{"id":2754,"date":"2008-12-29T16:06:56","date_gmt":"2008-12-29T21:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=2754"},"modified":"2008-12-29T16:16:19","modified_gmt":"2008-12-29T21:16:19","slug":"those-stupid-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2008\/12\/29\/those-stupid-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"those stupid programs…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Patient Teenagers?
A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers<\/strong><\/a>
Janet Elise Rosenbaum, PhD, AM <\/div>\n

Health Policy PhD Program, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland<\/p>\n

OBJECTIVE<\/strong><\/u>. The US government spends more than $200 million annually on abstinence-promotion programs, including virginity pledges. This study compares the sexual activity of adolescent virginity pledgers with matched nonpledgers by using more robust methods than past research…<\/p>\n

RESULTS<\/strong><\/u>. Five years after the pledge, 82% of pledgers denied having ever pledged. Pledgers and matched nonpledgers did not differ in premarital sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and anal and oral sex variables. Pledgers had 0.1 fewer past-year partners but did not differ in lifetime sexual partners and age of first sex. Fewer pledgers than matched nonpledgers used birth control and condoms in the past year and birth control at last sex.<\/p>\n

CONCLUSIONS<\/strong><\/u>. The sexual behavior of virginity pledgers does not differ from that of closely matched nonpledgers, and pledgers are less likely to protect themselves from pregnancy and disease before marriage. Virginity pledges may not affect sexual behavior but may decrease the likelihood of taking precautions during sex. Clinicians should provide birth control information to all adolescents, especially virginity pledgers…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Like we need Johns Hopkins<\/strong><\/font> and Harvard<\/strong><\/font> to tell us that spending $200,000,000 a year on abstinence promotion as sex-education is a waste of money. The Catholic Church has been at it for 2000 years with similar results. Abstinence promotion is about as effective as Reagan’s anti-drug program – "Just say No."<\/div>\n

But I didn’t post this article just for the opportunity to make a sarcastic comment. This kind of insanity is what we’ve lived with for eight plus years. The point of sex-education programs should be three-fold. First, to protect young girls from becoming reluctantly pregnant and having to either get an abortion or prematurely become mothers. Neither option is good for young girls. Second, unprotected sex carries the possibility of transmitting diseases, some of which are fatal. Finally, all of our biggest problems – energy depletion, global warming, hunger, etc. – are caused by over-population. It is rational to suppose that having only "wanted" children will help with our desperate need for population control. <\/p>\n

Sex education programs are not about morality. They are about mental health<\/strong><\/font>, physical health<\/strong><\/font>, and planetary health<\/strong><\/font>. I don’t know much about God, but I know God isn’t crazy and wouldn’t want us doing silly things, particularly in His or Her name. It’s a shame we had to call on these two prestigious Universities to tell us something that we already knew from the history of mankind. Those goofy programs are just something Bush did to pull the wool over the Religious Right’s eyes anyway… <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers Janet Elise Rosenbaum, PhD, AM Health Policy PhD Program, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland OBJECTIVE. The US government spends more than $200 million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}