I’m sure you are all as surprised by this as I am:
Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush’s evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US’s major public health body.
In a report that will surprise few of Bush’s critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years. According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but are up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005. The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.
The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.
At least the southern states get to lead the nation in something.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
It also coincided with the reduction if not outright ban of meaningful sex edumacation cuz, yunno, that might lead to promiscuity and the spread of diseases.
You mean reducing that lead to an increase? D’OH.
The whole fucking GOP and the wingnuts that run it are just one long-running D’OH moment.
anonevent
Yes, but by denying girls a shot that might prevent cervical cancer we can surely reverse these trends.
A Mom Anon
My kid’s been through this abstinence only shit in the schools here. His 8th grade health teacher(the boy’s PE “coach”) actually told him that boys are better than girls because girls bleed every month. When I bitched about this,I was laughed at by the admins in the front office. Middle school is a fucking wasteland,thank god we’re past that at least.
Fortunately for my kid,I’m not squeamish about talking about sex. Every other word is condom,lol.
DougJ
I call it the Obama teen pregnancy epidemic. He’s been there six months. He owns the problem now.
dr. luba
Really, just what did they expect?
I think that for, the righties, this is a feature, not a bug. Premarital sex must be punished (pregnancy, STDs) not encouraged.
Mission accomplished!
Keith
This can all be fixed by a Congressional statement saying that teaching abstinence works (due to us having laws based on the Bible).
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
This also means that adults and kids are having sex, since you need an infected adult to introduce aids, syphillus, and VD into the mix.
Sexual History Report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6x0WvK546g
Just Some Fuckhead
Yeah but telling teenagers to use condoms is just like telling ’em to go fuck like rabbits and the only thing worse than disease-ridden teenagers is, uh, sexually proficient teenagers.
rock
DougJ beat me to it — you didn’t see statistics like this during the Bush administration!
Abstinence-only education is like communism and modern-American conservatism. It can never fail, it can only be failed.
RedKitten
This just makes me absolutely sick. Those disgusting, Bible-thumping, hypocritical fuckers are so set on their own ridiculous agenda that they’ve deliberately withheld vital, life-saving health information from adolescents, and are quite literally ruining their lives. I don’t care if this sounds immoderate — I’m at the point where I think that any parent or school who refuses to give their child proper scientific facts about reproduction and sexual education should be charged with neglect. Kids, both in America and in third-world countries, are DYING because of this moralistic bullshit! It’s wrong, and it needs to stop.
Fulcanelli
This is probably a bad place to ‘insert’ a “wetsuits and dildos” joke, amirite? Heh.
demkat620
But, obviously if we don’t talk about sex, teens would never know it exists, right?
General Winfield Stuck
The wingnut preachers never understood the teenage mind. The surest way to get them to do something is tell them they shouldn’t/
God is no match for Post Puberty Hormones. It is written/
And DFH’s ought to be doing Sex Ed/They invented it.
r€nato
That Bill Clinton fellow’s been pretty busy since he stopped presidentin’, heh heh heh.
Fulcanelli
I can’t wait for BOB to weigh in on this one…
r€nato
Of course abstinence works. The 9 out of 10 Catholic priests who don’t molest children, are living proof.
Violet
@Keith:
Or a strongly worded letter.
This increase in pregnancy and disease can’t be from teenagers having sex, because they don’t. They promised they wouldn’t and they wear purity rings to prove it.
Just Some Fuckhead
By the way, I’m still here and I’m still looking at teen porn. Talk to me.
linda
@RedKitten:
and not one of these sobs who advocate/fund these idiotic programs will ever be called on it. the seriousness instead of mockery with which these nitwits — coburn comes to mind — are treated when they appear on these programs is maddening. not to mention the general squeamishness of the media to even talk about these issues in adult language.
DonkeyKong
C’mon DougJ, you never had some fried syphilis with a side of grits?
I am NOT anonymous! I just don't use my own name.
Margaret Mead wrote about teenagers having casual sex, and the culture having relaxed attitudes about teenage sex, in Coming of Age in Samoa… in 1928. STDs, on the other hand, are relatively new. Adolescence is when we are most fertile. Biology pretty much dictates that adolescents have sex.
LD50
@dr. luba: Precisely. Once you realize that the Fundies’ policies on sex education are not meant to prevent pregnancy or STDs, but to make sure that sex is punished, then suddenly all their doubletalk on this issue makes total sense.
So yes, they can truthfully point to the results in the South as a victory.
KG
@3: I only vaguely remember sex ed in jr high here in Cali. I’m pretty sure it was the science teacher, at least. High school wasn’t much better. I think it was something most of my friends learned by, um, trial and error.
The talk with my very Republican folks went something like this:
Mom: so…
Me: yeah?
Mom: if you’re going to do it, make sure you suit up.
Me: um, ok.
ellaesther
The very last professional commentary I ever wrote, lo those many months ago, was about just this subject! Ahem, I quote myself:
“Rather than focusing on the poor decisions or sheer bad luck of individual young women (famous or not), we need to give all teenagers all the tools they need to keep their lives on track; when the next girl falls pregnant anyway, we need to surround her with all the support—familial, societal, and governmental—she may need. Oh, and we should probably involve the fathers too.”
I said it — it must be true!
(Also, I must say that I’m not sure that southern state bashing is the way to go — we all seem to have our heads up our asses, one way or the other).
Dennis-SGMM
The big mistake was calling it “Sex Education”. We all know how the right feels about education.
Just Some Fuckhead
@KG:
lmfao
Suddenly the wetsuits make sense.
Brachiator
I blame Bill Clinton.
Sadly, facts won’t matter here. The fundies will circle their religious wagons and insist that if you only get it harder and longer until you get married — prayer, that is — the baby Jebus will keep you pure and strong and disease and pregnancy free. And as a bonus, you will find your soul mate.
Ask Mark Sanford.
El Cid
At least one of our Confederate states could make some $$$ from their “FIRST IN SYPHILLIS” license plates.
KG
@26: I’m not sure if those are the exact words she used, but it was something like that. Or, “if it’s raining, wear a coat”.
It all really fell under the one house rule we had as kids: don’t do stupid shit.
RedKitten
No kidding. It just irks me to no end that these evil idiots (and the parents who idolize them) are putting their religious principles above the lives and health of so many kids. This is too damn important for them to be squeamish, and it’s too damn important for them to retreat behind their Bibles. They are ruining (and in some cases, ending) kids’ lives because of their ignorance, fear, and insistence on control.
asiangrrlMN
Who could have ever have guessed that not discussing contraceptive options with teens, pressuring them to take purity pledges or fear going to hell, and “dating” their fathers would ever lead to this? That last quote in the article is fucking stupid. “We wouldn’t bring alcohol to driver’s ed to combat drinking and driving.” Talk about a completely dishonest argument.
Teens are gonna have sex. All this abstinence bullshit is completely about punishment for “bad” behavior. I am disgusted.
jenniebee
Damn, Levi Johnston has been one busy dude.
demkat620
@Just Some Fuckhead: My brother went out one night in high school with this girl he really liked. He had driven my mom up the wall the whole day worrying about everything and just being a general pain in the ass.
He didn’t drive yet and he and his friend were double dating so the guy came to pick him up. Before he left my mom asked them both if they had there jimmy hats.
Two seventeen year olds turned bright red and ran out of the house.
My mom still laughs about that and if you say the word condom to my brother he still blushes.
Dennis-SGMM
The Marine Corps Major in charge of a detachment I was on put it perfectly, “Men, if you’re going to get your wick wet for Christ’s sake wear a raincoat! Dismissed!”
Hammy
Sarah Palin showed us that teen pregnancies should be saluted.
Josh Huaco
Ignorance is Strength, y’all. Also.
Derek
Knock me over with a feather…
Demo Woman
Two decades ago, I was volunteering at a Texas school system and the sex talk was being to rising the 6th graders who were going to middle school the following year. The school nurse at the time was giving a very frank talk to the girls and the Principal of the school called me over to the door to listen.
I even learned a few things that day, she told the girls that there was only one part of the guys body that loved her and it wasn’t his heart. The other thing the nurse said was that baggies don’t work. I actually knew about the baggies thing. lol
The Principal looked at me and said, she’s right and I approved her speech but he knew he was going to get many phone calls. The nurse did talk about appropriate birth control also.
Andre
@I am NOT anonymous! I just don’t use my own name.:
While I agree with what you’re saying generally, citing Mead isn’t really a good idea. Her view of Samoa was, at best, idealised or unintentionally credulous. Samoa is, and always has been, a very socially conservative culture (Fa’afafine notwithstanding.)
As for the article, I must be losing my jadedness. I saw the react from the conservative saying “No, no, no, the reason this is happening is because we didn’t do enough of it!” and actually laughed. Some things are just too ridiculous.
Dennis-SGMM
@Andre:
Just like tax cuts.
IndieTarheel
@El Cid:
Provided you could find one that could properly spell it, maybe…
lawnorder
We did warn them…
Alas in 2005 I still naively thought the pro-life worried about unborn baies and teenage pregnancies, and were not all about punishing women for having had sex.
steve s
Would you teach the kids how to use seatbelts?
KG
isn’t that the whole point of Red Asphalt? And I’m pretty sure they warn you about the dangers of drinking and driving in driver’s ed… I know they did 15 years ago when I took it.
Crashman06
Remember kids, oral doesn’t count as sex.
maya
If only those teens could have had access to the “C” Street Church of the Divine Prolapse.
Genine
Wow, this news is shocking! (And by “shocking” I mean completely obvious to anyone who thinks.)
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dennis-SGMM:
Huh? Wasn’t he mixing metaphors? Shouldn’t that have been, “Men, if you’re going to get your wick wet for Christ’s sake, hide your candle under a bushel! Dismissed!”
Roger Moore
@KG:
The problem is that we aren’t born knowing what things are and aren’t stupid, or the safer way of doing things that are potentially dangerous. Abstinence only sex ed is like telling kids that it’s dangerous to cross the street until they’re old enough rather than teaching them to look both ways.
Zifnab
@Crashman06: Hell, vaginal doesn’t count as sex if you’re wearing the magic Virginity Ring.
Zifnab
@Roger Moore:
If it looks like fun, and you’re 18 years old, it’s probably dangerous and stupid. If you’re under 18, it’s dangerous, stupid, and illegal.
lamh31
Hey,
But this has got to be only those hedonistic black & mexican kids right? not the nice lily-white kids.
Seriously though, I work a the county hospital in Dallas, Texas in the Microbiology lab. We do lots of testing, but our serious money-maker is the testing we do for Neisseria gonnorheae, and Chlamydia trachomatis. I kid you not that 10% of the patient population I test are pos for either one or the other or BOTH!. And a majority of the positives are teenagers and yound adults. I’ve seen them as young as 14…
Glidwrith
What’s really annoying is how mainstream is reporting this:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/13/std.report.cdc/
Bastards can’t admit the levels were dropping and say nothing about the increases were actually during the Bush years.
kay
I was doing parenting plans for teenage parents and their parents, and I kept hearing about this Mennonite organization that were seeing the same people on the counseling end. The mennonite organization, in turn, were seeing my parenting plans. Finally, the mennonites called me, and we are doing collaborative work. Their contract MSW does the counseling end and I do the legal end. We work together. Kumbaya approach, which I love.
We’ve only successfully filed four. It’s hard, because there are 7 people. Two teen parents, their parents, and the baby. Everyone is crying at the first meeting, including the baby, who probably feels all that tension and discord. Many times the relationship that produced the baby is long past, and the parents of the teens are hostile to each other, for various reasons.
Anyway, I just wanted to add that. This is a long-term relationship in addition to a public health issue. It’s more than teen mommies with babies. It’s two families, thrown together, raising three kids between them: mom, dad and baby.
DougJ
But this has got to be only those hedonistic black & mexican kids right?
Imagine what it will be like when they’re a majority.
whatsleft
Just today I was talking to a high-school teacher who said he had 5 girls in his class (for passing the GED and FCAT) and 4 of them gave birth this year. I don’t know if those girls actually did get their GED’s… This is in Jacksonville, FL. Sex ed here is pretty sad, and teen pregnancy is high. Only 33% of our 10th graders passed the FCAT this year. You would weep to see the lack of funds we receive. Our schools get $3,050 per student from the district, which receives $6,873 per student. Our school board is one of the most highly paid in the nation! Yep, we sure have our priorities straight here!
Betsy
@I am NOT anonymous! I just don’t use my own name.:
STDs? New? LOLOLOLOLOLOL
Whew! Heh heh heh. Thanks for the best laugh I’ve had all day.
There have been STDs for thousands of years. For a more recent example, see the literature about syphilis during WWI. It wasn’t new then either; it was just finally getting some attention from the military docs. It was during and immediately after WWI that condoms became widely distributed in the U.S. (“Widely” being relative, of course.)
steve s
@kay:
Did you hear about the Amish woman who was having an affair?
She had two Mennonite.
steve s
fixicated.
Betsy
@steve s:
Right, thanks. Once I get past 15,000 BC I stop paying close attention.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Thank you for sharing your inspiring Daily Devotionals with us, Fuckhead.
steve s
The conservatives who whine and bitch that the liberal media is biased should be glad I’m not writing MSNBC’s headlines. This story would be filed under “Nation Still Dealing With Fallout From Retarded President & Congress”
kay
@steve s:
I like them. They’re practical, and they must know I’m not religious and they never, ever try to convert. They must not be an evangelical religion, or they just figure I’m hopeless, which is true. I’m a failure at religion.
I don’t know their position on premarital sex or birth control. By the time I’m in that’s besides the point.
I like to laugh at work, because it’s so sad a lot of the time, and they are patient and long-suffering with my clowning around.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W:
It was really nothing. Just taking a short break from Faceborg. You all can get back to arguing with sign posts or whatever it is you do these days. ;)
Tsulagi
Well, when their Abstinence Czar who said abstinence works, condoms don’t was found to have been chasing soulmates at Madame Palfrey’s, you just knew the Bush admin didn’t overlook bringing their magic touch to that area too.
asiangrrlMN
@steve s:
Damn you for typing what I was trying to say! Argh. My brain is fried today.
Tsulagi, I have NO idea what you just typed, but I loved it, anyway.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead: Even though I know your heart now lies with FaceSuck and BJ is a mere afterthought, I’d just like to say how much I appreciate seeing “Fuckhead” back. I hated that Mosquito Truck asshole. You can run and you can hide but you’ll always be Just Some Fuckhead to us.
…sniff…
Quaker in a Basement
At least the southern states get to lead the nation in something.
Well yeah, but cousins don’t count.
Dave_Violence
Bullshit detector going off…
So, during the W administration no one talked to their kids about sex? The consequences of unprotected sex was not discussed once in the media, popular culture, in magazines, television, nada, nothing, no one said a thing? All schools were forbidden from talking about condoms? Planned parenthood was silenced? AIDS cases in adolescent boys? Are we to believe that the gay rights movement (let’s just assume that these weren’t straight – including the entire “safer sex” arm – was silenced on the issue? Information that had FLOODED the entire US culture for more than 20 years (let’s say 1986-2006, why not?) was suddenly forgotten? Because the Federal government wasn’t, apparently, footing the bill, the locals couldn’t open their mouths? The teachers all of a sudden “followed orders” and became “conservatives”? Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
BULLSHIT.
Dumb kids, lots of them. By the way, where were these loose girls when I was a teen? It would’ve solved a lot of frustration on my part back then.
Tonal Crow
@rock:
This is chock-full of win.
Betsy
A discussion I liked that my mother told me about was a school board meeting, somewhere or other, about whether or not to implement ab-only sex ed. One mother got up and said, “We wouldn’t teach our children that it’s ok to use heroin as long as they use clean needles!”
And another replied, “No. But we don’t want our children to use heroin, EVER. We do, someday, want our children to have sex.” The first mother didn’t even know what to say – she clearly was not thinking that far in advance.
Dave_Violence
“We do, someday, want our children to have sex.”
Is sex ed in grade school teaching techniques? If so, they’d save a lot of money simply by making available all the free internet pron that’s out there. Dumb moms all around. …and born in the 1970s, I presume. What a bunch of idiots. why… it’s like an Idiocracy.
p.a.
It’s a good thing for the ‘gaming’ industry that the lying, anti-science anti-scientific method anti-18th 19th 20th 21st century gay-closeted self-loathing bigoted holier-than-thou nose-pressed-against-everyone-else’s-bedroom-window ok-for-me but not-for-thee Republicans aren’t gamblers. (pace Bill Bennett) All we’d have to do is bet against their bets and the casinos, tracks, lotteries etc. would be bankrupt in a week. Is there a single word in English for their complete buffoonery? Bushism doesn’t do justice; the stupidity is root, trunk, branch and leaf. Jesus.
Betsy
@Dave_Violence:
Well, Dave, the fact of the matter is that the types of states that embrace abstinence only sex-ed (in which yes, teachers are NOT PERMITTED to discuss contraception; they can be fired) are also the states with a high percentage of parents who wouldn’t dream of giving their kids information about pregnancy prevention or STD prevention. They are also the type of states in which planned parenthood IS, in fact, silenced (read=driven out of town), as are gay rights organizations. And if you want to rely on your kids getting educated on ANY subject by watching Gossip Girl, as you seem to imply, well, I’m sorry for your kids.
So sure, a motivated, educated kid could easily search out good info on the internet. But that’s not most kids. And the same is true of any subject we want kids to learn – they can teach themselves to read, dammit! There are words everywhere! If they want to know about science, they can just watch NOVA! No need for science teachers! Do you realize how absurd this sounds?
But really, I don’t know why I try. Your last sentence, with its charming reference to “loose girls,” really tells me everything I need to know about you.
gopher2b
[regurgitate John’s point]
[state something obvious about teens being horny]
Betsy
@Dave_Violence:
Who said anything about technique?
ETA: It’s also telling that you blame only the “dumb moms.” Because clearly, fathers have no role here.
Andre
@Dave_Violence:
6/10. Appeal to common sense was quite effective, but you gave the game away with your comment about “loose girls”.
Must try harder.
YellowJournalism
@Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s: This has sadly been going on a long time. One of my best friends in high school lived with a guy 10 years her senior. Her parents honestly did not give a shit. They were too busy living it up to care that her daughter was living with and sexually active with a man who ended up doing some major damage to her psychologically.
When I was student teaching, I had a 14-year-old student tell me and another teacher about how she was upset that her boyfriend was going to jail. The boyfriend was 23, and, no, he wasn’t going to jail for statuatory rape. He got caught breaking into someone’s home. I found out that she was not the only one in the junior high that had a boyfriend over the age of 21.
In almost every case, the parents know that the child is dating the older man. It’s not until a pregnancy comes along that any of them even think of getting these guys prosecuted for statuatory rape, and many times it’s used as a threat to get child support.
steve s
‘Tard’ pretty much sums it up.
Tsulagi
@asiangrrlMN:
What, no recollection of Randall Tobias, the Bush admin Abstinence and AIDS czar who pushed for a third of Bush’s AIDS relief in Caribbean and African countries fund abstinence and monogamy programs? Think he should have taken a look at C-Street Promise Keepers to see just how well that education works.
Tobias was found to be a frequent customer of the DC hooker broker, Madame Palfrey. Along with Senator Vitter, whose proclivities with those ladies earned him the nickname Diaper Dave. Family values, bitches
jake 4 that 1
Suggested Tag: “Don’t bother with the – local girls.”
This just backs up the regular ass-kicking the GAO visits upon these programs. All they do is allow a bunch of modern day snake oil salesmen to get filthy rich. Follow up slut shaming is an extra bonus.
Did the Guardian really spell AIDS, Aids? Ugg. Also.
Paul L.
So under George Bush abortions went down and teenage pregnancies went up.
Any chance of seeing the report? To see the breakdown by urban/suburbs/rural or income or (for Oliver) race?
Betsy
@Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s:
Huh? No you don’t. Teens get STDs from other teens who got it from other teens and on down the line. Of course there are teens having sex with and/or getting raped by adults, but the logic doesn’t make any sense. There have been active STD strains in the teenage population for a very long time; even if from here forward no teen had sex with an adult, teens would still be getting STDs. It doesn’t take an infected adult to introduce it into the mix; it takes an infected *person*.
Betsy
@Paul L.:
Um, perhaps you missed the title and first line of the article:
“Teen pregnancy and disease rates rose sharply during Bush years, agency finds.”
That would seem to indicate that under George Bush, teenage pregnancies did not in fact “go down.” But, you know, don’t let a silly thing like “reality” get in your way.
Tongue of Groucho Marx
Fuck. I used to be able to find a video that was the embodiment of all things wrong with the abstinence movement, a song by some crackpot called Robert Breaud. It’s been removed from the internet, though, presumably because he realized what a fool of himself he made.
The abstinence industry is a paragon of virtue in our society, willing to go where no other industry has ever gone before.
Bob In Pacifica
Maybe there wasn’t the Ten Commandments posted on the wall in the schoolhouse. I’m sure that would have worked.
Betsy
Ok I need to back off this thread now. I am feeling vexed by all the stupid. See y’all later.
ETA:
Bob in Pacifica FTW.
Mnemosyne
Wait, this guy is under the impression that kids in sex ed classes actually move the desks aside and have orgies on the floor while the teacher gives them directions? Because that’s the sex ed equivalent of giving kids alcohol during driver’s ed class.
Jon H
@Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s: “This also means that adults and kids are having sex, since you need an infected adult to introduce aids, syphillus, and VD into the mix.”
All you need is an 18 year old hooking up with a college student or hiring a prostitute, then passing it on to slightly younger classmates.
It doesn’t necessarily imply a large age difference, it just implies a broader social circle.
Paul L.
What report is the Guardian referring to?
I do not see any thing about Teen pregnancy
in the table of contents for this report.
Sexually Transmitted Diseases Surveillance, 2007.
I wonder if they are cherry picking the intelligence.
CDC Issues Annual Report on Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Jon H
@Paul L.: “I do not see any thing about Teen pregnancy”
Psst, Paul. If they’re getting Syphilis, they probably aren’t using a condom, a situation that also leads to the condition known as pregnancy.
Paul L.
@Betsy:
Noticed the typo or whatever you would call my screw up after I hit submit and edited the comment. You must have seen the old copy.
mea culpa
Das Internetkommissariat
@Betsy:
Mozart died of Syphilis.
And so did Heinrich Heine, Paul Gaugin, Franz Schubert, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Al Capone.
Josh Huaco
@Paul L.:
“What report is the Guardian referring to?
I do not see any thing about Teen pregnancy”
Ahem.
Steeplejack
@Das Internetkommissariat:
You appear to be about half right. From Wikipedia.
Mozart: “The cause of Mozart’s death cannot be known with certainty. The official record has it as ‘hitziges Frieselfieber’ (“severe miliary fever,” referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Dozens of theories have been proposed, including trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning and a rare kidney ailment. The practice of bleeding medical patients, common at that time, is also cited as a contributing factor. The most widely accepted version, however, is that he died of acute rheumatic fever; he is known to have had three or even four attacks of it since his childhood, and this disease has a tendency to recur, with increasingly serious consequences each time, such as rampant infection and damage to the heart valves.”
Heine: “Heine suffered from ailments that kept him bedridden for the last eight years of his life (some have suggested he suffered from multiple sclerosis or syphilis), although in 1997 it was confirmed through an analysis of the poet’s hair that he had suffered from chronic lead poisoning.”
And, although Al Capone definitely had syphilis: “On January 21, 1947, Capone had an apoplectic stroke. He regained consciousness and started to improve but contracted pneumonia on January 24. He suffered a fatal cardiac arrest the next day.”
Dennis-SGMM
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Not too sure how religious the Major was. He did invoke the name of Jesus Christ fairly frequently though.
matoko_chan
Ruy Teixiera says the [culture] war is ending.
whew!
Das Internetkommissariat
@Steeplejack:
Ah, ok, didn’t know that about Heine and Capone.
Regarding Mozart, however, I have to insist on Syphilis as cause of death.
I probably should add that I am of Austrian nationality and that our most famoust son is prominently featured in both schoolbooks and everyday culture, even if the latter sometimes looks more like Disneyworld than classic music.
There have been a lot of attempts to somewhat “rectify” his life, especially in the middle of last century by a political streaming of -ahem- rather nationalistic nature. (Those were the guys that preferred Wagner.)
Mozart was known to live in brothels, to lose all his money playing and betting on Billiard. The guy was the first Rockstar.
And that’s how he died. Broke and with a STD :)
Fulcanelli
@jake 4 that 1: Whoa. You win the internets for the Graham Parker reference. See Al Gore to redeem your prize before it’s too late.
gex
@dr. luba: Moreover, if you are concerned about the oncoming white minority, you actively want white Christian girls to start having babies earlier. Every time a conservative talks about preserving the Judeo-Christian ethic, what they really mean is that there need to be more white people. This is part of the plan. If you meant to be snarky, you weren’t. It really is a feature.
Paul L.
@Josh Huaco:
Interesting
TABLE 27. Percentage of high school students who experienced dating violence and who were ever physically forced to have sexual intercourse when they did not want to, by sex, grade, and year — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 1999–2007 and 2001–2007
The percent Forced to have sexual intercourse is going back up.
2001 7.7
2003 9.0
2005 7.5
2007 7.8
Who can I blame for that feminists?
Anne Laurie
Fixtd, slightly. For a lot of Americans, bodily pleasure is Teh Enemy, and must be punished, unless you’re a C-Street Congerscritter or small-town bidnisman using the local tight employment situation to sexually abuse your employees.
Jon H
@Das Internetkommissariat:
Nietzche had it, too. Dunno if he died from it but it made him crazy.
Very popular way to die.
Dennis-SGMM
@Paul L.:
I’d guess that the people who forced them to have sex are the ones to blame.
You’re such a Paul L.
argystokes
And you’ve been away from the mines for far too long!
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Bob In Pacifica: Only if you don’t want kids having sex with their neighbor’s wife or ox.
Slightly OT: I discovered Holy Kidding Me yesterday. It appears there are either many, many, many people wandering about who have NO IDEA how sex works, or les spooferables have taken over the internons. If the former, many, many, many* people need to be locked in a room with a baseball bat wielding Dan Savage:
i accidentally got herpes from my ex gf and then i started dating this other girl who i really like. the only problem is she doesnt know i have herpes and she wants to take things to the next level. i really dont want her getting the herpes so is it wrong if i have sex with someone else before her to pass the herpes onto them instead so she doesnt get it? i dont want to cheat on her but its the only way to make sure she doesnt get my herpes and then once ive passed it on well both be clean!
*Lots!
Bubblegum Tate
This stuff pisses me off and depresses me. How much longer are millions of Americans going to have to suffer the consequences of this bass-ackwards, ignorant-ass Bible-thumping horseshit? It’s tragic.
That said, the multitude of great jokes in the thread makes a great balm.
“The Bible Belt: Last in literacy, great at gonorrhea!”
Charon
I’ve always wondered, why doesn’t abstinence-only sex-ed run afoul of the Establishment Clause the way that ID in science classes does? In both cases gov’t employees are lying to children in order to make them subscribe to a religious notion, i.e. creation or the idea that pre-marital sex is inherently wrong.
MNPundit
Whoa, dumb southern girls who are trashy and breeding after being fed a diet of extra-crispy ignorance? Holy stereotype batman.
Comrade Nikolita
I’m actually in the middle of writing my paper for my university level social work class, about teen pregnancy.
As for STD’s, I’ve been running a guild on the forum-based website Gaia Online for over 4 years, and the ignorance of some American teens (primarily) just blows my mind. They’re not being taught it in school (often this abstinence-only crap), and then their parents don’t tell them either, so they’re left talking to friends or asking around, or finding out the hard way themselves sometimes.
Wile E. Quixote
Two questions:
1) Is this what the Republicans are talking about when they refer to their “southern strategy”?
2) Is this good news for John McCain?
Wile E. Quixote
@Das Internetkommissariat
Hate to bum your high liebchen, but Austria’s most famous son isn’t Mozart, I think it’s probably this crazy guy who was born in Braunau in 1889, but strangely enough when you go to Austria no one mentions that guy, who might have been so crazy because he caught a bad dose of the clap.
Wile E. Quixote
@Betsy
Actually I want that first mom’s kids to do lots and lots of heroin but I don’t want them to have any sex, because they might procreate teh stupid.
Wile E. Quixote
@steve s
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Wile E. Quixote
@Mnemosyne
Well yes, isn’t that how they do it everywhere? Also legalizing gay marriage will mean that it becomes mandatory and doodz will have to marry doodz, which is way uncool, but chicks will get to marry chicks, which is OK as long as I get to watch, and they’re hot and stuff.
ItAintEazy
@Kommrade reproductive vigor:
That question you provided simply proves once again that stupid should be painful.
Molly
@Betsy: “Well, Dave, the fact of the matter is that the types of states that embrace abstinence only sex-ed (in which yes, teachers are NOT PERMITTED to discuss contraception; they can be fired) are also the states with a high percentage of parents who wouldn’t dream of giving their kids information about pregnancy prevention or STD prevention.”
Correct.
Being raised in one of these states, my parents made sure to teach me EVERYTHING, things as explicit as “Don’t turn a used condom inside-out so you can use it twice, that won’t work.”
And, I taught my friends, who had to deal with things like their parents putting pictures of aborted fetuses in their underwear drawer to remind them to be chaste.
I am SO not bullshitting you.
BTW – Those friends all had sex in high school. They also had gone on the pill without their parent’s knowledge, and used condoms. Some of the questions they brought to me were scary ignorant, folks. “You can’t get pregnant if it’s the second week after your period, right?” Dear God.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@LD50: The pregnancy/STD as punishment aspect is but one thread in the tapestry. They’re also getting their particular religious views promoted in an official setting, fighting the Great Culture War against the Demon Left (in which their kids are conscripts), and trying to wreck the very concept of public education by taking the parts that work and deliberately breaking them. They’re also keeping the issue of abortion alive in the minds of the faithful; by creating more teen pregnancies, they get to scream about Roe and keep the donations flowing.
Abstinence-only sex education is very effective, just not at preventing unwanted pregnancy or reducing the spread of disease.
John T
More than 100 comments and nobody has mentioned saddlebacking yet?