"Facts" of life Michelle Cottle rages over the a priori commitment to abstinence pushed by the Bush administration. It seems that it's not only Leftists that will allow their ideology to overwhelm any concern to the facts on the ground.

The Post piece details accusations by sex-education advocates and HIV-prevention groups that the Bushies are "waging a widespread campaign of disinformation and intimidation that is hampering AIDS prevention work across the country." The groups--including Advocates for Youth, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and the Gay Men's Health Crisis--expressed concern that a Health and Human Services (HHS) review of all grants to AIDS prevention, treatment, and research groups is in part motivated by the administration's hostility toward any form of sex ed that does not focus solely on abstinence. HHS has also launched an investigation to determine if several AIDS programs either promote sexual activity or are too sexually explicit. By contrast, the head of Advocates for Youth told the Post, HHS has refused to conduct audits of abstinence-only programs--even after a federal court ruled that the state of Louisiana was illegally using its federal abstinence funding to promote religion.

I don't know where I stand on the abstinence only stuff really as far as whether it works or not. I don't know many people that abstained before marriage as I'm only in my mid-20s and don't know many people that are married yet. This is probably a reflection of my social circle, as many people from my high school that I have had no contact with (especially Mormons) got married right after they graduated from what I hear (and many of them have now divorced in their mid-20s!). Maybe abstinence only works for people too stupid to think about the consequences of casual sex with strangers. But certainly its outcome seems like it is something that should be allowed to play out on on the local level before federal decisions are made. From what I've seen in my own life abstinence only works if one has an expectation of getting married before 20 (as many conservative religious youth probably will), but it's pretty unrealistic for people that want to get their college degree and settled in their careers before they get married. Of course, it is the latter group that probably doesn't need "sex education" to tell them when to do the deed. Maybe people should change it from "abstinence only" to "abstinence only for teenagers." Telling people to wait on sex is going up a rather steep hill. Might be better to tell 12 year olds to get engaged before they graduate from high school. That might prevent pre-marital sex.