The House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing "Assessing the Evidence of Domestic Abstinence-Only [Sex Education] Programs," at which various public health experts opined that scientific studies don't show any benefit to such abstinence programs. (See here for the witness statements.) Rep. Duncan (R-Tenn.) responded, among other things, that polls show that parents support abstinence-only education, and that
The Zogby poll that's been mentioned showed by a more than 2-1 margin that parents ... prefer the abstinence approach, and it seems rather elitist to me for people who maybe have degrees in this field to feel that they, because they've studied it, somehow know better than the parents what is best for ... I still think parents know best what is best for their children.
(See this video, starting at around 72:00.)
People thinking that because they've studied a subject — based, they claim, on attempts to actually measure the effectiveness of particular educational programs — they know better than those who just have intuition, casual observation, and anecdote? How elitist! Next thing you know, doctors will think that because they've studied the effectiveness of various treatments for childhood illnesses, they know better than the parents what is best for treating those illnesses. I mean, why not just rely on parents' intuitions about what medical approaches (or educational programs) work? After all, they are parents who love their children, and you don't need a fancy-pants M.D. to do that. How could parents' intuitions about what will actually work in keeping children safe possibly be wrong?
Look, if you want to challenge the reliability of various studies, by all means please do that. Many such studies are indeed junk science; and education is an area where good studies are notoriously hard to conduct. For all I know, maybe the studies that the witnesses are referring to are unsound. Likewise, if you want to make an argument based on pure morality or democratic theory about what should be done and shouldn't, that's fine, if you make clear that you're focused on what's moral or democratic, rather than on what actually helps children.
But if you're going to talk about what's actually "best for ... children" — which is to say what's actually effective in preventing harmful behavior — then don't claim that parents have some sort of innate insight into a process that they've never systematically studied, and as to which they have at best a couple of observations (and far from perfect ones, since they may not know that much about their children's sex lives). It's not that parents are less inherently "elite" than public health Ph.D.s. It's just that, on the question of what sorts of educational programs work in this area, only people who have indeed studied the subject in a systematic way are likely to have a trustworthy opinion on what will actually work.
Thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer.
UPDATE: I should mention something that I had thought was implicit, but that on reflection I should make explicit: Even if parents may know better what programs work for their particular children, given their knowledge of their children (which isn't necessarily so) — or even if parents have some a moral or political theory entitlement to opt out of certain such programs (which may well be so) — the question is what education programs the government should fund for children at large. Even if ten years from now my special knowledge of my boys' personalities and behavior will give me a better sense of what sex education will work for them (I hope it will, but I'm not sure), it won't give me a particularly good sense of what sex education will work for children generally.
The first part of the statement makes sense: if parents prefer abstinence-only education, feeling that it is not the place of public schools to educate their children about contraception and the Kama Sutra, then there is a very, very valid policy reason to encourage abstinence-only education. Nevertheless, such a statement is questionably relevant, at best, during a discussion of the statistics regarding the efficacy of abstinence-only education. It would be more relevant after the hearings were concluded, when the findings would be used to develop policy.
Throw in the second half of the statement, and it's just a debacle.
Paradoxically, the Zogby Poll is, itself, a totally elitist, systematic measurement by people who have studied that field [here, polling]. So around and around we go. ;)
This question was not testing their knowledge of what a recession is, just if they think we're in one. It seems opinion polls are more important than empirical studies, regardless of the issue.
It was only a few years ago that dimwits like Duncan plagued the Democratic Party, so don't call them conservatives.
"Elitist" still doesn't seem the right word; and of course, this doesn't mean the expert testimony is irrelevant, or that the parents' opinions have much weight on the question of "does abstinence-ed make kids less likely to have sex and get STDs", but we should remember that by posing that question and giving it weight, we're already making a decision.
(NB: this comment is motivated by about 40% pointless contrarianism, and 59% desire to procrastinate).
(For one thing, you could quite rationally assume that your children are not average, on the basis of the parenting you've been doing since they were one day old. That parenting, incidentally, is exactly what you don't want undermined by the well-meaning curricula which might prevent gun deaths among the larger group of children who got no parenting at all on the subject.)
What Rep. Duncan said was "elitist" was trusting academic experts to know better than parents "what is best for their children". That's precisely the kind of subjective moral question that even you concede is not exclusively the province of academic experts. The specific effects that those experts measured are only one component of that question, and if parents believe strongly that abstinence education is better overall for their children than the alternatives--certain specific result measurements notwithstanding--then that belief deserves more respect than your mockery displays.
(And in case you weren't aware, Nunzio, whether citizens believe they're in a recession is part of a measure otherwise known as "consumer confidence"--a vital economic indicator. The question is thus perfectly reasonable for a poll.)
Is it necessarily irrational for an ordinary person with no statisical training to distrust a study, or even a collection of studies, that contradicts one's own intuition and experience (especially when this program has been in effect for a short amount of time)? If one distrusts the source and is skeptical of its conclusions they should nevertheless trust the experts and do what they feel is wrong?
Would Professor Volokh treat his children contrary to his intuition and experience because some egghead said the data suggested otherwise? I think this is a difficult question for the professor because he's able to personally evaluate the data and come to his own conclusions--good or bad data, good or bad interpretation of data. Imagine if you were not, Professor. Is there no situation where you would trust your own intuition and experience over the experts?
Wouldn't you say "it matters more to teach kids the truth, and teaching kids a blatant falsehood merely because teaching it causes the kids to behave better really isn't a good idea"?
In which case, it may not have been a case of a Representative arguing that “anecdotes trump statistics” but rather chastising a witness who went beyond giving facts and instead strayed into giving their own normative opinion about whether trying to reinforce the belief that sex should be saved for marriage had any “value” or was “harmful.” It may not have been what they intended but I could see how someone who feels strongly about it might feel compelled to challenge them on it.
The only way in which teaching effective techniques for avoiding STDs for those who choose to have sex could contradict the parents' values is if the parents want their children to die of a horrible disease if they engage in premarital sex. If those are the parents' values, they deserve no respect.
Does one need to "urge" kids to have sex in order to implicitly encourage them to do so? Does one need to urge sexual activity in order to set a normative standard for it during the high school years? Does one need to "urge children to have sex" in order to undermine their confidence in their decision to abstain?
Can you really say that, because someone isn't saying, "Go out and have sex!" (like Ms. Landolphi did, which kind of kills the theory that non-abstinence education doesn't urge children to have sex), that the non-abstinence message does not have an effect on teenage sexual decision-making?
FYI: The Heritage Foundation found that teens who abstain until at least age 18 are more likely to graduate from high school, more likely to go to college, and more likely to graduate from college once matriculated. (Study is here.)
You're not debating "Guns Are Bad." You're debating which is the best way to teach people that guns are bad. I don't concede your idea of what's best; you see no need or reason to recognize any other possibility, because, well, you've decided. I fear that kind of outlook when I see it in government.
Sex is one area where this has been seen many times.
Alfred Kinsey was hailed as an expert whose whose conclusions were based on systematic objective research. It was only much later that it was revealed that Kinsey was a bisexual masochist who pressured his staff into group sex, and padded his sample populations with convicts and known pedophiles.
Margaret Mead was hailed as an expert whose investigation of Samoan culture revealed the joys of a sexually free society. Only later was it revealed that Mead was sexually involved with several other anthropologists, and that her Samoan informants had played an elaborate practical joke on her.
John Money of Johns Hopkins was hailed as an expert whose ground-breaking research showed that gender identity was socially constructed and highly plastic. With the authority of his credentials he induced the Reimer family of Winnipeg to impose a sex change on a baby boy with damaged genitals - a program which nearly drove the poor kid insane and wrecked the family.
Educational experts determined that "look-say" methods of teaching reading are better than "phonetic" methods, and spread the latter throughout American schools. They continue to advocate "look-say" over phonics even though systematic objective research has consistently shown phonics works better.
Experts have for several decades loudly proclaimed that fat in the diet is a terrible danger and should be replaced by carbohydrates. Now it has been shown that carb-heavy diets lead to obesity and diabetes.
The Kinsey and Mead cases are perhaps the most disturbing. In both cases a scientist was hailed for findings that appeared to validate "liberal" mores, and the information that these mores were the personal preference of the experts was concealed.
Is it any wonder that the experts are not trusted in this area?
Nice post Professor.
we have some moderately reliable information that abstaince only education is ineffective on average nationally. We don't have the reliability we would have in a medical double blind study (as in medicine we often do)-and we certainly don't have the reliability of a physical science experiment. We also are not hearing much, from the witnesses regarding alternatives. Also, since we are talking about national data here-it could be that in certain local places the effect is different.
in that light-doesn't it make sense that, instead of choosing a blanket funding rule at the federal rule discouraging abstaince only education-that instead, we put the information from the academics in the hands of those who have more information about their children's particular demographic? (parents and local school boards). This isn't simply democratic as EV puts it-its Could that be the point that Rep. Duncan is making?
It's not quite like he is calling scientists elitist for going against their intuition that the world is flat.
we have some moderately reliable information that abstaince only education is ineffective on average nationally. We don't have the reliability we would have in a medical double blind study (as in medicine we often do)-and we certainly don't have the reliability of a physical science experiment. We also are not hearing much, from the witnesses regarding alternatives. Also, since we are talking about national data here-it could be that in certain local places the effect is different.
in that light-doesn't it make sense that, instead of choosing a blanket funding rule at the federal rule discouraging abstaince only education-that instead, we put the information from the academics in the hands of those who have more information about their children's particular demographic? (parents and local school boards). This isn't simply democratic as EV puts it-it may very well be choosing the most informed decision. Could that be the point that Rep. Duncan is making?
It's not quite like he is calling scientists elitist for going against their intuition that the world is flat.
A child's best education is the intersection of two domains, knowledge of educational programmes, and and knowledge of the child himself. The experts may know the programmes better than the parents do, but they don't know the child at all, so they are not always the best to decide what is best for the individual child.
Sorry, professor, no slam-dunk this time.
As a parent you don't get any do-overs - you only get one chance. Even if the social sciences were hard science (which they are a long way from becoming) - they still would only represent a statistical outcome.
I agree with Steve - experts advise - parents decide.
I don't think this is different than what the professor was saying. He never said that parents should forgo their intuition and blindly trust experts. He also was clear that studies on education are frequently poorly done. His main point is that it's not inherently "elitist" to cite to properly done studies (as opposed to personal impression and anecdote) when making governmental policy.
Rich Rostrom lists some granitic truths which turned out to range from honest mistakes to flat lies. And we can all remember education or other policy prescriptions based on them.
To add: About fifteen years ago, a couple of docs from the CDC admitted they'd lied about the threat to the hetero population of AIDS. They did it, they said, for political reasons--which remained unenumerated but can be guessed. But they didn't have to admit to lying to have a reasonable person recall that the original hysteria was WRONG. See Fumento.
Then there's AGW which is taking a sabbatical while natural variations work their way through the system.
And these "mistakes" all had serious policy built or threatened around them, or at least--wrt Kinsey and Meade--broad miseducation.
If I were not an expert on a subject and I heard an expert, it would be rational to distrust him. Until a good deal of work had been done and the anti-Meade anthropologists were not losing their slots, the anti-AGW folks were not losing their grant money, the anti-het/AIDS people were not being savaged by ACT/UP. Then I might be reasonably interested in listening to an expert who wants me to change my ways.
Of course, EV was right to point out that Congress still has the right to make a value judgement that abstinence only education is still better for our kids, despite the fact that the best evidence indicates it is less effective at preventing risky behavior. Congress should just be clear that this is what it is doing.
Muddying this debate are the areas of research where scietific investigation is so spurious that it makes sense to discard the resulting conclusions out of hand. In this category I would put 1) rape statistics coming from women's groups, 2) a good deal of research on novel education methods, 3) much of the research on young children's/teenager behavior, etc. Sometimes this is due to intractable researcher bias, and sometimes it is due to the impossiblity of studying a phenomenon. For the latter, I tend to think of studies on media and aggresssion--they are just so hard to generalize. BUT, the important point is that even if we discard this type of research as inferior to our own intuition, we are not diminishing the scientific method, we are just saying it so frequently misapplied in these areas that we don't want to waste time wading through the data.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics
I note that at least some of the witnesses themselves use information that isn't purely statistical. One of John Santelli's points is:
Many abstinence-only programs withhold critical information or include
misinformation, particularly about important health topics such as contraception and condoms. This puts young people at risk. Such programs are contrary to the medical ethical principle of informed consent and are a violation of human rights principles
This seems to me exactly the right approach: the statistical studies are important, but it is very dangerous to assume that the most important facts must be the ones that have been measured by experts.
1. The validity of these studies.
2. The normative conclusions-- i.e., assuming, arguendo, that the studies' conclusions are correct, is a larger amount of premarital sex without guilt worth the decline in STD's in adolescents? (Someone who does not believe there is a moral demension to premarital sex among teens does not need to address this conflict, of course.)
3. Who makes that normative decision-- the Feds, local boards, parents?
4. Use of the term "elitist." The first definition of "elitist" in Merriam-Webster Online is "leadership or rule by an elite." And yes-- in this case Duncan's charge is correct. He is accusing people who have made themselves experts in an area of wanting to impose normative decisions that conflict with the values of non-experts. I.e., rule by an elite. Elitism may be good or bad, depending on the issue. I want experts making decisions on safety rules for nuclear plants, for example, rather than relying on ad hoc decisions by legislators or city councilmen.
There is a widespread sense, though (expressed in posts above), that certain fields of scholarship select for particiapnts who disproportionately have certain normative beliefs, and that these experts impose these beliefs on thier scholarship. This calls not only their normative conclusions into question, but their factual conclusion.
I tried the video but can't get sound running or a fast forward arrow or tracker so I'm wondering if anyone has rebuttal of Thorley's apparently wellmade point:
There seems to be a degree of nuance and allowance for the points of views expressed by both Duncan and the witness here. Which is to say that I might have to agree that presenting the quote that way did lack context. It suggests a possible normative belief that social scientists are more appropriate source of policy guidance, and while not opining directly on the subject and taken somewhat as a procedural more than substantive observation, has the additional import of seeming to cast government involvement in this policy area as necessary to begin with.
Finally, the citations to Fumento are apt.
Brian
What else would you call overriding the wishes of parents all because some Phd policy wonk wrote a bunch of studies that say it is "better for children?"
So it is rather arrogant to issist that someone has the only answer to any question on the basis of a few studies. Those making that claim better be prepared to defend their methodology and show studies from completely unrelated sources before they claim their work is scientific proof of anything.
Even then, don't be surprised at this kind of response when the evidence is presented before Congress. How the federal government spends money is more of a political question than a scientific one.
Consider, for example, one such report. The media conflated "Abstinence Programs Don't Work" with "studies don't show that abstinence programs work." Consider the report's findings:
Granted, I haven't perused every scientist's claim at the hearing, but this is a significant distinction to make.
Actually, what [i]would[/i] surprise me is if [i]any[/i] public school sex ed curriculum, whatever its focus or methodology, has much effect. And I seem to recall a study several years ago in New Jersey confirming that pretty much nothing works.
But isn't that the problem with parents in general? They all think their kids are "not average" (the Lake Wobegone effect). (I'm not going to touch your gun example and stick with sex education).
Parents are going to say, "my child is a little angel and he is never going to have sex until his wedding night, so abstinence only education is perfectly appropriate for him, now that slut Suzy down the street . . ."
You've made the same mistake several others have made. If I remember "sex education programs" correctly, they do not claim to reduce the amount of sex students have. Teenagers will have sex whether they get no education, abstinence only education, or sex education.
Instead, the advocates of sex education claim that when students finally do have sex, they will have safe sex.
So, in answer to your question:
No one does think that, when "making a difference" means "convince kids not to have sex." People DO think that a two-week health course will, however, convince teenage boys to wear a condom.
What irks me about this debate is that the abstinence-only side IS making a scientifically verifiable claim. They claim that "sex education" is teaching kids how to have sex and will therefore convince more kids to have sex. The empirical testing on that idea has not stood up. Instead, the aggregate of studies show that kids have the same amount of sex, they just do it without condoms. Much better!
No, that's why you have more kids. Our third is doing fine. :-)
PhDs who study education theory don't respond to the marketplace. Public schools -- where this abstinence program would be mandated -- are not responsive to the consumers of that good: the children and/or their parents.
Thus, PhDs in the field 'study' it much in the same that Soviet agricultural planners 'studied' what food should have been grown in that country.
Both elite planners have had dismal showings in terms of any quantitative measure.
Parents, on the other hand, are actual consumers of the good. Their reaction tracks, much more closely, what the market desires.
The days of central planning, unfortunately, are not over.
But the days of believing that such planning is effective when divorced from the market have ended.
So you're telling us that nerds don't get laid in high school. I'm going to guess that the causation is not in the direction that the study suggests.
I have two words for that: So. What.
Public education is in such disarray, I don't trust them to teach something as objective and quantifiable as arithmetic, much less complex moral questions.
If abstinence is a value in itself and does not depend on stoking fears, then providing accurate information about contraception and prevention of STDS will not deter students from abstinence.
The fact is that there are many high school students who have knowledge of contraception and STDs who nonetheless choose abstinence for a variety of reasons, including moral reasons, romance, and other priorities.
Studies do show that children whose parents discuss sex with them are more likely to delay sex. Sadly, too many parents never discuss sex with their children. So, if parents are concerned about sex education, they should discuss their values and sex with their children. Of course, many children do have information about their own parents' choices, especially when parents are single or divorced and date.
As a new grandpa, however, I can tell you that the parents of newborns are very attentive to the opinions of experts.
If someone's priority is "the children at large" and they think they can reduce the overall disease rate to x% from a greater y%, they might see that as a success..
If somone's priority is their child, x% is probably too high a chance. Absinence works every time it's tried, so any program that would tend to undercut that parent's effort for the sake of some "overall" gain creates conflict.
In short, safe-sex education is a collective "the good of the many outweigh the needs of the few" garbage.
So the default message is, gays should never have sex ever, in their entire life. Which, of course, is unrealistic, unfair, and just plain stupid.
Now, the fact is that teens are not stupid. They are not empty vessels into which you can pour in your facts and ideas and those are the only ones they get. Kids can see through stupidity, bias, and illogic, which is why for a lot of the kids, these programs don't work. And when a kid, any kid, whether hetero or gay or questioning, hears either implicitly or explicitly that you can't have sex until marriage, they know that doesn't apply to gays, and it doesn't apply once you reach a certain age. Few people expect unmarried 30-somethings to be celibate, and kids know that.
Today, people marry later in life, and often the marriage age is in the 30s. Kids know that these people, with few exceptions, remained celibate until marriage.
So the whole abstinence only education serves only to withhold valuable information from kids just when they need it.
This is exactly what I was talking about. You are claiming that sex education "tends to undercut" the message that abstinence is best. In other words, more students will have sex after receiving sex education than if those students had received just abstinence education.
Notice how flaky your claim is. You say that sex education "tends to" have this effect. This is an empirical question. You just have it in your head that sex education leads to more sex, when there is in fact little to no proof of that. I call shenanigans.
Then there is the problem that arises later in life. I can't speak for experience, so let me rely upon Dan Savage, the sex advice columnist. He has said and written that one of the major problems with abstinence until marriage is that people, especially women, 'save' themselves for marriage. AFter several years of marriage, though, these women (usually women) are writing to Dan asking how they can experiment with other guys while still not breaking their marriage vows. Why do they want to experiment? Because they are bored out of their minds with having had sex with just one guy in their life! And they can't imagine spending the rest of their lives having vanilla sex, or at least just seeing how others do it.
Now, perhaps these people are spoiled. Perhaps they need sex counseling. But the fact is that some of these marriages end up in divorce because at least one party has a need to see what sex is like with others.
My point? Sometimes, when you try to correct one social problem, you merely create another.
Gays are allowed to marry in every state of the union. I'm pretty sure they always were.
Mildred Loving, R.I.P.
Really? Then I guess all that hullabaloo when the Massachusetts Supreme court allowed gays to get married was really about nothing, right?
It was about something. Not a new allowance for gays to marry. Like I said. Gays have always been allowed to marry. They were allowed to not marry, too.
Equal protection. The same rules for everyone, regardless of race, creed, or sexual orientation. Everyone can marry, but there are people they aren't allowed to marry.
Everyone is allowed to marry a person who is: 1) not already married to someone else, 2) of the opposite sex, 3) not a close relative, 4) over a certain age, and 5) consents.
I may be leaving some rules out. I think some states have rules on the books like 6) does not have an STD 7) is not an idiot.
The problem is with no. 2. Two gay men can't marry each other, no matter how much in love. In MA, now they can. And that is what matters.
There used to be a No. 6: You had to be of the same race. Under your analysis, blacks and whites always had the right to marry, so Mildred Loving, who was black, could marry any other black man, but not the man she wanted to, who happened to be white. That was unfair, and SCOTUS struck down those laws.
On top of that, your analogy fails. Comparing a hard science (like medicine) to a soft "science" like psychology or sociology is laughable. Medical Doctors and Medical Researchers observe empirical evidence and document advances and changes using the scientific method.
Sociologists and Psychologists "doctor" studies, twist numbers and rely on SELF-REPORTING surveys to craft the various results that they desire. There is a reason that these field are called soft "science". How on earth do you truly measure the effectiveness of any sex education program?
Do you actually observe the teenagers involved and make sure that they have actually engaged in a sex act? Or do you rely on the answers that the teenagers give you on a self-reporting survey? And when you select these teenagers do you really use a valid sample?
Newsflash: Teenagers lie. Adults Lie. People lie on self-reporting surveys.
In fact, I have instructed my children to purposely lie on any survey that they are given, in order to purposely skew the results of any survey or poll that they ever take.
I do the same any time I am asked to complete a survey.
I do this because my actions demonstrate the inherent unreliability of soft "sciences" that so many rely upon for public policy.
They were quite right to strike down that No. 6. Restricting someone's pool of available marriage partners by race is not legitamate. As far as I'm concerned, the law should make no distinctions regarding race. I consider "race" to be an imaginary human construct anyway (i.e. the law should be colorblind).
However, I think it is nonsensical to expect the law to make no distinctions regarding sex--thereby pretending there are no distinctions between people of the differenent sexes (i.e. the law should not be sexblind). The Equal Rights Amendment rightly failed. There are real distinctions between men and women that matter. To ignore them would be foolish.
Who gets to decide? Scientists shouldn't assume that, simply because they can make some observations and crunch some numbers, and just because they feel they ought to get more respect, their judgments on matters of value are necessarily better than anyone else's. Stanley Milgram provides some rather good evidence questioning whether being a scientist really ought to make one an authority figure on moral matters.
A child's best education is the intersection of two domains, knowledge of educational programmes, and and knowledge of the child himself. The experts may know the programmes better than the parents do, but they don't know the child at all, so they are not always the best to decide what is best for the individual child.
Sorry, professor, no slam-dunk this time.
I concur. Also: My graduate education was in the physical sciences. My contact with the social sciences came mostly in my legal studies, but one thing that really impressed me what how much obviously bad science is passed off as social science. Most of the research seems to be designed to confirm hypotheses, rather than to refute them. It should hardly be surprising that the "experts" in social sciences usually come up with results that confirm their prejudices.
Chris, who said anything about causation?
I find it interesting that the critics of abstinence-only education, when presented with empirical data that suggest a correlation between abstinence and academic achievement (which, at the very least, undercuts the reverse notion - that there is no correlation between sexual activity and lower academic achievement!), and scream that correlation is not causation, that people who tend to think about the future do better academically, etc etc.
Not one would ever look at a study from a feminist perspective and think, "What if there IS a causation issue, and sexual activity causes reduced academic success?" In that case, if you care about women's academic success, you would do everything in your power to ensure that they remain abstinent until age 18.
Now, as for your "nerds don't get laid in high school" comment, is that perhaps because those who think that they have a great life in front of them don't want to risk an unplanned pregnancy? Why is that good enough for the nerds - that which they deserve out of life - but not good enough for the underachievers, who, arguably, would be more harmed by an unplanned pregnancy and lack the tenacity to fight for what they want, child and all?
Furthermore, for gay couples that have adopted children, these children now have the benefits of having married couples, and that's a good thing.
"There are real distinctions between men and women that matter. To ignore them would be foolish." Of course there are. And there are real distinctions between gays and heteros. To ignore them is foolish and unjust as well.
I completely agree. Luckily, that's not what scientists are doing. Scientists are saying that we have two options, sex education and abstinence education. Neither option affects the amount of sex that teenagers have. Sex education, however, does cause more of that sex to be safe sex. I don't see any scientist saying "my values are better than yours" or anything of the sort.
Right: Teenage sex is bad.
Left: I agree
Right: So we shouldn't teach about sex
Left: I'm not so sure. Teaching about safe sex has some good effects, like increased condom use.
Right: That's nonsense. NO sex is certainly better than condomed sex.
Left: True, and condomed sex is better than uncondomed sex.
Right: Agreed. The hierarchy runs no sex, condomed sex, uncondomed sex. Good, bad, worse.
Left: So, if sex education increases sex rates, then we shouldn't teach it even if it has other benefits.
Right: Agreed.
Left: There is no evidence that sex education has that effect.
Right: Of course it has that effect. It's obvious that talking about sex puts a seal of approval on it and will cause more of it.
Left: Do you have any empirical evidence for that?
Right: The obvious does not need evidence.
Left: This study says that sex education does not cause an increase in sex, but it does cause sex to be safer.
Right: Scientists shouldn't assume that their values are better than mine.
Left: ???
Personally, I suspect that the Religious Right can't bring itself to accept that safe sex is better than unsafe sex. Both are sins, and perhaps it would be better if sins had consequences. (So, if kids are going to have premarital sex, then it would be better for it to be unprotected.) The immorality, however, of this type of thought makes me squeamish.
As is often the case, you were doing okay until you started to venture down the exceptions pathway.
Regardless of your "consideration", it is what it is. There are obvious differences (and perhaps some not so obvious) that naturally occur as a result of diverse ethnicity. I can "consider" the speed limits to be an "imaginary human construct" as well, but that doesn't change the reality that they exist.
However, if you grant an exception for one "human construct", what makes that exception valid and others invalid? What is the difference in allowing two individuals of significantly different ethnic heritage to enter a social contract as opposed to two individuals of the same gender? Why should one be allowed and not the other?
A specific quote: "Right, the whole Harvard film faculty on one side, a bunch of philistine midwesterners on the other . . . not a close call." She has since come around. Hopefully Eugene will follow.
Anticipating a response, I would note that "what is best for children's sexual development" is *more* subjective than analyzing movies.
Bingo. The religious right doesn't believe in the hierarchy of sex. For them, there is no sex outside of marriage, period, end of discussion. No other sex, whether protected or not is acceptable.
My question: Where in the bible does it state that sex outside of marriage is unacceptable? Or premarital sex? What do they base this rigid doctrine upon?
My sister is 60 years old, never married and because she is deeply religious, never had sex. However, instead of telling people that she is celibate, she tells people she is 'pure.' It sure makes her look looney to everyone else, and I've asked her if that means that people who have sex are stained or impure, but she won't answer.
Really? There are distinctions significant enough between a gay man and a hetero man for the law to make distinctions between them? What laws should be made to apply to gay men and not hetero men or vice-versa?
I think you are pretending there is no difference for the sake of argument.
No and None. All should be treated equal. You have the right to marry any person who agrees to marry you. I should have the same right. But in 49 states I don't.
Look, you are engaging in a sophistry. The fact is that gay men cannot marry, and lesbians cannot either. Sure, we can marry any old person off the street who happens to be the opposite sex, but that's not what we are talking about. Although I am not in a relationship, I have many gay friends who are. And many of them have children. Marriage is not only about two people loving each other, but it also comes with a whole host of benefits and rights, such as inheritance rights, hospital visitation rights, social security benefits, etc. And these rights impact upon the children that they have.
So: two people, both men, both gay, want to marry each other. Currently, even you must agree, they cannot do so. However, two people, one woman, one man, want to marry each other. They can do so. So the effect of the law is that gays are treated unequally, which in my view (and the view of the MA supreme court) is that to deny gays the right to marry is to treat them differently.
To answer your quesiton more fully: There should be one law that applies to everyone, and that law should be that any two people of any gender may marry each other. This way, you have one law that applies to men, women, gay, lesbian and hetero. All are covered equally and treated equally. Satisfactory, no?
The Fourteenth Amendment was clearly intended to limit racial discrimination by the government. Discrimination against gays? Not so much. That said, I'm not persuaded by somedude's argument that because gays can marry just like straights, there is no equal protection violation. Sometimes the law itself violates equality even if it is equally applied (i.e. gays can get married under traditional marriage just like straights). Obviously a law which is designed to discriminate against blacks but is nevertheless sometimes used against whites is not vindicated by being equally applicable to whites and blacks. After all, the miscegenation statutes were usually mutual--whites could not intermarry and neither could blacks, they applied equally to each race.
Any difference between a mixed race marriage and a non-mixed raced marriage is superficial and insignificant. The differences in a mixed sex marriage and a same sex marriage are neither superficial nor insignificant. This is a sex ed thread, so I wouldn't think I'd have to elaborate.
Maybe there should be. But here is where we part ways. What ought to be isn't necessarily what the Constitutiona requires.
Is there no difference between a mother and a father? You are prepared to say that the difference between the average mother and the average father is "superficial and insignificant"?
I would disagree. I would say that post-Lawrence, gays in every state can marry. They are just not entitled to equal recognition from the state. That is, the state is not required to regulate and subsidize gay marriages in the same way it does for straight marriages.
And Post-Lawrence, gays tried to marry in Arizona, California, and New York. in all cases, the marriages were invalided by the courts. So you are wrong -- gays cannot marry anywhere except in Massachusetts.
Yes, gays can be married in certain churches, but it is not legally recognized by the state. And in what way any marriage subsidized? The US Congressional Service did a study a few years ago and concluded that allowing gay marriage in all 50 states would result in a net gain of revenue to the treasury.
Haberdash: "Is there no difference between a mother and a father? You are prepared to say that the difference between the average mother and the average father is "superficial and insignificant"?
I don't understand your point. Is that an arguement against gay marriage? Every family is different. And every mother and every father is different. Some are engaged with their kids, some not at all. Some are stable, some are alcoholics. Some are loving, some are distant. And some families have only one parent, either through divorce or death.
You assert that that is what the law should be, and I agree that such a law would not violate equal protection. I just don't think the current law violates equal protection either. Equal protection applies to individuals. There is no equal protection for couples. Not all couples are treated equal. A couple of siblings is not allowed to marry. Two people who are already married to other people are not allowed to marry. It would be a violation of equal protection to ban mixed race marriage because it restricts the pool of available spouses differently from one individual to the next based on nothing but prejudice.
There already is. Everyone is allowed to marry a person who is: 1) not already married to someone else, 2) of the opposite sex, 3) not a close relative, 4) over a certain age, and 5) consents.
If I was ever asked to vote on a law dropping the #2 condition, I would probably abstain. Same for #1 actually. It doesn't matter that much to me either way. It just bothers me when people claim gays aren't already treated like everyone else.
If we ignore gender roles, then yes, there is no difference between mothers and fathers.
(!?)
For example, if you yell at your child for staying out late (instruction), he may be learning that the only penalty for staying out late is having to sit through a lecture (experience).
Sex education is schools in difficult because the child has so many sources of information about sex outside the classroom. (This was even true before the internet, and before the descent of TV &Hollywood into the gutter.) The information obtained outside the classroom informs his reaction to the material presented in the classroom. So if the teacher solemnly teaches that it's real bad to have sex before marriage, it's likely that the lesson learned is that the teacher is a prude and dork, and the school system is in thrall to repressive interests.
The exact same discussion applies to drug education, especially the DARE program into which the Federal Government and whoever else has sunk a ton of money with no discernible effect on recreation drug use.
That was my point. They can get married. Call each other spouse. Live the married life. The state is just left out of it.
Social security benefits. Veteran benefits. Taxes in many cases.
I think that the difference is enough to justify the state's actions under the rational basis test.
I'm not a "race doesn't exist" type of person but I realize that's a common perception. But certainly you are not saying that gender doesn't exist, that it's a social construction? Or are you?
Note that we have jumped from talking about marriage to talking about parenthood. I would argue that this is a significant jump, so let me revise my previous statement:
Unless we jump directly to stereotypes and/or gender roles, then yes, I would argue that the differences between the "average" woman and the "average" man are just as superficial and insignificant as is the difference between the "average" white person and the "average" black person.
Also I would point out that there is a difference between saying that A is just as insignificant as B and saying that A is not insignificant.
To the extent that "race doesn't exist" or is a "social construction", then yes, I would think that a similar argument could be applied to gender. Why would it not?
Once again Randy has managed to sidetrack the issue to the legality of gay marriage. I'd like to point out that the problem, for both gays and teenagers, does not depend on giving up sex until you are legally married. Rather, the solution depends on (1) not having sex with a partner until you are adult enough to make relatively rational decisions, and (2) having sex only with a faithful, trustable, disease-free partner.
Randy, if you can manage to fulfill these two conditions, it doesn't matter whether you are "legally married" or not.
I think that's daft. It willfully disregards the better judgement of human experience.
But there are lots of questions.
As others have said, the experts in this field are wrong an awful lot. (They contradict each other over time and place, in ways that both can't be right.)
The government starts with "School is a place where we can get most of the children on a regular and well-administered basis." That makes it a good place to administer things besides education, like nutrition and vaccinations.
There's little disagreement that physical education (gym) is valuable in a similar way to intellectual education (3 Rs), and that education can include the softer stuff like art and music.
A public health person wants to reduce unwanted pregnancies and STDs. He probably gives little value to the amount that souls are saved or lost by exposure to sex ed. (He would give a negative value to other, absurd measures like neutering, even if they achieved his goals.)
He can look at populations, hopefully matched, differing only in what kind, if any, sex education they received. Through the usual methods he might compare the populations as to the number of unwanted pregnancies and STDs that happen, and draw a conclusion.
If the government is going to deal with the sex parts of public health in its schools, it might want to use that data in its decision-making process. If there are factors that matter to the parents, the children, and other interested parties, like colleges and future employers, the policy-makers should consider those party's concerns as well.
The Zogby poll that's been mentioned showed by a more than 2-1 margin that parents ... prefer the abstinence approach, and it seems rather elitist to me for people who maybe have degrees in this field to feel that they, because they've studied it, somehow know better than the parents what is best for ... I still think parents know best what is best for their children.
That could be a silly statement, but it depends on what field it is, what the course of study in it is, and what it takes to get a degree.
No, I didn't. I merely pointed out that teaching no sex until marriage leaves gay teenagers out of the equation. It was then The Dude who brought the issue of gay marriage.
" I'd like to point out that the problem, for both gays and teenagers, does not depend on giving up sex until you are legally married. Rather, the solution depends on (1) not having sex with a partner until you are adult enough to make relatively rational decisions, and (2) having sex only with a faithful, trustable, disease-free partner."
I agree. But that's not what this administration wants to teach, nor do any religious right wingers want it taught that way. They teach abstinence until marriage, period. But I agree that what you propose is a much better solution.
Some Dude: "It just bothers me when people claim gays aren't already treated like everyone else."
And Mildred Loving, a black woman, was treated just like everybody else. She had the exact same marriage rights as you did. But that wasn't enough -- she wanted to marry a white man, which was prohibited. Under your analysis, she was nonetheless treated like everyone else, and even though interracial marriage was banned in Virginia and several other states. If you can't see that she was prohibited from marrying the one person she wanted to, and gay men and women are also prohibited from marrying the one person we want to, then there isn't much else to say.
Why don't we turn this around? You can't marry anyone more than ten years apart from you. And you can't marry anyone who shares a similar hair color to you. Hey, you can still get married to most anyone else! Therefore, you are treated just like everyone else, and you can't complain.
You really can't see that gay couple that wants to get married, actually cannot get married in 49 states and have it legally recognized? You really can't see that see that why they might believe that they are treated just a bit differently from you?
Is that the problem? Does "exposure" to sex ed give students sinful ideas that corrupt their soul? (It would have to be "ideas" because sex education doesn't cause more sex.) Sex education has been shown to reduce the spread of harmful disease. You are balancing that good against the bad of losing some souls?
Let's call a spade a spade. You are willing to let real children get terrible diseases because you believe in a fairy tale.
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I do want to extend what I said earlier and promote some understanding. Premarital sex is a sin--a bad one, apparently. To the religious person, someone promoting sex education is basically claiming that "Students shouldn't sin, but we want students to know how to sin correctly if they do decide to do it."
The strangeness of that statement is apparent even to me, an atheist. There is sinning, and there is not sinning. Period.
The world sure looks different through Bible-tinted glasses....
No.
Next question.
It seems clear there are two questions here: one statistical and one normative. On the statistical question, I'll believe the experts. There seems to be (since all statistical data is based on probability) a correlation between abstinence only education and increased rates of unsafe sex while there is no correlation between abstinence and sex education and rates of teenage sex. FWIW, I think anything-only education is probably a bad idea. But when it comes to the normative question of what should policy support, I also defer to parents and legislators. A large part of the reason is the fight against AIDS in Africa.
Since the mid-90s, the ABC strategy appears to be the most effective in combatting the spread of AIDS. It consists of Abstinence, Be Faithful, and Condoms. However, when it comes to funding, conservatives only want to fund abstinence and liberals only want to fund condoms. But when the people administering the programs don't believe in A or B, funding requests only support C, as shown in this report. The same is probably happening in schools, prompting the political backlash. Ironically, the most effective part of the strategy is Be Faithful: reduce the number of multiple, concurrent sex partners.
I see the same thing happening in the debate over sex education here. Conservatives want to fund abstinence-only programs while liberals wink at abstinence messages and proceed to teach that having sex with multiple partners can be made safe. That one-quarter of girls have an STD, and ~37% of children are born out of wedlock is not considered. If we would emphasize the "Be Faithful", and promote programs to reduce the number of sexual partners, we might make some progress. But I'm not holding my breath.
Once again Randy has managed to sidetrack the issue to the legality of gay marriage.
Randy R.:
No, I didn't. I merely pointed out that teaching no sex until marriage leaves gay teenagers out of the equation. It was then The Dude who brought the issue of gay marriage.
Oh, really? This was the quote that I cited:
Sure looks to me like you're bringing up the issue of gay marriag e!
Seems to me the whole point of teaching abstinence to teens is to teach absti nence to teens. Are you telling us that the eeeeevil Rethuglicans have a polic