Kindly Póg Mo Thóin

The fuzzy-piece-of-tape metaphor for you hussies who have sex is alive and well:

In northeastern Texas, advocates of abstinence education vow to fight for their mission because to them, it is not just a matter of sexuality or even public health. Getting a teenager to the other side of high school without viruses or babies is a bonus, but not the real goal. They see casual sex as toxic to future marriage, family and even, in an oblique way, opposition to abortion.

“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.”

To make the point, Mr. Love grabbed a tape dispenser and snapped off two fresh pieces. He slapped them to his filing cabinet and the floor; they trapped dirt, lint, a small metal bolt. “Now when it comes time for them to get married, the marriage pulls apart so easily,” he said, trying to unite the grimy strips. “Why? Because they gave the stickiness away.”

And as we know, if there’s anything that sex isn’t, it’s sticky.

Mr. Love, an adult man who rides around in a “Virginity Van” and obsesses about the hymens of young girls for a living, is a little afraid of having some of that sweet, sweet federal funding cut off as more and more states — not to mention Congress — start to wake the fuck up and realize that abstinence-only sexual education does not work, it is no more effective at preventing early sexual intercourse than no sex education at all, it can be dangerous since it gives out patently false information about contraceptives and the risks of sex, pregnancy, abortion and the like, and often results in “abstinent” kids having unprotected sex because, like, using protection would mean we planned on having sex, and that’s just wrong, because we’re abstinent. Indeed, Family Planning Perspectives applied the “perfect” versus “typical” use analysis for various contraceptive methods to abstinence, and discovered that abstinence, as typically practiced, is a better way of getting pregnant than not taking your pill every day.

At least Mr. Love is limiting himself to tape (and he’s not the only one, though the Sex Lady’s schtick is that she rips the hair from the kids’ arms, too). They use a lot more gross stuff in abstinence-only circles, like having an entire classroom of kids lick a peppermint patty or chew a piece of gum or spit in a cup for someone else to drink, the theory being that the girl (and it’s always a girl, even if they wink and not in the boys’ direction for that veneer of equal opportunity) who has sex, particularly more than once and with more than one partner, is like a piece of gum or slobbered-on piece of candy, and no guy will want to marry her ABC ass after it’s been in the mouths of so many other guys. Quackery brings us the “YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO FIND A HUSBAND, YOU SLUT, IF YOU USE UP YOUR OXYTOCIN!!!” Then there’s the property-crimes metaphor pushed by Laura Sessions Stepp, who seems to think that if you have sex with someone, it’s like having vandals throw rocks through the windows of your first house, and before you know it, your house is that one that all the neighborhood thugs vandalize.

Me, I let my friends in the front door. I wonder if Stepp grew up in the kind of house where the guests were not allowed to sit on the good furniture or use the guest soaps. Because those are for company. And don’t even ask what she serves at buffets.

The Times article also talks about the focus of abstinence-only programs on marriage, though they really drop the ball when they fail to note that all of these programs are concerned mostly with the sexual activity of girls. It’s not boys who are being pushed into marriage, or told that they’re chewed-up gum, or getting the message that sexual activity is inherently damaging to their psyches. Speaking of which, while I would like to see more realistic and frank discussion about the emotions tied up with having sex, not to mention peer pressure, I’m not so sure I like this idea so much:

Opinions vary on whether the absence of evidence — to borrow from Carl Sagan — is evidence of absence. One of the leading experts on sex education programs, Dr. John Jemmott of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, says some abstinence education programs in the future might show promise. He is hopeful about an abstinence curriculum that he has designed which, unlike many, tries to get teenagers to think long-term about their behavior and its consequences, questioning, for example, whether a boyfriend would really love you if you had sex with him. Many programs dwell on the risks of sex, not the reasons.

The thing is, the whole “I’ll love you if you have sex with me” thing works because girls are raised to think that they must be in love, or at least should have some Feelings, with people they have sex with. At the same time, boys are taught that they’re entitled to have sex, and that girls need to be cajoled, pressured or tricked into having sex, because they’re not supposed to give it up willingly. So what’s a great trick? Telling a girl you want to have sex because you love her, or at least that your love is conditional on her putting out.

Seems to me that if we were able to talk realistically to kids about sex, and to promote the idea that sex is a cooperative venture that both (or all) parties must enthusiastically give consent to, that having sex is okay, that not having sex is okay, that asking for what you want and being clear about what you don’t want is a good thing, and oh by the way here’s some medically accurate information about pregnancy and disease prevention, please use it when you’re ready — then, perhaps, we could give up this silly idea that girls are the gatekeepers of sex and morality.

Oh, silly me. There’s no profit in letting people live the lives they want to!