I recommend the book, The War on Intimacy. The subtitle tells the story, “How Comprehensive Sex Ed Sabotages Committed Relationships and Our Nation’s Health.” I met the author, Richard Panzer, Ph.D. at a meeting of the Abstinence Clearing House last year. He pressed this book into my hands, and I read it on the plane. He and coauthor Mary Anne Mosack have compiled a wealth of information, from academic studies on the psychological impact of early teen sexual activity, the spread of STD’s and much more. They have a wealth of information about how you can be involved on their site. They also have some You-Tube clips. Check it out.
Regular Ruth Readers know that I have been supportive of the students of the Princeton University Anscombe Society, and their efforts to obtain a center to support abstinence and chastity on campus. Their efforts have been smacked down by the University adminstration, for a variety of extremely lame reasons. But now, the Christian Union, housed at Princeton, reports that the University’s refusal to support the students who value sexual integrity is nothing short of hypocrisy. They claim that they want to remain neutral and not impose or even propose values to students, so they couldn’t possibly support an abstinence center on campus, to go along with the Women’s Center and the LGBT Center. But now, the mask is off entirely: the University supported events that quite obviously promote non-abstinence, non-monogamy. I can’t make this up. Read more…
Maggie Gallagher did her syndicated column on the new abstinence studies. (Regular Ruth readers already know something about this controversy. See our posts here, here, and here and our podcasts here .)
The release of this new study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine this week is weirdly timely. …It’s just the gold standard for intervention research, a bright and shining pinnacle of research design that social science seldom ever reaches: Read more…
Way to go, PM! Way to voice your opinion even when it’s so horribly unpopular. . . and when you’re right.
Carolyn Moynihan
Horrors! The next prime minister of Australia might be a man who advocates virginity for young people.
Here is this week’s shock-horror story from Australia: the country’s next prime minister might be a man who advises his daughters not to throw their virginity away on just anyone. Fair go, that’s what he dared to say during an interview with a women’s magazine. You probably heard the resulting outcry in America, above the President’s State of the Union address, above the iPad hysteria: ‘What a chauvinist! What a pontificator! What a hypocrite!’ — to recite only the more flattering epithets. Read more…
My money is on the horrible movies and tv shows geered toward teens. Just a preview for an American Pie movie was enough to make me want to retch.
Charlie Butts – OneNewsNow -
Teen pregnancies were up three percent in 2006, which is the latest reporting period available. Proponents of comprehensive sex education are blaming abstinence programs for the increase. Read more…
I wonder why we haven’t heard anything about this study from the University of Pennsylvania Med School? Sixth and seventh grade African American students were randomly sorted into a control group, an abstinence only class, a safer-sex class and a combined abstinence plus safer sex class.
an abstinence-only intervention for pre-teens was more successful in delaying the onset of sexual activity than a health-promotion control intervention. After two years, one-third of the abstinence-only group reported having sex, compared to one-half of the control group. Read more…
Oprah was dumbfounded by Bristol Palin’s abstinence pledge. I analyze both women in this new podcast. You and I know that if Bristol had said, “I want to be president of the US,” Oprah would not have said, “Aren’t you setting yourself up for failure?” But that is exactly what she said when Bristol voiced her determination to abstain from sex until she gets married.