Lies: The new contraceptive

A new study headed by Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., shows that nearly 100 percent of serious injuries and fatalities involving automobile accidents occur outdoors. Instead of concentrating on safety measures, such as safe-driving programs, supporting the installation of air bags in new automobiles and enforcing drunk-driving legislation, the U.S. government is allocating almost $1 billion during the next five years to a program that instructs people to "Just stay in."\nPart of the "Just stay in" campaign targets the dangers of going outside and also works to discredit seat belts and other so-called "Safety measures."\nOK, so I made that up.\nBut the government's approach to sex is so strikingly similar that its naïveté is equally laughable -- and nearly criminal when one considers its information is full of lies. \nWhile it is impossible to contradict the overwhelming effectiveness of maintaining sexual abstinence to prevent sexually transmitted disease and pregnancy, the implementation of "abstinence only" educational programs is, at best, a disservice to America's youth.\nFor next year, nearly $170 million has been allocated by the federal government to support these programs -- bringing the five year total to almost $900 million, according to The Washington Post.\nThis is anything but fiscal responsibility.\nWhat is more alarming is the moral irresponsibility of Congress and this administration that allows for 11 of the 13 most utilized curricula taught to millions of American students to include "false, misleading or distorted information" about sexual behavior and its consequences.\nAmong these assertions -- according to a congressional staff analysis -- are inflated condom failure rates, unproven methods of HIV transmission and that more than 50 percent of gay male teens are HIV-positive.\nHave the authors of these materials learned nothing from past mistakes of misinformation?\nTake, for example, drug education. In years past, such ridiculous propaganda like the movie "Reefer Madness" led people to believe that marijuana use would invariably lead to deviant lifestyles and the ruination of a user's life. Yet, when kids see that peers (or adults) who shirk the warnings put to them do not suffer from the maladies that they were told would occur, all of the information taught to them is more easily dismissed and the behavior is thereby promoted.\nThus, kids will dismiss the more reasonable warnings and ignore the real dangers obscured by ridiculous and unsubstantiated lies. \nIt follows, then, that the truth is much more useful in dissuasion of harmful behavior. \nOne can easily promote the benefits of abstinence without unfairly discrediting alternative methods. Show a classroom full of boys the picture of a diseased penis or make them listen to a personal account of pubic lice -- something condoms cannot help against -- and you'd be surprised how many would reconsider wanton sexual behavior.\nAll this, however, should be irrelevant. Parents should be the people who teach their children about sex, not educators or the government. As we conservatives maintain the government should stay out of the lives of the individual, our elected representatives and their bureaucratic lackeys continue to violate this ideal in one of the most egregious manners possible -- the usurpation of parental rights.\nNevertheless, teenage sexuality is a reality, no matter if people want to admit it. Misinformed (or uninformed) people of any age cannot be relied on to make the right decisions in life and, as such, someone needs to tell kids the truth. One could argue that abstinence should be stressed to curb disease and unwanted pregnancy, but not at the expense of other methods.\nSolely relying on abstinence is tantamount to sending a soldier to war with no training outside of a singular message: "Don't get killed." \nThe message might be a good one, but it is hardly sufficient.