Posts tagged as:

abstinence

Linkage for 11-10-08

by Viviane on 11/10/2008

in sex

National Prop 8 Protests: Queers United has a listing of Prop 8 protests and rallies around the country.

Bound Not Gagged on the Craigslist erotic services crackdown.

Esquire on DIY porn.

Friday night, Charlie Rose rebroadcast his conversation with the Emanuel brothers (Rahm, Ezekiel & Ari).

11th Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy

For Your Nympomation, maker of sex toy cases, now has an affiliate site. If you have a blog, sign up! Vera, the owner,  is on Twitter.

Ren’s open letter to those who voted no on Prop K.

Susannah Breslin is guest blogging at BoingBoing on vaginablogs and sexbots.

Oh no, the Pioneer Theatre has closed.

I was hanging curtains, honest!

The Ira Isaacs trial isn’t over yet. The federal prosecutor asked 50 appellate judges to recuse themselves.

There will be a Prop 8 protest at the Mormon Temple this Wednesday, in NYC.

Fleshbot’s  top 10 celebrity sex tapes.

Something instructional to read on the train: Violet Blue’s the complete ebook guide to sex.

The Steamroller gets off. Motherfucker. Susannah’s BoingBoing post quotes Debauchette.

Ducky Doolittle has always advocated for foster children (having been one herself). She will be writing a memoir and it will be coming out under her real name/ She outs herself .

President-elect Barack Obama will reverse U.S. family-planning and AIDS-prevention strategies that have long linked global funding to anti-abortion and abstinence education.

R.I.P. Miriam Makeba.

Winston Churchill’s mother, Jennie Jerome, was a MILF. (via Sexoteric)

Feministing’s Weekly Feminist Reader.

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. . . During the campaign, the media has largely respected calls to treat Bristol Palin’s pregnancy as a private matter. But the reactions to it have exposed a cultural rift that mirrors America’s dominant political divide. Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.

A handful of social scientists and family-law scholars have recently begun looking closely at this split. Last year, Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, published a startling book called “Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers,” and he is working on a follow-up that includes a section titled “Red Sex, Blue Sex.” His findings are drawn from a national survey that Regnerus and his colleagues conducted of some thirty-four hundred thirteen-to-seventeen-year-olds, and from a comprehensive government study of adolescent health known as Add Health. Regnerus argues that religion is a good indicator of attitudes toward sex, but a poor one of sexual behavior, and that this gap is especially wide among teen-agers who identify themselves as evangelical. The vast majority of white evangelical adolescents—seventy-four per cent—say that they believe in abstaining from sex before marriage. (Only half of mainline Protestants, and a quarter of Jews, say that they believe in abstinence.) Moreover, among the major religious groups, evangelical virgins are the least likely to anticipate that sex will be pleasurable, and the most likely to believe that having sex will cause their partners to lose respect for them. (Jews most often cite pleasure as a reason to have sex, and say that an unplanned pregnancy would be an embarrassment.) But, according to Add Health data, evangelical teen-agers are more sexually active than Mormons, mainline Protestants, and Jews. On average, white evangelical Protestants make their “sexual début”—to use the festive term of social-science researchers—shortly after turning sixteen. Among major religious groups, only black Protestants begin having sex earlier.

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. . .McCain’s record on issues surrounding teen pregnancy and contraceptives during his more than two decades in the Senate indicates that he and Palin have similar views. Until Monday, when the subject surfaced in a deeply personal manner, teen pregnancy and sex education were not issues in the national political campaign.

Palin herself said she opposes funding sexual-education programs in Alaska.

”The explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support,” she wrote in a 2006 questionnaire distributed among gubernatorial candidates.

McCain’s position on contraceptives and teen pregnancy issues has been difficult to judge on the campaign trail, as he appears uncomfortable discussing such topics. Reporters asked the presumptive GOP presidential nominee in November 2007 whether he supported grants for sex education in the United States, whether such programs should include directions for using contraceptives and whether he supports President Bush’s policy of promoting abstinence.

”Ahhh, I think I support the president’s policy,” McCain said.

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. . . The Obamas represent change that most of us are hungry for, and in some cases, desperate for. So, here’s how Barack can put an end to the war on public school sex education and the sharing of accurate sex information to people of all ages:

1. Kill the abstinence programs. Period. Think of them as creationism in schools: optional to include in curricula but privately funded only. Fire the f— out of anyone with a religious agenda in a position of power in relation to public health. We are a nation of many faiths — most of which are not being served with this nonsense.

2. My best friend’s daughter is 5, and brags that she has a boyfriend. Craft programs that are age appropriate so kids understand what they’re doing every step of the way. Take a cue from England, where the Sex and Relationship Education program centers on “All About Us: Living and Growing” videos for 5-7-year-olds, 7-9-year-olds and 9-11-year-olds, with workbooks about healthy sexual relationships for kids (and adults) with learning disabilities.

3. Require all sex ed programs to include practical information about reproduction (including a woman’s right to choose and male responsibilities of parenthood), contraception, STDs and STIs, sexual pleasure, masturbation, consent, homosexuality, sexual tolerance, and gender identity. Kids are dealing with all this stuff; adults need to stop lying to themselves and have honest discourse with kids about it.

4. Set aside federal funding for a teen sex ed counselor to be on school staff at all times, exclusively for hotline-style accurate sex information, and completely confidential. Our kids’ health and futures depend on it. Require that they are tech- and Internet-savvy.

5. Create a task force to research and implement outreach programs that visit schools for presentations on relevant and current sexual issues. This could include the Gardasil vaccination (HPV shot), presentations on transgender issues, workshops on sexual consent, rape prevention and self-defense for girls, age-appropriate sex ed books, religious faith and sexuality, and sexual questions around — yes — political scandals.

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