Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
As one who was taught by Benedictine nuns in a Catholic elementary school, I grew up with some strange and possibly severe restrictions on what the nuns called “mixing” the boys and girls. More recently, when my adult children were in school, the Diocese of Rockford forbade Altar boys being on the altar at the same time as Altar girls! With that background, I thought I had seen it all. However, the State of Tennessee has just beaten that sorry record of over restrictive rules for school children. It seems that Tennessee state senators, in their infinite wisdom have updated their already suspect abstinence based sex education law by suggesting that holding hands is a gateway to sex.
“Last week, the Senate passed SB 3310, a bill to update the state’s abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as “gateway sexual activities.” Just one senator voted against the legislation; 28 voted in favor. Since the bill specifically bans teachers from “demonstrating gateway sexual activity”, educators would be prohibited from even demonstrating what hand-holding is.” Truth Progress
I understand the concept of abstinence only programs. The nuns were in favor of that idea, and it worked as badly in the 1960’s as it does now. “In a new family life instructions bill, holding hands and kissing could be considered gateways to sex. Planned Parenthood said that allowing state government to define local sex education curriculum could backfire. According to a 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Study, 61 percent of Memphis City high school students and 27 percent of middle school students have had sex. That’s higher than the national average. Planned Parenthood said these numbers are why a new sex education bill promoting abstinence is not realistic.” WMC-TV
As I understand it, the State Senate of Tennessee has an ongoing problem with high school and middle school students having sex. Their educated response to this problem is to claim that holding hands is a dirty and dangerous act that could lead to dire sexual health consequences. Under this proposed legislation, a teacher could be subject to a direct lawsuit from parents if the instructor goes beyond this draconian curriculum. Do these State Senators have any idea what is happening in the real world? The numbers quoted by the Memphis TV station above suggest that the State Senate should be happy if all the students are doing is hand holding. Could the respective religious beliefs of these State Senators be guiding their legislative hands?
Just how successful are these abstinence only programs? One George Mason University article in December 2006 discussed claims that any reduction in teen pregnancy rates is far and away due to contraception and not abstinence. “A new study has shown that contraception, not abstinence, is behind declines in teen pregnancy. Researchers from Columbia University and the Guttmacher Institute took a nation-wide look at why it is that teen pregnancy rates are down. In 1995, there were just under 100 pregnancies for every 1,000 teenage women age 15-19, according to the Guttmacher Institute (the figures vary slightly among the three major sources for teen pregnancy rates – the Guttmacher Institute, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion). By 2002, this had gone down to just over 75 per 1,000. According to the new study, 86 percent of the decline is attributable to the use of contraception, while only 14 percent is attributable to abstinence. Abstinence has only contributed to a small percentage of the overall decline, and none for teens aged 18-19. For those ages 15-17, abstinence was responsible for about 23 percent of the decline, according to the study published in the American Journal of Public Health.” stats.org
When the Tennessee House representatives take up the Senate bill, I hope that they look beyond religion and realize that the teen pregnancy problem won’t be solved by burying their heads in the sand. A sex education program designed by educational experts and not Bishops, can have a positive impact on teen pregnancy. Outlawing teachers from actually talking about the real issues could defeat what the legislators are trying to accomplish. However, since Tennessee just passed a law allowing creationism to be taught alongside evolution, I am not holding my breath that the legislature in Tennessee will do the right thing.
Do you think religion is getting in the way of proper education principles and methods? Are the state representatives pandering to a particular segment of their citizens rather than suggesting and promoting valid, scientific methods to address the problem at hand? What do you think?
I knew that Sesame Street was EVIL!..
“Do these State Senators have any idea what is happening in the real world?”
Negatory Rubber Ducky.
Really, raff?
I thought they were my words. I’m going to have to start charging the Devil for using my IP. Hopefully my contracting skills are better than Faust.
re: home schoolers. The ones I know about are home schooling b/c they don’t want their kids exposed to the temptations and evils of public schools. This includes getting a religous exemption for sex education.
One pastor’s daughter now has 2 children, no husband. Her parents did everything they could to keep her out of the two public school systems she tried to get into before and after she left home.
Another family now have a grandchild whose parents are their son and daughter. Actually, I only know that the daughter was pregnant. They are also against abortion so I assume they now have a grandchild.
I worked as a substitute teacher for awhile. In one class, the students were learning, not just basic human biology, but how hormones affected them and how to deal with them. Among other things, they discussed means of determining when things were getting “too hot” and how to cool things off. The idea being that they had a responsibility to themselves and each other. This was a co-ed class. There may have been some snickers here and there but, overall, the students were respectful and participating. They were being empowered.
Has alzheimers set in? These old fogey legislators don’t seem to remember what it was like when they were young. Or maybe they just think that by keeping the kids ignorant that they will do as they are told. What fools!
This kind of thing has very little to do with actual religion and has everything to do with controlling people. Every longstanding human institution devotes a certain amount of its energies towards perpetuating the institution. When the proportion of those energies gets to great, it becomes a corrupting force in that institution. In religion and nationalism this usually takes the shape of condemning certain normal healthy human behaviors and then defining anyone that continues those behaviors or questions their prohibition as “the enemy”. Those who loudly condemn the unbelievers/traitors are held up as pillars of the institution, even when they are actually just adding to the corrupting force.
Gene,
Those are the Devil’s words!
“Tennessee just cant be serious can it? Are the people in Tennessee going to regularly host gatherings modeled after the Scopes Monkey Trial? God save us….” Yes, they are serious and No, God is not going to save us because there is no such thing!
By the same token, raff, if they adopt the slogan “Join the RCC and get laid!” they may be overwhelmed by new membership. Too much growth too quick can be as bad as a declining membership.
God loves life. The more humans born loving like Jesus loves the happier Jesus will be. Look beyond this life.
Mespo,
You are right that the numbers of Catholics might decrease if abstinence gets out of hand! 🙂
Jonathan Hughes,
In fairness to the RCC, my question asking if religion had anything to do with the legislators actions was not suggesting it was only a Catholic issue. My past personal experiences were in a Catholic setting.
It is not only a Catholic issue. The Religions as a whole teach the same thing about hell being a place when hell is Gods light being like fire to those that like darkness, and the perverting of servant to mean slave, and using the words perverted, and abomination, defiled, and deviant to mean what they have them mean, but all of them come from the mouth describing the blaspheming devil in the soul of a human. The devil hiding in the churches tried to make the things God made out to be bad. That is why war in government is made out to be good, and the oppression of humans in the legal system good. It is all connected.
“Do you think religion is getting in the way of proper education principles and methods?”
Does the Pope wear a funny hat?
Abstinence is bad for the RCC membership drive!
Holding hands being the gateway to sex to be horrible must therefore mean God who made sex must also be horrible. Catholics say they represent that being? Really now, had God be horrible the life on this planet would be horrible being a representation of the Hoooorable God that made it terrorizing humans that dared walk out of their man made shelters. The Catholics must worship a tyrant of a God that made sex bad. Could it be the Catholics unwittingly worship Satan under the guise of worshiping God who is loving not bad at all being Jesus?
It seems to me that a sui generis phrase like “holding hands” is pretty descriptive of the forbidden sexual activity…..and if the statute forbids discussion of that condemned activity how can the teacher even say the magic words? I have recent recollections here in California of elementary school kids crossing streets in cross walks holding each others hands looking like so many goslings following their Mother Goose. Tennessee just cant be serious can it? Are the people in Tennessee going to regularly host gatherings modeled after the Scopes Monkey Trial? God save us….
Blouise, I feel a story coming on.
In about mid-1990s a colleague and I received information about a case in which a colonel in the army, stationed at Fort Benning, GA (head of the marksmanship unit) had been charged by the CID with molesting three out of his four children. But his CO refused to allow the court martial to go forward because the CO has the last word in prosecutions. As a result, the kids had to go visit Colonel Dad on the base and the older two (twins) were violently opposed to it because (a) they had told on him; and (b) they didn’t want another dose. We got in touch with the general in the Pentagon in charge of social services within the army; my friend was an employee of the Division of Army Psychiatry at that time so I was the one who carried the laboring oar. I got to the Pentagon to meet with the Colonel in charge of the investigation and he spent several hours with me going over the documents and discussing things. I also told him about cases we had seen OUTSIDE the army. We were really involved in serious negotiations and he was trying to convince me that we shouldn’t divulge any of the information, although he had no real power to stop me. I had met with his boss, the general, who had shaken my hand in such a violent manner that it hurt for two weeks. My bones were crunched together; he did that on purpose right before asking me where I got the documents. I answered, “I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me.” Anyway, the Colonel parted ways with me that day saying to me, “I understand what you have told me. I understand this case. I understand what is going on here. I am getting a headache.” I made an appointment to see him again after two weeks. I brought him a whole bottle of aspirin. I put down the aspirin right next to the tape recorder he put down to tape the interview. I said, “This is for our meetings, because we will have many of them.”
I don’t know if this was mentioned in their legislation, but is there an age defined. I’m thinking about all the little kids holding hands with their “partners” as they line up to go on a field trip. What about the cultural divide that we all made fun of George Bush for when he was meeting with the Saudi King?
This stupidity is giving me a head ache.
Raff,
Lol…… You have to be kidding, right?
I wonder if there are exceptions for home schooled children….. Family better be exempt….. This is Tennessee after all.. The birth place of incest….. (only kidding, it really Arkansas)….
What about Sunday school…. This has to be a misprint…..