Chastity Makes a Comeback

Thanks to some inappropriate talking and staple-throwing, the uniformed 13- and 14-year-olds at Bernardo Yorba Middle School have been made to sit for roll call. When they are quiet, the teacher introduces today’s guest speaker, a friendly looking woman in a short skirt, who also, they are told, suffered the consequences of imperfect behavior.

Her problem, however, was sex.

Some kids look alarmed, others shake their heads in sympathy, as Mary Slosted, 42, leads them through her roller coaster life of childhood molestation, sex at 16 in the back seat of a Volkswagen, two abortions, depression, suicidal thoughts, anorexia and overeating, marriage and divorce and, finally, redemption through sexual abstinence.

After her divorce, she tells the students, she didn’t have sex for nine years until she remarried at age 37. Then, she confides to a few snickers, it was an exciting “all-night affair.”

Slosted represents Choices, a private, Fullerton-based program that teaches students they should wait until they are married to have sex. Programs like Choices, whose 20 speakers brought its message of chastity last year to 17,000 students in Orange County, are changing the face of sex education in the United States.

If teaching sexual abstinence sounded hopelessly dated a few years ago, it is now blessed by federal and state governments. With $500 million in public funds, hundreds of new programs are instructing children that premarital sex will likely have “harmful psychological and physical effects” and that condoms and other contraceptives are unreliable. Even California, the only state to reject federal money for abstinence-only programs, has funded Choices with about $400,000.

As such programs proliferate, they are challenging the long-established trinity of sex education--human sexuality, safe sex and birth control. This turn of events has led some religious conservatives to proclaim victory over what they see as the corrosive effects of the ‘60s. “The sexual revolution came and went and sex lost,” declares Leslee Unruh, president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse in Sioux Falls, S.D., which has counted about 1,000 abstinence programs nationwide. “This is our moment in time.”

In the last two years, 698 new abstinence-only programs and 21 new media campaigns have been funded by the federal government with state matching funds. In Chicago, where teen pregnancy rates have soared to 40%, a new curriculum adopted last fall teaches abstinence as the best choice, rather than one of several options. Sweetwater, Texas, population 12,000, has created a position for an “abstinence education coordinator.”

For the first time in years, liberal sex educators are on the defensive. They insist they have always believed that young people should delay having sex until they are physically and emotionally mature. But, they warn, the prevalence of teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease makes it imperative to fund programs that tell teenagers how to protect themselves and others.

Because sex education touches on deeply held moral beliefs, it has always been a volatile subject in the United States. Sarah Brown, director of the private, nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Pregnancy, identifies some of the issues that such programs inherently raise: “The roles of men and women. Feelings about the sanctity of children. What does sex mean? What’s the role of sex in marriage? People start talking about abstinence and all of a sudden they’re having a discussion about the American family.”

The irony of the current debate is that school programs alone are unlikely to dent problems of teenage sexual behavior and pregnancy, says Brown, whose organization supports research-based efforts through the media and community organizations as well as schools. “In the great cultural landscape of teenagers, they’re a very small part. Most teachers who offer them are not very well trained. The notion that six hours in two years can make a huge dent on something as important as adolescent pregnancy is naive.”

Lobbyist Instrumental in Leading Movement

If there is an architect of the abstinence-only movement, it would be a rumpled and graying 47-year-old lobbyist named Robert Rector. A policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, Rector has focused on illegitimacy as a source of social problems and is considered a leading thinker among religious conservatives. In 1994, when the Republicans swept into Congress poised to reform welfare, one senator’s aide recalled, “Robert had a proposal in hand, and abstinence was a part of it.”

Conservatives’ concern about family breakdown was running so high, says Jennifer Marshall, a former colleague at Heritage, that “a lot of us who worked on the welfare reform bill really felt that whether or not people went back to work was not even as important as the status of marriage and the family.”

When Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.) approached Rector to help draft the 1996 federal Welfare Reform Act, the policy analyst suggested the bill set aside funds to teach that sex outside marriage is wrong.

“We were looking for programs helping children practice self-control when they’re minors,” Rector says, “but also helping them understand the role of self-control in marriage in their adult lives. This is really not an issue solely about what teenagers are doing in the back seats of cars. It’s an issue about the breakdown of adult relationships between men and women.”

Rector says that when he surveyed school programs that stressed abstinence, he found “essentially condom-delivery programs with a little bit of abstinence tacked on to the front. We felt we had to create some true abstinence programs to see what they could actually do.”

Led by Rector, representatives from the Christian Coalition, the Family Research Council, a Washington-based family values advocacy group and others worked for months to draft tightly worded language that would prevent liberal-minded administrators from using potential funds for comprehensive sex education programs.

The measure said programs can receive money only if they teach the social, psychological and health gains to be realized by refraining from sexual activity; that abstinence is the expected standard for all school-age children; that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity; and that sexual activity outside marriage is likely to have “harmful physical and psychological effects.” Funds cannot be used to endorse birth control.

Tucked into the miscellaneous Title IX of the welfare legislation, the item escaped the scrutiny of sex education lobbyists, who were surprised to see the proposal appear from the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House Commerce Committee.

“This was in one of the dead-of-night provisions,” says James Wagner, president of Advocates for Youth, an advocacy group that favors comprehensive programs. “There were no hearings on this prior to enactment.”

At first, members of Planned Parenthood urged state legislators to “just say no” to the money. Nevertheless, in the first two years of the five-year program, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded matching grants to all 50 states. Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana, Indiana and Georgia adopted the provisions into their own education laws.

Led by the Democrats, California lawmakers rejected the abstinence-only program, partly because its own abstinence-only program was found to be ineffective and because the state already has a $70-million initiative in place to reduce teen pregnancy. Half of California’s two-year share of the matching grants, $5.75 million, is about to be returned to the federal government, according to state sources.

Official reviews show that the federal funds have set in motion moderate as well as extreme elements. In Arizona, programs aim to “change a culture” about out-of-wedlock sexual activity and target adults up to age 45 as well as children. On the other hand, Massachusetts has used the funds exclusively for an advertising campaign targeting preteens and parents.

In Utah, even a Planned Parenthood affiliate has tapped into the money for a school program called “Growing Up Comes First,” that teaches “maturation” issues to 10- through 12-year-olds and their parents. Lynda Ion, director of Planned Parenthood’s community services, says the program stresses respect, self-knowledge and candor about sexual issues. “We’re not going to tell the kids they’re going to hell.”

Long-Term Impact of Sex Education Unclear

Sex educators like to say that everyone gets sex education, if not from the classroom, from the informal curriculum of parents and friends, movies and TV, the lunchroom and the playground. “The question is never sexuality education yes or no,” says Debra Haffner, president of the Sexuality Information Education Council of the United States. “The question is whether it’s left to chance or taught by trained teachers in a comprehensive program that covers a range of attitudes and skills that young people need.”

Still, the long-term effect of formal sex education is unclear because what passes for sex education can differ radically from state to state, not to mention teacher to teacher. Depending on where they live and the prevailing political winds, children might still be hearing biological facts from the gym coach, practicing refusal skills in a Planned Parenthood class or going down to Safeway to buy condoms as a homework assignment.

No matter what the course, teachers’ values or embarrassment can’t help but “ooze out of their pores,” says sex educator Lynda Madaras. As a result, she says, teenagers rarely hear what advocates in both camps say they need most: how to craft meaningful relationships from the complex ambiguities of everyday life.

As the age gap between puberty and marriage has grown over the years, most sex educators have come to see sexual activity among young people as inevitable. Recent surveys, however, report that previously unprecedented rates of sexual activity among teenagers have started to drop. Now, less than half of all high school students have had sex. In 1998, the average age of first intercourse was 16.3, up from 15.8 in 1997, according to the Durex Global Survey. Teen pregnancies, abortions and births have also declined. On the other hand, 3 million new cases of STDs are diagnosed among teenagers each year, and half of all new HIV cases occur among those under age 25.

“In general,” says Madaras, “kids today who have it together, have it a lot more together. But a lot more kids are slipping through the cracks than ever before.”

Contrary to popular images, teen sex is rarely sexy, Madaras says. Some have sex to be popular, to achieve status, or to prove they’re not gay. “For most kids,” Madaras says, “having sex is like holding their nose and jumping into an ice-cold pool.”

Some liberal sex educators admit that abstinence is a subject many students need to hear more about. Dr. Drew Pinsky, co-host of the raunchy and irreverent MTV and syndicated radio show “Loveline,” champions abstinence as the best choice for teenagers’ emotional health. Most girls under age 18, he says, are not prepared for an intense emotional bond. When they have sex too soon, they risk depression in addition to pregnancy and disease. Young men, he says, can become clingy if they have sex before they are “fully developed and autonomous as a person.”

But Pinsky says abstinence alone is a dangerous--even immoral--policy beyond a certain age. Surveys show that fewer than 15% of those who marry are virgins. By withholding knowledge, spreading medical misinformation and including anti-abortion messages, liberal advocates say many abstinence-only programs leave people without any backup plan to protect themselves from pregnancy or disease.

Looking to Expand Abstinence Programs

Meanwhile, Robert Rector is looking to expand abstinence education.

“The next step of the debate in my mind is to recognize that we don’t just have a problem with teen sexuality; we have a problem with young adult sexuality,” he says. “Almost all unmarried people in their 20s are sexually active, and a lot of this behavior is not moving toward stable relationships. That’s a very serious thing.”

He has already been lobbying state officials to mix a pro-marriage message with their welfare programs. He expects that proposals this year will be made to increase the federal abstinence-only funding. He also envisions bills on marriage and character education.

If the abstinence club at Stanford University is any indicator, though, young adults may prove to be a tougher sell than teenagers. Five years ago, a few students formed a club called “True Love Waits” in reaction to a freshman safe sex program they felt promoted a “ ‘60s mentality.” The organization attracted as many as 80 members and put together dorm talks on saving sex for marriage.

Last year, co-president Brendan Stuhan, 19, said he became frustrated by other students’ challenges during the talks. “There are lots of people who want to make exceptions,” he says. “‘How far is OK?’ ‘What about cohabiting?’ ‘What if you plan to get married next week?’ ‘What if you’re stranded on a desert island with no priest to perform the ceremony?’ ”

This year, membership in “True Love Waits” dwindled to six. The panel discussions were discontinued.