By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
August 9, 2000
On August 1st, during the Republican Convention, David Broder, who has been called "the high priest of political journalism" accused the Republicans of having "this hang-up about sex. Every time it tries to act like a modern, 21st century institution it stumbles over its Victorian morality and ends up looking absurd" by wanting to "turn back the clock on sex education." Broder’s target for contempt was the draft platform which states "We renew our call for replacing ‘family planning’ programs for teens by increasing funding for abstinence education." According to Broder, George W. Bush’s position on the subject was not eliminating family planning programs "but would increase abstinence funding" and "voted 50-39 to keep the youngsters of America from learning ways of protecting their health and avoiding unwanted pregnancies if they become sexually active."
This, Broder said, reflects George W. Bush’s position. "On an early campaign swing in South Carolina, I watched Bush visit - and praise - an abstinence-only program in a Greenville high school. He told a news conference there that he agreed with the abstinence only curriculum, which derided the safety and effectiveness of contraception, because teaching abstinence and ‘safe sex’ at the same time ‘sends a contradictory message.’
"So here is the first Republican ‘baby boomer’ presidential candidate running on a platform that treats sex as a forbidden subject."
Makes me wonder where Broder has been sleeping for the past ten years. Its not Victorian scruples that is fueling the "abstinence" movement. It’s AIDS. After millions of condoms have been distributed to the youth of the world, in the guise of "safe sex" we wound up not only with rampant increases in unwanted pregnancies and but also with a pandemic that is killing millions of people. Condoms are not reliable in preventing either pregnancy or, AIDS, even in America. This summer, one of my young friends, who adhered, for religious reasons, to an "abstinence" stance throughout her teen-years, married at the age of 23. However, her generation was bombarded with the idea that condoms provided sex that would be pregnancy free and disease free. Hoping to postpone pregnancy until they were more financially settled, they used condoms. She was pregnant after about six weeks of marriage.
It has only been since the younger generation has begun to reject their baby-boomer parents nonsense about "free-sex" and "safe-sex with condoms" that the number of babies born to teen-aged unwed mothers has sharply declined. This is so dramatic that even SIECUS (The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S.), has adopted its language. In its section on "Teen-agers" it lists three "Sexual Choices: - Abstinence, Masturbation and Sexual Involvement" this major "free-sex" condom pushing advocate of the 1960s now lists Abstinence as choice number one:
"Abstinence from sexual relations has benefits for teenagers. It is the best way to prevent pregnancy and to prevent becoming infected with HIV and other STDs."
And, in spite of the 1960s throwbacks like David Broder in our midst, abstinence is working. Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that "Teen-agers are having babies at the lowest rate in at least 60 years, and everyone is taking credit - from religious groups that push abstinence to advocates for contraceptives and sex education in schools."
Although Center for Disease Control statistics do show a sharp drop in the last few years since Abstinence became an approved option for youth, I seriously doubt that those figures. What I did find in my research was a statement from the Center which says:
"Retrospective analyses using the 1982 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) suggest that this increase (in adolescent sexual behaviors) began in the late 1960s. In the 1980s, national surveys documented increases in rates of initiation of sexual intercourse for both adolescent females and males, gains in condom use and decreases in oral contraceptive use. Data from three national surveys suggest that during the late 1980s and the 1990s, the historic increase in sexual experience reversed among adolescent men and either stopped or reversed among adolescent women."
According to the Center for Disease Control, in 1960 the illegitimate birth rate was 11 per 1,000 unmarried 15-17 year old girls and 25 per 1,000 unmarried 18-19 year olds. The total was 36 births per 1,000 teen-agers in 1960. In 1995, the ratios were 28 per 1,000 unmarried 15-17 year-olds and 65 per 1,000 in 1995. In 1995 there were 93 births per 1,000 unmarried teen-age girls aged 15-19. The rates of illegitimate births among unmarried teen-agers has dropped sharply from the highs reached in 1991, however when it exceeded 30 births per 1,000 for 15-17 year olds and 71 per 1,000 births for 18-19 year olds. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 1940 only 2.5% of all births were out-of-wedlock. By 1997 a whopping 30% of all births were out of wedlock.
David Broder is still spouting the same free-sex jargon of the 1960s which was part of the "Women’s Liberation" movement. Sex without responsibility was, and for many still is, the cornerstone of the "Women’s Liberation" movement. During the 1960s much of the philosophy of feminism was a frontal attack on the institution of the family. For example, in "The Women’s Rights Movement in the U.S.: A new View (By Shulamith Firestone) a group of feminists talked about sex, love, marriage. (see: http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/notes/#newview), a timid feminist was told when she asked:
"At the risk of sounding naive...I've been listening to this for an hour and no one has mentioned love." (Ferocious laughter)
"Love?"
"God, if I waited to fall in LOVE I'd be climbing the walls"'
"Yeah, forget love. If you even just like him...''
"Forget like. I'd be happy if I could only respect the guy a little bit.
"Respect -- forget it. If you can even talk to him at all, you're lucky."
And thus, in the name of "women’s liberation" was born the notion, which Broder appears to still believe, that sexual abstinence prior to marriage is an unequal, male-supremacist system of oppression. The Church and the Family were, according to the feminists, along with Capitalism, the Law and government, merely institutions of oppression of women:
"Judaeo-Christianity has always espoused the inferiority of women, pointing to Genesis for proof of women's temptress nature, her special role, her mission to be fruitful and multiply and after Eden, to multiply in pain and submission to man. The family unit based on women's responsibility for childrearing, on male supremacy and thus her submission to male authority and the sexual double standard, was severely threatened at its core by any talk of change. After all, who could know at that time that the movement could be stopped with only partial or surrogate freedoms? They saw clearly, that to follow through on Women's rights would mean abolition of the traditional family structure, which certainly gave these men quite a few advantages."
(Eleanor Flexner, in Century of Struggle (Atheneum, Harvard U. Press)
What is encouraging is that teen-agers today are beginning to reject the absurdities of their parents 1960s sexual notions and are beginning to once again re-discover a wonderful institution of their grandparents - romance. Nothing disturbs me more than watching young people interact without any feelings of romance. What the sex education programs have done is teach mechanical sex - whenever or wherever the urge arises. I’ve had conversations with young people about the sad absence of romance in their lives, - their music, their videos and their personal relationships with the opposite sex.
A side effect of the abstinence movement, which the Republicans support in their platform is the restoration of romance, responsibility and respect between the sexes among the teen-agers - something many of them have never actually seen in their baby-boomer, fast divorcing, free-sex parents.
I say three cheers for George W. Bush’s support of abstinence and its side effects -romance, responsibility and respect.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
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