Pledging virginity no shield for STDs

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are more likely to take chances with other kinds of sex that increase the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, a study of 12,000 adolescents suggests.

The report by Yale and Columbia University researchers could help explain their earlier findings that teens who pledged abstinence are just as likely to have STDs as their peers.

The latest study, published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that teens pledging virginity until marriage are more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens who have not had intercourse. That behavior, however, "puts you at risk," said Hannah Brueckner, assistant professor of sociology at Yale and one of the study's authors.

Click here for the rest.

Yet another sign that "abstinence based" sex education is not only ineffective, but downright dangerous. As I've said many times, "abstinence based" sex ed is simply wishful thinking that denies the reality of contemporary culture: the vast majority of Americans have sex before the age of eighteen, and no public school program is going to change that. Period. Indeed, the above linked article points out that "Last year, the same research team found that 88 percent of teens who pledge abstinence end up having sex before marriage." This is all a sick joke, and is representative of the same kind of pathological denial evident a couple of posts down. America's teens are being doomed, by policy, to risky sexual behaviors that don't simply damage health; some of these kids contract HIV and will die young. All for bullshit. We're way past due for a massive implementation of comprehensive sex ed in all schools. Really, we ought to have goldfish bowls of condoms on every teacher's desk. God, what a fucked country!

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