REVERSING THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION….Since 1996, thanks to the Republican addition of Section 912 to that year’s welfare reform bill, the federal government has spent over a billion dollars funding “abstinence only” sex education programs for teens. Recently, however, the Bush administration rewrote the rules so that programs can only get funding if they promote avoidance of sex at any age until you’re safely ensconced in a traditional marriage of one man and one woman. Via Dale Carpenter, Walter Olson complains:
Such language inadvertently makes clear, however, that the abstinence program has cut loose from whatever original public-health rationale it may have had, and is now about enforcing social conformity, not reducing risks of disease or out-of-wedlock pregnancy or empowering novices to make more considered decisions.
I just have to ask Walter a question: did he ever really believe that public health considerations were behind this in the first place? Did anyone? Seriously?
