The drum beat against abstinence-only grows louder
Last week was a bad week for the Bush administration’s abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. Abstinence-only proponents were still reeling from the ab-only doesn’t work Mathematica bomb when it was announced that the ACLU, SIECUS and Advocates for Youth had sent a nine-page letter to the Secretary of HHS, Mike Leavitt, demanding the medical inaccuracies in abstinence-only-until-marriage programs (ala the Waxman report) be corrected within 30 days or HHS will face legal action.
Friday was even worse: more than 65 organizations signed on to letters to the Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education calling for the end of abstinence only until marriage grants for community based programs and for the government to begin allocating dollars for comprehensive sex education. Friday also saw the resignation of Randall L.Tobias, the former ab-only guru for the Bush administration, after it was widely reported that he had hired an “escort.” The Randall development underscores not only a good dose of hypocrisy but more importantly that the standards of behavior that the Bush administration has laid out as expected and acceptable is unrealistic for even the most ardent adult supporters.
