The man who has cheated on all three of his wives, proudly claims to be able to grab women by their pussies, and has been known to pay hush money to the porn stars he sleeps with, is now leading an administration that wants to encourage schools to emphasize “the benefits of avoiding sex.”
Lol. My god.
Abstinence-only sex education doesn’t merely emphasize “the benefits of avoiding sex.” It straight up refuses to give you information that will help you stay healthy and happy in the long run. It lies to you. It is a misinformation campaign with the end goal being that people only have heterosexual sex within the confines of marriage for the sake of having American Christian babies.
It wants to criminalize abortion. It wants to criminalize birth control. It judges you for your sex drive — especially if you’re a woman — and it insists your self-worth is all tied up in whether or not you have sex.
I know this because I had an abstinence-only sex education. They told me condoms don’t really work. They told me even if you could get the condom on, which they said was very hard to do, that it would probably not be successful. They came up with nonsensical metaphors about your virginity being a fire within the confines of the fireplaces of marriage; it’s great, but outside of that, it will burn your house down.
They mentioned birth control, only to dismiss the different forms as being unreliable. My abstinence-only sex educators were Catholic, so any form of birth control was a sin. Sex is for two reasons, they explained: love and procreation. Sure, if you’re married, you can have sex if you don’t want kids, but use the natural planning method because it’s important to at least be open to the idea of children when getting it in.
It worked for Rick Santorum and his six children, so you have nothing to worry about.
Abstinence-only sex education tells you sex is dangerous. It tells you of the terrors, but then tells you there’s no way to avoid them. It refuses to actually give the education it pretends to give. It tells you Planned Parenthood is an abortion factory.
There is no separating abstinence-only sex education from the pro-life movement. They are inextricably linked together.
Abstinence-only sex education assumes you’re straight. It assumes you’re monogamous. It assumes that sex is only vaginal penetration (which leaves quite a few in the LGBT community virgins). It gives you a timeline on when it’s acceptable to finally kiss, touch, hold hands, cuddle, spend the night (I’m serious — there was an actual fucking timeline at one point). It is the reason we even need the #MeToo movement to begin with.
But it does not tell you how to avoid STDs. It doesn’t tell you which form of birth control would be best for you. It doesn’t explain the concept of consent, because all sex outside of marriage is equally bad. It doesn’t allow room for curiosity, which is an insult to the very concept of education.
Abstinence-only sex education leads to higher teen birth rates and higher abortion rates. The comprehensive sex education initiatives we saw under Obama led to a decrease in both areas. We have seen the results. The more educated you are on sex and reproduction, the higher your quality of life because you will have the knowledge to plan for your family on your schedule, instead of living in fear that having sex makes you a harlot and will invariably give you syphilis.
Make no mistake: this is Mike Pence’s doing. He wants to make abortion illegal again. And he’s starting with this.
Featured image via screen grab/YouTube
