Interesting piece in the NYTimes on the future of abstinence education, given that a recent, comprehensive study found “no sign that it delayed a teenager’s sexual debut” - and thus, some states are beginning to turn away from the program.

I suppose as a good liberal I’m supposed to sneer at abstinence education, but in fact I think it can be a very valuable thing - so long as it’s not done with a “reefer madness” type of approach. I mean, I’ll preach abstinence to my own kids when they’re old enough specifically because there is one way, and one way only, for people to avoid unwanted pregnancy and unwanted disease - and that is to keep the zipper zipped.

At the same time, some of the strongest proponents of abstinence education are proponents for religious reasons:

“You have to look at why sex was created,” Eric Love, the director of the East Texas Abstinence Program, which runs Virginity Rules, said one day, the sounds of Christian contemporary music humming faintly in his Longview office. “Sex was designed to bond two people together.”

Um, no. Sex was designed to propagate the species. And I have to wonder about those who insist that saving sex for marriage means the marriage itself will be better - that the sex ultimately will be better. What if it’s not? What if it’s underwhelming, and you wind up thinking: I waited my whole life for this? That, it seems to me, is going to breed discontent. Which is bad for the marriage.

In any event, I’ve no objection to abstinence education being offered in school, though I do strongly object to abstinence only education; and I do strongly object to fibbing to kids (for their own good, sure), saying that if you have sex before marriage your life will be ruined, or that by “saving it” your marriage will automatically be stronger. Both could be the case, and that’s well worth pointing out to kids on its own merits - without presenting it, falsely, as some sort of guarantee, backed more by wishful thinking than real-life statistics.