Obama's Proposal To Redirect Abstinence-Only Funding Renews 'Culture-War Battle,' Washington Times Columnist States

Main Category: Sexual Health / STDs
Article Date: 24 Jun 2009 - 7:00 PDT

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President Obama is causing the "core culture-war battle" over sex education to "come full circle" by proposing to redirect funding for abstinence-only sex education to a new Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative that "rejects an abstinence-only approach," Washington Times columnist Cheryl Wetzstein writes. According to Wetzstein, Obama's fiscal year 2010 budget plan "zeroed out" the Title V abstinence-only sex education grant program, set to expire on June 30, and the Community-Based Abstinence Education program.

Wetzstein continues that groups supporting comprehensive sex education have "loathed Title V from its inception" because of its "prohibition on teaching teens how to use birth-control products (i.e., no condom demonstrations) and its eight-point definition that seemed utterly unrealistic to sex educators." For example, Title V's definition said that the "'expected standard of human sexual activity'" was a "'mutually faithful, monogamous relationship in the context of marriage,'" which Wetzstein says she has "heard many times, was insulting to gay youth who couldn't marry" and "insensitive to minority youth who grew up in neighborhoods where marriage was rare."

Wetzstein asks, "What will happen to Title V?" She writes that opponents "are staying vigilant" and working to avoid "any last-minute, back-door revivals of this program." Groups that support abstinence-only sex education are "working the phones, too," Wetzstein reports. According to Wetzstein, Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, noted that "[s]aving Title V will require some heavy lifting, but 'it's expired before and been retroactively renewed.'" Wetzstein concludes that "we'll soon see what happens with the new players in town" (Wetzstein, Washington Times, 6/23).

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