Conservatives Love Virgins
Recent studies by the Department of Health and Human Services found that teenagers who took a pledge of virginity actually had similar rates of sexually transmitted diseases as did teenagers who declined to take the pledge. (Apparently, they also have a lot of anal sex, in the curious belief that backdoor-love "doesn't count.")
Now a conservative thinktank,
the Heritage Foundation, has come out with two studies contradicting that finding—studies that seem more politically motivated than scientifically sound.
According to the Times, "Independent experts called the new findings provocative, but criticized the Heritage team's analysis as flawed and lacking the statistical evidence to back its conclusions. The new findings have not been submitted to a journal for publication, an author said. The independent experts who reviewed the study said the findings were unlikely to be published in their present form."
Conservatives remind me of the Catholic Church: They're both so anti-sex, they contort science and the truth to support their dogma. Both try to control what they fear—or what they see as a threat to their own hierarchical authority. And both wind up corrupting themselves internally as a result. Catholics have the child abuse problem; conservatives have the awkward truth that, as one high-level Republican friend of mine recently said to me, "they're all gay." He wasn't really joking.
No one wants to see teenagers screwing like bunnies. (Well, teenagers might, but otherwise....) But can't we just accept that sex is a normal, healthy part of life—even teenage life—and maybe it's better to teach kids about sex than just telling them that they shouldn't have any?
