Amarillo College Ranger

Issue date: 4/5/07 Section: Religion & Politics

With STD rates reaching epidemic proportions, it's obvious that teens having sex is a major health concern. Unwanted pregnancies also are an inevitable consequence.

According to www.worththewait.org, the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any industrialized country.

Some people in Texas might blame the outbreaks on abstinence-only sex education being taught in public schools. But with sex being everywhere around us in our society, maybe abstinence should be stressed even more to undo what the media is forcing upon children.

Modern television series exploit sex and pass it off as no big deal. In Friends, one of the most popular shows on television for years, the group sleeps with each other and also with other people, then back with each other again.

Sex and the City, another popular television series, makes it seem normal to change boyfriends more often than one's underwear and to sleep with all of them like there are no consequences.

I don't think it's fair to say that abstinence-only sex education does not work. It seems to me that it works just as well, if not better, than the alternative.

Comprehensive sex education tells students, "If you do decide to have sex, just make sure to slap on a condom first."

Seriously, I grew up in Texas schools and, even being taught abstinence-only, it wasn't rocket science to know what a condom was and what its purpose is. I didn't need a teacher telling me that.

With more than 50 percent of sexually active people infected, Human papillomavirus probably is the most common STD today. Even scarier is that condoms cannot always be trusted to protect against the virus.

"Although using a condom is a good idea to prevent transmission of other infections or diseases, condoms may not protect sexual partners from genital HPV infections," the National Institutes of Health's "Report on Condom Effectiveness" states.

Because condoms don't cover the entire genital area, they also are not very effective when it comes to protecting against herpes. Herpes and HPV are two of the worst STDs out there, and not having sex is the only way to be sure infection won't occur.

It's not like an infected person has the word "herpes" or "HPV" written across their forehead. In many cases, there is no way to tell if a person has an STD. So being sexually promiscuous is like playing Russian Roulette.

Even in states where tax dollars do fund comprehensive sex education, STDs and teen pregnancy still are on the rise. So obviously those programs aren't doing a good job of solving the problem, either. Tax dollars should only be spent teaching a concept that is 100 percent effective, and that is abstinence.

Abstinence-only education promotes morality (and will someone please tell me again why that's such a bad thing?). It also teaches the only true way to be safe when it comes to sexuality, and it helps protect against the emotional ramifications that having premarital sex can bring.

Despite the type of education a person receives, they still are going to make their own decisions about sex and using protection. I believe teaching abstinence is more likely to make a person think twice about having sex, because it doesn't try to rationalize the issue.

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