So whos really surprised by this. My friends and I talked about this B.S. when bush enacted it. Oddly enough the results are about what we thought they would be. Just more proof that the douche's policys dont, wont and cannot work. I cant wait for a Clinton to be in office again.....

Thank you for the well-written and informative article. Please, keep articles like this coming!

I seriously have fits when I think about how anybody would be surprised that when you don't teach people how to prevent STDs they start getting them...I mean, when you don't teach people how to use cars, do they crash them? When you don't teach people about proper food preparation do they some how magically figure out that you need to cook to a certain temperature? Yeah, abstinence is the safest way...but people still drive, don't they? fuck it...I don't even know why I'm writing this, it's nothing that's never been said.

The problem is that no matter who gets elected these programs and being explored and insituted now, so even if some magical super-president descended form the sky and had all the best idea for all side, it would still take time to implement changes, and when you are dealing with an epidemic time if of the essence...

it seems to me people are going to continue to get STD's and not practice safe sex, or abstinence no matter what. so you can say these programs are useless, but at least ther are there. in the article cited you mentioned that some women in sub-sahara africa are forced to have sex for food, shelter, or whatever essentials they need to survive. it seems to me programs for safe sex there would be ineffective until the real issues of poverty and starvation are addressed. i guess what i am saying is, you can teach people whatever you want, it is up to them to utilyze it...

i sympathize with the plight of the sub-saharan african woman (which is where 75% of the woman aged 15 and older with aids live) but do you really belive that any kind of prevention program is going to stop them from having unprotected sex? and i am not asking to be an asshole, or anything like that. I am asking with sincerity and a heavy heart because i belive the answer to be no, and i belive the battle there cannot be won until other issues are addressed.

Well, you can't say "at least they are there" if they aren't doing anything. If they are not helping, why should we be glad of them? Also, obviously we need to take care of the other issues, but having education saying things like "hey, wear a condom, it will help you to not get AIDs" might actually help people. Even those that are selling their bodies might be more inclined to use condoms.
The problem is that our government doesn't give a shit about Africans getting AIDs, they just care about spreading their dogma.

abstinence?

Hey i've come up with a great program to help cure asthma...it's called not breathing...

Actually, cable TV subscriptions might actually work better than abstinence programs. Hey, if theres nothing to do but fuck, then cable comes along, there will be less total sex in general, correct?

I think the worst part about abstinence sex ed, is that many of these programs lie to children, Ive read abstinence pamphlets that say things like "condoms don't work" while this is intended to scare kids from sex, it really just teaches them not to use protection. Only teaching one side of anything is wrong, but teaching lies to enforce your personal beliefs should be illegal. And yet these lies are being supportied by our government...........of course now that Ive said that out loud I don't know why I was surprised.

*starts slow clap*

Thank you. One thing that I was thankful for was getting an actual sexual education with facts when it came that time in my Life Science class. Yeah, she told us that we had no business having sex at 12, and that the only way one hundred percent not to get pregnate or to catch something was to not have sex. But enphasised the proper birth control when we were older and ready to have sex. She got hell for it, but I'm glad for it.

There were way less people that had her for a teacher for that class that later ended up pregnate or with the clap.

Well, isn't that kind of the whole point? Why are we spending money on programs that don't work and in fact do nothing to target the actual problems? The whole point here is a "moral agenda", in addition to prioritizing and emphasizing flawed measures, is painfully blind to the actual problems affecting people. They fail to treat the right problems, and the problems they try to treat they treat ineffectively.

A "moral agenda" fails because it is ignorant to anything but itself.

Also, we need to stop relying on the government to get anything done. If you something done right, click on the link at the end of the article.

It is another case of:

This same thing was going on 20 years ago when Surgeon General C Everett Koop came forward in support of supporting the use of condoms by sexually active persons in order to prevent the spread of HIV, and he caught hell from the Right for not parroting the abstinence party line. The more things stay the same, the more things stay the same.

Thank you for reading Rolling Stone, so I don't have to. :-D

In World War I, the American Expeditionary Force sent to Europe was not given condoms. Instead, contracting an STD was punishable by court martial. After the troops returned home, the number of STD cases in the US skyrocketed.
Legislate based on how people do behave, not how you think they should behave.