Washington Post. "I don't think we ought to lie to our children about science."
But lying to children about science is the only way to guarantee they won't turn into homos and harlots. After all, no single woman or gay man has ever given a blowjob (decent married people don't do that kind of thing) without first getting step-by-step instruction in a public school classroom. Just like many American teens can't locate Greenland on a map, they also wouldn't be able to locate these naughty bits unless some godless liberal public school teacher taught them where to look. Right?
Not so much.
A study by the U.S. Congress released April 2007 found that youth who get abstinence-only education have just as much sex as those who don't.
"After 10 years and $1.5 billion in public funds these failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs will go down as an ideological boondoggle of historic proportions," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth. "The tragedy is not simply the waste of taxpayer dollars, it is the damage done to the young people who have been on the receiving end of distorted, inaccurate information about condoms and birth control. We have been promoting ignorance in the era of AIDS, and that's not just bad public health policy, its bad ethics."
Tell that to the North Carolina Family Policy Council folks who are creaming their jeans over the abandonment of a bill that called for comprehensive sex education in the state's schools. Rep. Susan Fisher (D-Buncombe) announced she was dropping the bill rather than try to repackage it with another piece of legislation.
"I've taken enough abuse," she told the Asheville Citizen-Times July 1. "I want to be up front with it. I don't want to go the back way. I want to be open about the need for comprehensive sexual education."
Currently North Carolina state law requires public schools to teach "that abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage is the expected standard for all school age children" and "a mutually faithful monogamous heterosexual relationship in the context of marriage is the best lifelong means of avoiding sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS."
Fisher's "radical" proposal would have required schools "to use abstinence as a base but also teach about other means of preventing pregnancy and disease," according to the Citizen-Times.
According to NCFPC, comprehensive sex-ed "advocates condom and contraceptive use and often instructs children on a myriad of sexual activities."
NCFPC attorney Tami Fitzgerald said, "I don't doubt Representative Fisher's sincerity, but our research indicates that abstinence education is working in North Carolina…"
And my research indicates that pigs can fly. How long they stay in the air, however, depends on how tall the building you throw them off of is.

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Topics: Opinions
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