"...I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me..." [Deuteronomy 5:8-10]

Saturday, July 17, 2004

Abstinence Only At Any Cost?
Darkstar218 writes:

"...go ahead and have promiscuous sex. And yes, blame Christians when your condoms don't protect you from your diseases. (And send us the bill for cleaning up the mess while you're at it. Hey, we make so much money over here in the States, us Yanks should have enough leftover to find the cures to all the diseases the world throws on our doorstep. No charge to you, of course.) And when your empty lives are in ruin because your are looking for satisfaction and love and meaning in a casual sex Russian roulette game, and families lie in ruin, and the cornerstone of society crumbles, and we are running wild in the street fulfilling every urge and notion we have in a reckless disregard for order and civility -- burn in hell? Wait, it would BE hell. Well, don't say I didn't warn ya. And all the technology and drugs and latex in the world isn’t going to save you... My soul is prepared. How’s yours?"
Now you are just being dishonest.

No-one says that condoms always "work". But properly used they are a cheap and highly effective public health measure. You wrote earlier: "You can read your charts and say that Abstinence is not working; I will see the same data and come to the conclusion that money and programs are not the solution to the problem. It’s teaching values and morals." That is admission that "abstinence only" programs are a failure.

Campaign against "promiscuity" all you want. Remove sex from our televisions and magazines. Ban abortion. Make sex outside out marriage illegal. Do what you want. But for now, people are having sex, and "abstinence only" programmes are substantially increasing the rates of unwanted pregnancies and STDs.

If you cared about the health of US teens and wanted to reduce the abortion rate, you'd be honest enough to tell them that if they did for whatever reason have sex that you disapprove of, that they should take care of themselves. (If one of your children did have sex outside of marriage, would you *really* rather that they didn't know how to be responsible about it?)

If you cared about your precious tax dollars, you'd accept the marginal cost of proper sexual health policies rather than paying for after-the-fact AIDS treatment.

But as you've shown with your beliefs on the Bible and "absolute morality", facts, evidence, history, science, humanity, reason and logic play no part in your decision making.

PTET

Darkstar's ony response: "Right, keep those sandbags coming."

See the full discussion at Darkstar's Weblog

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