Mo Money for Monogamy

Over the past five years, the Bush administration has put more than $600 million federal dollars into the coffers of abstinence-until-marriage programs. Critics contend that such funding is a back-door way to provide infrastructure funding to the religious right since many of these no-sex sex education programs are housed within Christian, evangelical, pro-life organizations. 

In mid-October, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Children and Families issued the latest batch of federal disbursements, totaling $37 million to 63 grantees.

In announcing the grants, Wade Horn, HHS Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, said, ​“the only way to be 100 percent certain that kids avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases is to stay abstinent until marriage.”

“By focusing on this clear message,” Horn said, ​“the Bush administration is ensuring youth have the information they need to make the healthiest decision.” 

The relationship between abstinence and health is highly questionable. A March 2005 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health reported that STD rates among virginity ​“pledgers” and non-pledgers were about the same. Furthermore, the findings indicated that virginity pledgers were less likely to see a doctor if they feared having contracted an STD, and were consequently less frequently tested for and/​or diagnosed for STDs.

Although not publicized by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at all, many of this year’s grants have actually gone to so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), of which there are at least 3,200 in the United States. 

CPCs do not offer abortions. Instead, they attempt to sway pregnant girls and women away from that choice through counseling that emphasizes the physical and psychological trauma of abortion. Among the dozens of CPCs on the most recent list of federal grant recipients are Crisis Pregnancy Center, Inc., in Anchorage, Alaska ($663,845); New Hope Center in Edgewood, Kentucky ($799,935); Pregnancy Counseling Center in Reno, Nevada ($371,358); Elizabeth’s New Life Center in Dayton, Ohio ($800,000); Charlottesville Pregnancy Center in Virginia ($645,642); and the Several Sources Foundation Center in Ramsey, New Jersey ($800,00). Several Sources is a self-described ​“non-profit Christian organization” that touts its ​“chastity” training for women who have already become pregnant and claims that it has ​“saved” 15,000 children, presumably from abortion.

That taxpayers’ dollars are being directly funneled into religious organizations like these has raised concerns about constitutional separation of church and state. Three states have refused to accept abstinence-only federal funding – California, Pennsylvania and, in September, Maine.

And in August, the ACLU decided to sue HHS in Boston over the faith-based aspects of a program known as the ​“Silver Ring Thing.” 

Students exposed to this program were given the choice of picking the ​“faith-based” track, and then given fancy Bibles and silver ring engraved with a scriptural verse. The students who opted for the secular version were given a ring engraved with the word, ​“waiting.” Silver Ring Thing has already received more than $1 million in federal dollars, and the funding is likely to be restored once ​“tweaks” to the program are in place. One of the most recent HHS funding recipients, Knoxville Leadership Foundation in Tennessee ($354,236), uses the Silver Ring Thing program while ​“reconciling people to Jesus Christ and to each other.”

With all this money being channeled to organizations intervening in the lives of women and girls who have already become pregnant, it’s hard to see for whom the actual abstinence education is intended. Scattered throughout the grant list are a few abstinence-focused agencies developing curriculum for junior high and high school students, including the Illinois-based Abstinence and Marriage Education Partnership ($800,000); and Virginia’s Educational Guidance Institute ($698,840). Both of these agencies have ties to a right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation.

HHS itself promotes abstinence-only programs on a Web site it unveiled earlier this year (4Par​ents​.gov) that designed to give parents the tools to talk to their kids about sex.

According to research by the Feminist Majority Foundation and Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SEICUS), the site was designed with the help of National Physicians for Family Resources, a group with strong ties to right-wing organizations. 4Par​ents​.gov goes to great lengths to stress abstinence over any other option and, in doing so, exaggerates the risks involved with using condoms, or even contracting certain STDs through various forms of sexual activity.

This is the same message conveyed in many abstinence-only education materials, including three books highlighted by SIECUS in its third annual ​“Back to School Briefing.” Those books, Worth the Wait, Passions and Principles and Navigator, are making their way through school curricula in more than a dozen states.

The materials are typically fear-based, positing extreme consequences to any kind of sexual activity. One of the dice games recommended by the Passions and Principles book instructs the teacher to say the following when a four is rolled: ​“You’re heading to the grave. No cure.”

For FY06, President Bush has announced his intention to seek an additional $206 million for abstinence education. And he – and the religious right – can apparently rest assured that HHS will do the ​“right” thing with that funding.

“Tell your son or daughter that the best way to avoid getting an STD is for them not to have vaginal, oral, or anal sex,” the 4Par​ents​.gov instructs parents, ​“until they are in a mutually faithful, monogamous relationship, preferably marriage.”

In other words, wait until marriage and you can have all the anal sex you want? More enticing than a silver ring, perhaps? Maybe they’ve just been keeping these kinds of scintillating messages from the rest of us all along.