Editor,
All Daily Lobo readers should be shocked and appalled at the results of a devastating study showing that one in four teenage girls have a sexually transmitted disease, which has been making headlines lately.
This is an outrage, not because so many children at younger ages are having sex in this country, but it's an outrage that so many children are so profoundly ignorant about sex and its potential consequences.
This study should be a wake-up call to young people across the country, and it is a damning condemnation of all the horribly misguided abstinence-only programs still being lauded by this administration.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Bush administration is still beholden to religious fanatics who hypocritically prefer moralizing and religious dogma to education and support when it comes to sex.
Abstinence-only programs are a $1.5 billion waste of taxpayer money, and it has been proven time and time again in study after study that they simply do not work, no matter how the administration wants to spin it.
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The teenage birth rate grew in the U.S. this year for the first time in 15 years, according to another recent study, and teenage pregnancy has always been a problem in New Mexico. The simple fact is that the supporters of abstinence-only programs are just plain wrong, and their holier-than-thou attitude is causing unimaginable damage to America's youth.
The children of this country deserve better than this. Young people are going to experiment with sex whether we like it or not. There is no force known to man that can prevent this - certainly not religion.
Americans are acknowledged around the world as being overly prudish when it comes to human sexuality, and this is why we fall so far behind other Western nations that understand that education, not condemnation, is the best way to keep their citizens healthy and disease free.
In America, we'd rather pretend that young people don't have natural urges or curiosity about sex, and that these urges can be controlled through guilt and ignorance. They couldn't be more wrong.
You think maybe we'd have a healthier, happier, less-crazy society if we weren't so uptight and hypocritical when it comes to sexuality? I sure do.
Clearly, many parents in this country are clueless when it comes to sex as well, so if young people can't turn to their elders for critical information on such important subjects as avoiding STIs and pregnancy, who can they turn to?
This country needs to stop throwing money at worthless abstinence-only programs and go back to teaching sex education to our children at an early age like the rest of the civilized world.
We've got a lot of catching up to do. This study proves once again that abstinence-only programs aren't working.
Jason Darensburg
UNM staff
