No one could have predicted/hoocoodanode:
An abstinence-only high school in a tiny Texas town is battling a colossal chlamydia epidemic.
District officials are rethinking their approach to sex education after 20 of Crane High School’s 300 students tested positive for the sexually transmitted disease.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called the outbreak a health issue at “epidemic proportions,” KFOR reported.
Crane Independent School District officials met Monday to discuss possible updates to the high school’s conservative sex education program.
“We do have an abstinence curriculum, and that evidently ain’t working,” superintendent Jim Rumage told the TV station. “We need to do all we can, although it’s the parents’ responsibility to educate their kids on sexual education.”
However, Rumage defended the current teachings to the San Antonio Express-News.
“If kids are not having any sexual activity, they can’t get this disease,” he said. “That’s not a bad program.”
And if people wouldn’t steal we wouldn’t need cops. They better double down and put up some more Ten Commandments posters in the public square before this shit gets out of control.
Karen in GA
Morons.
(Also, too: John Cole, self-bigfooter.)
jaleh
I know you guys post great articles, so I thought you would like this one by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker: It is fabulous!
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/overkill-atul-gawande
John Cole +0
@Karen in GA: I was told I was the Honey Badger of blogging once.
Shakezula
Does anyone want to bet $100,000 that Patient Zero is NOT one of the teachers?
Anyone?
Damn. Oh well, back to work.
dedc79
But are we sure they got it from sex? Maybe they got chlamydia the same way Mary got pregnant.
scav
No no, are more fathers being disappeared?! Epidemic! Has anyone checked the tunnels underneath Walmart?!
Also, you Bad Bad Parents! Bad Students! You are failing the adopted Educational Theory!
Karen in GA
@John Cole +0: Only once?
Poopyman
Isn’t it time for a new thread by now?
CONGRATULATIONS!
The superintendent used the word “ain’t” in an interview he knew would be put out in the media. We are not dealing with a rocket scientist here.
I think they just need to pray harder, and not get that shit treated, it is the will of Jesus after all.
srv
You morons realize Crane is the only thing between Midland and the border? This could just be the first level of infection from ISIS.
Ft Hood, Garland, clap in Crane… Wake up!
Wallis Lane
Cue the press conference in which Greg Abbott claims the government is spreading chlamydia through the water system, in order to weaken the good people of Texas.in advance of Jade Helm.
That’s why the Governor only drinks rainwater and pure grain alcohol.
beltane
In the real world, “No sex” is not an attainable goal. The choice is between safe sex and unsafe sex. This Texas town has made the choice of unsafe sex and a disease outbreak was the inevitable result.
Chlamydia can cause infertility in woman. Are scarred Fallopian tubes a wingnut-approved form of birth control?
Belafon
@srv: You left out Jade Helm, with its Muslim connection through Obama.
srv
@Belafon: Obama just should have said, OK, y’all deal with those ISIS camps across the border on your own.
Aleta
The kids will be punished, corrected and ‘treated.’ The adults will hold on to their own virtue.
Shana
My daughter (age 25) sent me this this morning with the subject “I hope this makes you laugh as hard as it made me laugh.” Truly, who could have predicted?
sigaba
See the superintendent has clearly been duped by the liberal worldview. Liberals think the object of sex education is to prevent STDs. Conservatives know better: the object of sex education is to make sure the people who get STDs deserved to get them.
Keith G
That man is a pus-filled boil in the rectum of a rabid weasel. He is not an educator.
Those kids are being kids and as such the emotional/intellectual shafting they are getting from the adults is many times more consequential than the physical shafting that some are giving each other.
BillinGlendaleCA
@beltane:
Of course it is, these kids should just read the Bible together rather than exploring their naughty bits. It’s all the liberal society’s influence.
Mary G
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Yeah, it was the “ain’t working” that struck me the most. The superintendent of schools! My dad the grammar Nazi is spinning in his grave.
trollhattan
How do Texans dress themselves in the morning? Do they get help from Florida Man?
dedc79
Maybe they got it from riding tractors. Oh wait, wrong STD.
srv
Breaking: Obama Invasion Plans for Texas revealed.
beltane
@trollhattan: With all the STDs proliferating in Texas these days, it’s not a sure thing that they are dressing themselves anymore.
Litlebritdifrnt
So does this sound familiar to anyone? (RE: UK Elections)
Sounds like exactly the same problems the Romney campaign had. Now I am not one for wild conspiracy theories but does it appear strange that Jim Messina is running PR for the Tories and they are having exactly the same problem that Romney had? Seems to me that Messina’s liberal roots might be pulling a bit of sabotage. Heh Heh Heh
SiubhanDuinne
@jaleh:
This came up obliquely this morning re raven‘s wrist MRI. He suspected that it was more for the enrichment of BCBS than anything else.
That said, if you’re around, raven, please let us know how things went.
trollhattan
@beltane:
“Dang it all, Kristyll, mah pants is on backwards. Again!”
scav
Maybe it’s the upswing in the earth rocking and rolling because of, mmm, fluids being injected int wells in TX and environs because of fracking. … all the imagery, all the physical concrete unexpected rumbbbbling action on the naughty bits putting ideas into the unsupervised youthful heads. Practice safe well and drill-bit management.
Lit3Bolt
“Hay babee, whut ar’ dese funny looking bumps on yer genie-tals?”
“Oh honey don’t worry ’bout that my pastor told me to pray real hard and they’d go away.”
Pogonip
@beltane: Alert all those Buddhist and Christian monks and nuns so they can find other jobs.
Not picking on you specfically, but on Americans in general: it always amuses me how Americans, many of whom spend decades dieting, think it is absolutely impossible to control some of one’s other urges.
SiubhanDuinne
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
When I was a little girl, I was told “There ain’t such a word as ain’t, ’cause it ain’t in the dictionary.” That’s no longer strictly true, of course, and many educated people use it informally or mildly ironically. But a school superintendent speaking in his official capacity? That ain’t right.
scav
@Pogonip: um, looking at the body types on exhibit, I think they assume urges can’t be controlled based on solid — ok, very wobbly, but extensive — evidence.
Keith G
@trollhattan:
Voters who are willing to push the button for Democratic candidates make up 41 to 44 % of Texas voters. Don’t throw all Texans under your short yellow bus, please.
Steppan
@Pogonip:
But your examples also make it a dedicated, concerted way of life that they practice every day.
Hal
And in Colorado?
So how successful was the program?
Social conservatives want no sex, no pregnancies, no abortions, no social programs. You can’t have it all. If these people really cared about the unborn, they would support programs that actually reduce the pregnancy rates.
Mike in NC
Are abstinence-only high schools another weird Texas thing?
WereBear
@Hal: So, ipso facto, they don’t care.
They just want to take away the means by which people control their lives so they can have more opportunities to be moral scolds.
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip: Any individual can control his or her urges, but do you really think that an entire high school population will do so?
trollhattan
@Keith G:
Upon review of every governor since Ann Richards, two of whom were reelected in spite/because of their spectacular ineptitude, and then eyeballing the TX congressional delegation, it’s impossible to take the joint seriously. Just sayin’.
The Thin Black Duke
Today it’s Chlamydia.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to test positive for HIV.
No, this ain’t fucking funny.
scav
@The Thin Black Duke: Southern Indiana more or less beat you to it. Which was so obvious a parallel, I didn’t bother with it.
Belafon
@Hal: Conservatives want your sex to have consequences, mainly of the control women variety. I suspect most of them would be happy with Boko-Haram getting 214 of the 234 women freed pregnant.
Riley's Enabler
@Mike in NC: Here in Houston it’s a common thing.
Kiddo has his 5th grade “puberty film” screening in class tomorrow. I so want to go, but he’d be horrified.
(That said he’s already had his many, many talks on the subject at hand (ahem), with many more to go. His school district can bite it; my kid is not skipping into the world unprepared.)
The Thin Black Duke
@scav: Unfortunately, to some people, it’s not that obvious, is it?
What worse, they’re usually the morans in charge, too.
Sorry. I’m cranky today, because it’s the same old bullshit, except there seems to be more of it these days.
raven
Jewel Aiken
Belafon
@The Thin Black Duke: It isn’t funny for the kids. The adults on the other hand, need to be laughed at until they feel shame. The other option is to punch them, but I’m on the other side of the state.
Keith G
@trollhattan: And here I thought that stereotyping the whole on the basis of a perception of a part of a population was not a value embraced by progressives.
You seem to be very spiritually connected to the majority of Texas voters.
rikyrah
Barack Obama has been cast
…………………
Parker Sawyers Will Be Barack Obama to Tika Sumpter’s Michelle Robinson in ‘Before Sunset’-Style Romance
By Tambay A. Obenson | Shadow and Act
May 7, 2015 at 1:26PM
Parker Sawyers, known for parts in “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012), “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014) and “Monsters: Dark Continent” (2014), has been cast to play Barack Obama in a film based on the early romance between Barack and Michelle Obama.
Titled “Southside With You” – I suppose referring to South Side, Chicago, home to some of the most significant figures in the history of American politics, including Obama – the project is being pitched as a “Before Sunset”-style type of movie (in short, man, woman, lots of mostly profound conversation over a period of time), which will take place entirely in one day during the summer of 1989, when one Barack Obama (then a first-year Harvard Law student) took his future wife, Michelle (an associate at a Chicago law firm), out on a first date, which included a tour of Chicago’s South Side.
Sawyers will play the younger Barack, joining the previously-cast Tika Sumpter as the younger Michelle Obama (who was Michelle Robinson at the time).
http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/parker-sawyers-will-be-barack-obama-to-tika-sumpters-michelle-robinson-in-before-sunset-style-romance-20150507
samiam
BREAKING: Teenagers are still having sex. Clearly the astinence only curriculum is not aggressive enough. Needs more Jesus…and color charts…or something.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
How’d the MRI go?
beltane
@Pogonip: Umm, expecting the average American teenager to embrace the abstemious lifestyle of a Christian or Buddhist monk is unrealistic. Monasteries themselves have always had a reputation for unsavory goings on. While a strict segregation of sexes along with early marriage does limit unauthorized heterosexual activity among teenagers, it is not the way mainstream America lives. Even (especially) the evangelicals do not live like this.
Amir Khalid
@Hal:
But it’s not the unborn they care about, is it? The thing is not to do what works or even what’s right, but to be as ostentatiously “Christian” as possible. So they rely on abstinence-based sex “education”, even though it plainly doesn’t work. Likewise they restrict the supply of contraception and anything else that might abet teen/non-marital sex by making it less risky, so that when kids do have sex the adverse consequences happen more often. Because the self-righteous tut-tutting about the wages of sin is more conspicuously “Christian” than kids being informed about sex or kept safe from its more adverse consequences.
beltane
@The Thin Black Duke: Chlamydia is not even funny, especially untreated Chlamydia. As a parent, I want my children to learn how to care for their bodies.
bemused
Amanda Marcotte went to Crane High School as she wrote in Slate. She quoted a parent from news station as saying he didn’t want to bring up his kid in town that has nasty stuff like that going on.
Clueless parents don’t know what goes on in the high school but their kids sure do. Teens in a local high school in my area may not have a steady boy/girlfriend but could have a fuk buddy as they call it instead of friends with benefits. The difference is that they have had much better sex ed so I don’t think their parents know.
Belafon
@Keith G: As a Texan, I know who they’re talking about. Some of them are my parents.
Litlebritdifrnt
Is there any way we can have an open thread for the UK election returns? I am so looking forward to them (if I can stay awake), I love the way the commentator and the returns officer remain so calm throughout. “Joe Smith (Labor) 6,200 votes, Snot Nose Brown (Conservative) 5,100 votes, Eric the Magnificent (Monster Raving Loony Party) 150 votes, etc., it has such entertainment value. Methinks I shall be snickering all night.
beltane
@bemused:
These parents can’t be that old. They themselves were probably teenagers themselves during the late ’80s/ early ’90s when there was plenty of “nasty stuff” going on. What is the matter with these people?
beltane
@Litlebritdifrnt: I am excited, too. I love election returns, any country’s election returns.
Amir Khalid
@beltane:
A convenient and selective amnesia, I reckon.
Litlebritdifrnt
@bemused:
I am a former member of the Royal Navy and one weekend we hosted a barbeque for a bunch of my husband’s students. Their conversations were absolutely shocking to me. On the lines of “Oh are Melissa and Phil dating or are they just fuck buddies” I had never heard of the term “fuck buddies” before but apparently it is a thing these days.
boatboy_srq
@Shakezula: Just for you.
boatboy_srq
@dedc79: You mean The Immaculate Infection?
Amir Khalid
@Litlebritdifrnt:
This calls for a video.
Litlebritdifrnt
@beltane: It is so much more exciting than the damn cable news networks “exit poll predictions”. Apparently Sunderland’s returning officer is hoping to smash his own record and have his return by 10:42pm.
shawn
aint is perfectly acceptable in Texas. you hear it in red and blue corners alike. it is a subtle way to cut through ones own BS, connect to a dusty, blue collar, probably not college educated community and get to a hard truth that the listener may not like. maybe hard to understand, kind of like how Southerners might not get that New Yorkers aren’t being rude to each other.
i was happy to see they are coming to the abstinence only doesn’t work party, however late. they tried it their way, and they found out that it doesn’t work. this should be celebrated, especially in this audience
“‘no sex’ IS totally attainable,” said the roughly 140 boys at that high school that are not getting laid
trollhattan
@Keith G:
Your feefees are duly noted. And feel free to fire any and all rejoinders re. presidents Nixon and Reagan. We own up to our mistakes!
bemused
@beltane:
Denial? Selective memory? Hell if I know how grown people can be so naive.
boatboy_srq
@Pogonip: The problem is that for an individual that kind of commitment is achievable. For it to work as a society, it has to achieve 100% adherence or it’s a
failuresign from Gawd that There Be Sinners Among Us.boatboy_srq
@Keith G: IOW, that’s 11 million refugees the other 49 will need to evacuate and resettle.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Amir Khalid: That sums it up nicely
shell
I don’t know if there’s more of it, just that due to social media and the interwebs we’re more quickly and broadly aware of it.
Think of it as improved cancer screening.
JPL
@Litlebritdifrnt: The polls close in less than fifteen minutes so BBC should release something other than dogs going to vote with masters.
boatboy_srq
@Hal:
Not true. Social conservatives want an easy way to identify Teh Righteous™ – by which they mean the virginal and
wealthyElect. Adulterous behavior, illness and poverty are earthly signs of imminent Eternal Damnation™.Litlebritdifrnt
@JPL:
Sunderland is going to be first, they are hoping for a 10:42 return (which should be 5:42 EST I think). The Guardian had a great photo gallery of unlikely polling stations, lots of them in local pubs, some in caravans, according to the Guardian there have been huge lines (queues) to vote, so turnout is expected to be huge. I guess people are fed up with Cameron.
beltane
@Litlebritdifrnt: Exit poll will be released right now.
beltane
@boatboy_srq: I don’t even think it is desirable for a society. There is nothing inherently evil about sex.
Epicurus
Thanks, Obama!!1! (/sarcasm.)
mdblanche
@beltane: BBC says Tories 316, Labour 239, SNP 58 (out of 59), Lib Dems 10
Belafon
@Keith G: You know, most of us Democrats in Texas know exactly who people like trollhattan are talking about.
JPL
@Litlebritdifrnt: f..k bbc is saying tories
beltane
@mdblanche: Meh.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@jaleh: I love to read Atul Gawande’s New Yorker stuff. He has such wonderful insights into what’s fucked up about US medical care and how we pay for it, with high cred as a doc. His piece about hospice care is phenomenal.
Villago Delenda Est
The stupid. IT BURNS! (literally)
Jebediah, RBG
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
It’s OK – it was an Oxford “ain’t.”
Cacti
Opposition to sex education, birth control, family planning, etc. are all just symptoms of the larger problem…
Religious conservatives want to be the sex police.
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith G: Your constant butthurt about people looking at Texas and sighing “oh, what maroons” is getting beyond tiresome, and frankly, only reinforces the stereotypes you are so butthurt about. Why don’t you just find a fainting couch and park yourself there.
Gindy51
@bemused: In my rural SE IN town they have blow job buddies in GRADE school. In middle school they progress to anal so as to not get knocked up before high school and then onto vaginal by the time they enter high school. This has been going on since my kid was attending that school system and she’s been out of college since 2011. And this is no poor school district either, it’s one of the top tier systems in the state.
bemused
@Gindy51:
And parents are the last to know if ever.
trollhattan
O/T amid the endless (non)confirmation hearings I managed to miss what an awesome person Loretta Lynch is. Hope she enjoyed the seven-minute long post-confirmation honeymoon phase.
Pogonip
@Omnes Omnibus: No, I was just pointing out that the idea that doing so is absolutely impossible is unsupported by evidence.
In my madcap youth, I controlled myself with the knowledge that if I became pregnant, my parents would never, ever, ever let me hear the end of it! This was the ’70’s, when crossing your legs did not lead to popularity, but it beat the alternative. Maybe those Texas kids have rant-deficient parents.
Myiq2xu
I guess none of the kids in schools where they teach safe sex ever gets an STD.
boatboy_srq
@The Thin Black Duke: HIV, syphilis, etc; there’s a whole range of medical risks with seriously nasty consequences. Not a bit funny, actually. What do you suggest we do? We can’t persuade the school districts or TX Dept of Ed to adopt rational education standards (for anything, actually, let alone sex ed); we can’t persuade parents to teach rational sex ed without things like this happening first to showcase what a parade of fail abstinence ed is (although I for one still think pandemic STDs in abstinence-only schools is a feature-not-bug artifact for the FundiEvangelist crowd); we can’t require public boarding schools to teach what the school districts and parents obviously won’t in an environment where the local school districts and parents can’t interfere; we can’t take the kids away from the parents and communities; and despite what the Wingnut Wurlitzer insists is happening, we can’t dissolve the governments and institute martial law for any reason let alone just making sure potentially-fatal stupidity isn’t taught in schools.
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip: It is theoretically possible that an entire high school’s student population could refrain from sex, but the likelihood of it happening is so minute that I think we can safely discount it.
singfoom
@Myiq2xu: No, I’m sure they do. There’s a difference here. Those who acknowledge the way the world is know that teenagers are going to have sex. You can teach them to do it safely, they may or not take those lessons to heart. If they get an STD because they ignored how to have safe sex, that’s their own personal responsibility.
But if you live in jeebus land and can’t acknowledge the real world and therefore teach “abstinence-only” sex education (which isn’t educational at all, but just finger wagging) and then those kids get an STD, that’s partly on you because they were not given the tools they need to make the right choices.
Enjoy the warmth of that straw though.
boatboy_srq
@Myiq2xu: A) schools that teach sensible sex ed rarely if ever have a 10% STD infection rate; B) safe sex ed also includes seeing a physician if an infection is suspected so it can be treated and cured, instead of pretending it can’t possibly exist because the kids aren’t having sex (which is how Crane got to a 10% infection rate to begin with).
Baud
@Myiq2xu: Do you know of such an outbreak recently?
boatboy_srq
@mdblanche: The only way Tories get to majority with that is coalition with SNP (Hell will freeze first IYAM): LibDems can’t help them this time. Zero seats for UKIP?
Tree With Water
Next thing you know, kids today will be reading Balzac, Captain Billy Whizbang, and playing pool. We’ve got trouble, folks..
Shakezula
@Pogonip: I’m sure the parents from this ‘burg would be understanding personified if one of their daughters got pregnant.
Excuse me, my eyes just rolled off in a corner.
MomSense
Our Whole Lives is a comprehensive sexuality course that is offered at UCC and UU churches. It is such a good program. I recommend it highly and encourage people to learn more about it and refer parents. Even though I have never lived in an abstinence education school district, I still enrolled my kids and it made a huge difference. My boys do not consider birth control to be something that only women have to deal with. They are responsible sexually and are not burdened by shaming messages or misinformation.
Those poor kids in Crane did not have to go through this. Their parents, schools, and community failed them big time.
Myiq2xu
If anyone bothered to do some research instead of merely taking John Cole’s word for it they would discover that the school did not report that there had been 20 cases at the school, just that there had been an outbreak among teens and young adults in the area.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/photos/photo-letter-home-parents-students-crane-independent-school-30814149
boatboy_srq
@Myiq2xu: Nice try. Oh, wait: there’s more.
singfoom
@Myiq2xu:
1)I heard about this before John Cole mentioned anything.
2)Here’s some links including local news website in Texas that uses the 20 cases figure so it would seem that you’re incorrect:
http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/Chlamydia-Outbreak-Reported-At-Small-Texas-High-School-302306581.html
http://outbreaknewstoday.com/texas-crane-high-school-reports-chlamydia-outbreak-96050/
This is 500 out, but there’s a CDC bulletin about it: http://emergency.cdc.gov/snaps/data/48/48103.htm
3)What’s your goddamn point?
boatboy_srq
@boatboy_srq: Four legitimate links and I’m in moderation. FYWP.
boatboy_srq
@Myiq2xu: Let’s try that…
boatboy_srq
@Myiq2xu: … one more time, shall we?
Myiq2xu
@boatboy_srq: Zero + zero = zero. Find an article with a direct quote from a school or state official that says 20 students are confirmed to have chlamydia.
Omnes Omnibus
@Myiq2xu: Nice moving of the goalposts.
boatboy_srq
@Myiq2xu: Better? From the article:
And in case the school numbers confuse you, it might help to know that Crane only has about 3000 residents. So it’s not like there’s another high school in town that was masking the numbers, or a horrific truancy problem.
boatboy_srq
@Omnes Omnibus: I do like how he thinks we’re talking about either a metropolis with a HISD-grade infrastructure or some huge home-schooler community.
SRW1
@Myiq2xu:
Translating ‘almost two dozens’ into numbers apparently is kind of a challenge to some.
boatboy_srq
@Omnes Omnibus: Maybe he’ll take this as a reference – in case he thinks that Crane is an isolated case. Looking at the numbers for the 10 worst (TX is 8th) it’s a Red State wingnut
Hellparadise almost across the board.EDIT: and it’s not as if the surrounding area were much better.
bemused
I’m watching Amy Schumer’s “Ask if birth control is right for you” again. Great lampoon.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: Troll vermin is troll vermin. Period. Intellectually dishonest and fucking proud of it.
Hal
@bemused:
It’s hilarious scary how close to real life nails the issue of birth control. My favorite little joke is the ask people on Facebook part where some dude types “ur fat” in response. Like a skit inside a skit.
Love Breitbart’s take away on the real issue:
bemused
@Hal:
They lash out like little kids when the truth pinches them. When they resort to grade school insults, you know you’ve hit a nerve.
low-tech cyclist
Nice earworm, John – I hadn’t thought about that song for years.
Myiq2xu
I TOLD YOU SO:
Another epic John Cole fail.
My Truth Hurts
“We do have an abstinence curriculum, and that evidently ain’t working,”
No shit, Bubba? How about that?