12
Oct

Sex Education Vs. Abstinence Only Education

   Posted by: Pressed   in Ethics & Worldviews

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I hate to admit it, but I watch Boston Legal.  There are a lot of different reasons why I watch this show, but the most significant reason is I like to ponder the moral, ethical, and political quandaries they bring up in many of the court cases presented on the show.  For the most part Boston Legal makes conservatives look like idiots with mad cow disease and liberals are portrayed as the most sensible, logical, and tolerant people.  Allan (played by James Spader) always takes on the role of the sensible liberal.

This week Allan took a court case involving a young teenage girl with aids who wanted to sue her school for teaching abstinence only.  She was a 15 year old girl who had sex with her boyfriend (things got out of hand she says) and then she found out that she was HIV positive from that encounter.  She felt that the school itself was most at fault and she only took a small part of the blame in this.  Her school was teaching abstinence only in order to get government grants and she thought that the school should be required to teach safe sex education and that this safe sex education would have saved her life.

The question is, was the school at fault for causing this girl to suffer with HIV.  The obvious, logical answer is NO!  Regardless of what the school teaches in regards to sex, this girl was ultimately responsible for her actions.  If she wanted to have sex then it should have been her responsibility to find out all of the facts about sex before diving into it.  First of all, sexual education is readily available to teenagers and I find it hard to believe that this 15 year old girl would have been so naive as to now know that unprotected sex spreads disease.  Secondly it is her choice and she should be held accountable for that choice, instead she was attempting to blame someone other than herself for having aids.  She didn’t blame or sue the boyfriend who gave her the disease, she sued the school.  Thirdly, if she is going to sue anyone for blame other than herself then it should have either been the boyfriend for not telling her that he had HIV or it should have been her parents.  Sexual education should be something taught in the home and these parents should have been responsible as well.

Instead she passes the blame to the school and the school is only teaching abstinence only education in order to get a government grant and so ultimately it is the evil conservative religious finantics in government who are at fault for this 15 year old girl having aids.  Give me a break.  She made the choice to have sex.  It’s her fault.  Bottom line is that we don’t want to be held responsible for our own actions.

She won the court case and the school had to pay her 750,000 because they were at fault for giving this girl aids.  Ridiculous.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 11:56 am and is filed under Ethics & Worldviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 comments so far

JD
 1 

Sexual education should be something taught in the home and these parents should have been responsible as well.

I’m going to go ahead and say that I don’t know which side of the fence I fall on here. Part of me thinks that sex education in the hands of the public school is dangerous thing. As disturbed as I am at thought, it pales in comparison to the thought of some parents I know education their kids about sex. To them, sex education is supplying their kid with a pack of condoms and some privacy.

If good abstinence education is in place, I’d have to say that (on the whole) I’m more comfortable with the school handling sex ed instead of stupid parents. Of course, the best is to have it handled by Christian parents who know what the heck they’re doing.

October 12th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Michael Morgan
 2 

I know Christian parents that put their daughters on the pill so I don’t know if the Christians are any better off teaching it.

October 12th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
kmichael
 3 

Really Michael? That should get one banned from church for life!!! Ok, may be jsut a couple weeks. Even some Christians do not believe in the Sufficiency of Scripture or the power of the Holy Spirit, or the side effects of those drugs on little girls. Vatashame!

October 12th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Christopher
 4 

Normally Boston Legal (a show I love for several reasons) doesn’t get me upset. I laugh at the old conservative idiots (make sure they have their booze, guns and women and they will be okay), I chuckle at the liberal slant to the show and smugly shake my head when the most ridiculous decisions are handed down by even dumber juries. But Tuesday night’s show got me worked up. I had to stop watching it and return later. It was attacking two institutions that I am closely affiliated with and it burned my buns.

First the idea that the school is responsible for teaching kids about sex is just ludicrous. I certainly hear what JD is saying but I think an abstinence friendly government is soon going to be gone. If Obama gets his way, Kindergartners will have sex ed added to the curriculum. I can see it now: after calendar time the little ones trot on over to the story carpet for their “age appropriate” sex ed lesson. (Wonder what a dumb idea like that will do to teenage pregnancy levels in the future?)

Obviously parents of all backgrounds have completely dropped the ball on this and now schools are expected to pick up the slack. Just like in every other issue that parents don’t want to deal with. And then this episode. Grrr….

Of course the girl wouldn’t think that she was responsible. Well only a little responsible… They way she and her lawyers portrayed the whole thing you would have thought the principal was there holding her down… Amazing. Yeah, honey. Obviously this is the school’s fault not your own.

Good thing it is fiction and I can’t wait until next week’s episode.

October 12th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Alison
 5 

What perplexes me is why conservatives uphold ignorance about sexual function as the godly answer to teenage sex and pregnancy. Abstinence-only education is an oxymoron, and one that has no benefit. Kids deserve to know about sex just like they deserve to know about digestion, bipolar disorder, and WWII. Fundamentalists who think wagging their fingers constitutes complete sex education should keep their kids at home.

October 20th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
JD
 6 

Allison,

I can agree with some of what you said. I have a problem with the oxymoron statement. Abstinence education doesn’t teach that sex is bad nor does it avoid the topic of sex. It isn’t finger waggin either. If it were to become that, I would be against it. Rather, abstinence education seeks to educate about how sex is best and how it is safest. I don’t see how this is upholding ignorance.

October 22nd, 2007 at 10:47 am
Michael
 7 

If calling sex outside of marriage sin is wagging my finger than I am guilty. Sin must be called what sin is. The Bible is clear it is sin.

October 22nd, 2007 at 3:02 pm
kmichael
 8 

Kids deserve to learn about bipolar disorder??? Why? So that we can fill them full of psychotropic drugs? Bipolar disorder is nothing more than the outpouring of the sinful nature of mankind as a manipulative force on society. It cannot be cured with medication. It can only be cured by a submission to of the human will to the divine will of God. Is it easy? Of course not, but neither is life, even with Christ. Be careful using the secular names of mental disorders. He who names it gets to determine the cure for it. Go back the Bible–it is sufficient for all things–including the depravity of man.

As for sex education for children. Is 6th grade still the recommended age for such courses? If so, then teach them the journey down the fallopian tube. Teach them about diseases. Tell them the truth! And that is that by NOT having sex (of any kind) STD’s can be avoided–and so can pregnancy. How hard of a concept is this? Oh, and you obviously do not know how to use he word oxymoron. There is no possible oxymoron in the phrase “abstinence only education”

You say that conservatives want children to be ignorant of the “facts.” I want 5 years olds to be ignorant, and 6 years olds, and 7 year olds, and 8… I am not a child educator, but I still think 6th grade (maybe 5th) is a good time to discuss the biology of it all. Aside from that, leave it alone. If an 8 year old wants to learn about sex all they need to do is Google it. Or as mommy and daddy.

Public education, in some settings, is a joke. (not to demean my dear friends who are teachers). We need to fight for school vouchers and our churches need to unite and form “education coops” to educate “our own.”

Thanks for playing Allison, but I submit that you are wrong in all of your assumptions. Compare achievement test scores over the last 50 years with teen pregnancy rates and STD’s. The only conclusion…more kids are having sex, and at a younger age. This is wrong—do you admit that it is wrong? Or is desensitized sex the new moral standard? If that is the case, why bother to teach kids the biology of procreation?

tootles!

K

October 22nd, 2007 at 3:20 pm

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