Heterosexual-only sex education: next generation abstinence-only?

Rolling Stone tells of a rash of suicides among lesbian/gay/bisexual/questioning teens in a conservative town in Minnesota. They mention a next generation sex education program in public schools sponsored by evangelical organizations that questions same sex attraction. This heterosexual-only sex education program appears to be just another guise of abstinence-only sex education, and it seems to follow from the same motivation.

Both programs come from an assumption that both same sex attraction and premarital sex are brand new phenomena, and that it's possible to go back to the way things used to be. (Of course, plenty of evidence indicates that they're not new, and even if they were new, it's neither possible nor desirable to go back to a time when women's suffrage was unthinkable. None of the strong women evangelical leaders would agree to reverse feminist gains.)

Both programs attempt security via obscurity, and treat education as dangerous. Teaching a subject (contraception or same-sex attraction) is thought to encourage and legitimize the subject, and to advance an imagined liberal agenda.

Instead, the programs just delegitimize normal behavior and endanger teenagers. Abstinence-only sex education increased unsafe sex probably because it taught that pregnancy and STDs were unavoidable, so there was no point to avoiding them. Alternatively, it made teens so worried about the spiritual effects of sex that they never worried about the physical effects. That's dangerous and bad for public health, but probably no one would die from it. Hetero-only sex education is more insidious because it further marginalizes a population that is already marginalized, at high risk for educational and health disadvantages, and at high risk of suicide.

Right now these hetero-only sex education programs are coming into public schools using private funds. That's how abstinence-only sex education started in the early/mid 1990s. The next stage would be to slip funding for these programs into another bill, as abstinence-only began in 1996 with the welfare reform bill. I hope it doesn't get that far.

Cognitive dissonance in faculty recruiting

The University of South Carolina has what I understand to be a very high quality School of Public Health. They are looking for a tenure-track faculty member with a description that matches my own research fairly well, studying "sexualities, sexual behavior, sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancy, LGBT disparities or other sexuality and health issues." Particularly, they want someone who advocates and engages with community, state, national, and global organizations.

I checked their sex ed laws, and according to this profile, they are one of 7 states in the US to prohibit positive depictions of homosexuality in public schools, not a favorable start for any researcher who studies LGBT issues to advocate or engage with the community and local institutions. They also prohibit contraception information other than in the context of future family planning, which is better than nothing. SC is also one of the minority of states to apply for the federal abstinence-only sex education funding, meaning that the programs funded by that funding cannot even mention contraception in any positive way at all.

On the bright side, they also applied for the federal evidence-based sex education and pregnancy prevention funds, which they could certainly use since SC has the third highest gonorrhea rate in the country, and 8% of women ages 15-19 get pregnant each year, and 5% give birth. Looking at the gap between pregnancy and birth rates, it's particularly remarkable because 72% of SC women live in a county without an abortion provider (93% of counties lack an abortion provider), Medicaid does not fund abortions, they mandate a 24 hour waiting period and all procedures 12 weeks and after are a felony with mandatory minimum of 5 years in jail and/or $5000 fine.

Thanks to NARAL and Kaiser for the facts. The SC ACLU also has a long access guide listing all the sexuality, family planning, and related resources (e.g., PFLAG) in the state and neighboring states. So the state fortunately has some resources, even if they get an F by NARAL.

Origins of eating disorders among religious teens

This NY Times article about eating disorders among Orthodox Jews raises some theories about the origins of eating disorders in this population, but I think there are some other possibilities.

Modesty may make it harder to dress well for women who are even slightly overweight. Thin women look fine in a wide range of clothes, but slightly overweight women need to be creative in ways that don't always work with modesty restrictions --- showing cleavage is a good way for men not to notice extra fat elsewhere.

Also I suspect that being sexually involved is helpful for overweight women and their partners to feel good about their bodies. For religious women, that reinforcement isn't available. Religious men who have no experience either way may assume that thin women are better in bed. Alternatively, thin partners are more socially valued, and the social value may bring gratification pre-marriage. Likewise, religious women cannot feel sexy or sexually empowered by sexual activity. They may feel sexually empowered about how thin their bodies are, so they may seek thinness as their primary form of feeling sexy.

Because these alternative outlets for feeling desirable are not available to Orthodox teens, they need to find other ways of feeling good about themselves. I wonder whether the types of exercise that are incompatible with anorexia, such as weight lifting where it's important to eat minimum amounts of protein (0.5-1 g protein per pound of body weight) and to be moderate in quantity of exercise (every other day, at most), would be helpful. Gymnastics, dancing, rock climbing, and other ways of using that strength could also be helpful in helping teen women feel confident about their bodies, and also staying healthy.

Meanwhile, teen males also need to change their attitudes and how they perceive women of different sizes. That's harder, especially if they do not interact much with the opposite sex.

Song about breaking religious sex rules

I'm so proud of our University of Maryland undergraduates who wrote this song, called "I just broke Shomer." (i.e., touched a girl, against some interpretations of Jewish law that disallow touching the opposite sex until marriage.) It reminds me of my friends' 2005 song "No one's really shomer negiah."

Safe sex ads: where everyone is above average

New safe sex ad from Candies Foundation with Bristol Palin and Mike Sorrentino from Jersey Shore. First, Bristol looks a bit nervous, fidgeting as she's talking about sex and safe sex, which is odd since I would think they could try refilming until she didn't look nervous. Second, Mr. Sorentino whips out condoms, and brags that they're large-sized, and then offers one to Ms. Palin, just in case. A condom that's too large is only marginally better than no condom at all. What good does it do for a safe sex ad to raise the size issue when, by definition, only a small proportion of their viewers need large-sized condoms? While googling around for information about what proportion of males "need" large condoms, I found an article which said that the market share for a single large-sized brand went up from 5% to 20%, but that the condoms are not actually larger than other condoms.

Balanced arguments are more persuasive

According to this summary of a meta-analysis, arguments are more persuasive when both sides are presented, even when preaching to the choir. This research explains why abstinence-only sex education --- which is still funded at $50 million per year and requires that only disadvantages of birth control and condoms be presented, not advantages --- does not encourage abstinence as well as comprehensive sex education does, even among those inclined to believe it, and why the only abstinence-only program found effective (the Jemmotts' program) was not one-sided enough to be funded under federal abstinence-only funds.

My Baltimore Sun op-ed defending O'Donnell on abstinence, but not on poverty

My op-ed in today's Baltimore Sun says that O'Donnell's personal religious beliefs about abstinence and masturbation are reasonably mainstream evangelical beliefs, but that her mainstream Republican beliefs ignore that the Bible says that fortunate, wealthy societies have an obligation to provide for the poor.

Originally I framed the article as we should be sensitive to her because the Bible says to be sensitive to those who are alone through no fault of their own like widows, orphans, and converts, but the Bible also says societies have the obligation to be generous to the poor. This obligation to sensitivity for widows, orphans, and converts seems to extend to be sensitive also to people who are involuntarily single, as virtually all religious single adults are, and abstinence must be a particularly difficult subject for her since abstinence means that she has an idealized view of marriage and her eventual husband she hoped would love her for her beliefs and admire her for having stuck to them since her conversion to become more religious. I liked the parallelism, but it involved too much speculation about her personal life.

More importantly, I'm not a religious authority, so it's not my place to say what we should and shouldn't do.

Two good comments so far on Baltimore Sun. One said how to you judge which beliefs you criticize candidates for. That's a really terrific topic --- many politicians have personal religious beliefs, but they maintain a line between those beliefs and the policies that they support. One example is Joe Lieberman where it's my understanding that his personal religious beliefs should in theory make him more supportive of social programs to help the poor, but lately he has been voting against these programs for what may be political reasons. A case where religious beliefs do influence policy for Christine O'Donnell is that she is clearly extremely anti-abortion and anti-choice --- she would ban abortion even for rape survivors --- and there's every reason to expect she would vote that way, and that's a great reason to vote against her, but that's from her policy statements, not from her religious beliefs. On the other hand, there are some distinguished politicians who have personal beliefs against abortion, and they themselves would not have abortions except under limited circumstances, who have strongly pro-choice voting records. It would be a great study to look at when what we know of candidates' personal religious beliefs agree with their voting records, and when their personal religious beliefs contrast with them. And perhaps this study has already been done. Any political scientists to comment?

Second comment calls for holding politicians accountable for making "rational evidence-based decisions," and oh my, I am so in agreement with that. Not making evidence-based decisions, and instead making decisions for reasons of politics, is extremely common in our government. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winning economist and an expert in the Great Depression, and he's been writing op-eds for the past 2 years saying that we need to give more stimulus or unemployment is going to stay high for years and years, and we are going to lose a generation. And he's been saying the same theme over and over, and he's an extremely distinguished economist, a Nobel Prize winner, and not enough politicians listened to him to affect policy. And the failure to provide fiscal policy that can be adequate stimulus is the worst way that the government can fail people. We're talking about hurting young adults who happen to be coming of age now and during the next several years, and the effects of a worse job market when they come of age will affect them for their ENTIRE LIVES, and they will have not just lower earnings, but (judging by studies of past generations born in high unemployment eras) worse social problems. That's huge, and in my opinion way more important than abstinence education. But, yes, abstinence education is a shame, especially how $50 million abstinence-only funding came back in the health care reform bill in order to get it through Congress. And both of those issues are because of the 60 vote filibuster, and the fact that Senators no longer have to actually filibuster, they can just claim that they are. Some have said that if they actually had to speak for 24 hours straight, they would do it less. Again, the political scientists can speak.

Fantastic WW2 sex ed film for soldiers

This film shown to World War II soldiers is already better than any official abstinence-only (a-h criteria compliant) education curriculum. The message is do not have sex, but if you do, use a condom, and it shows a condom and then tells how to put it on, and do not drink so much that you are careless. And then it closes with the typewritten message on the screen, "Do not be so weak as to let some ignorant individual persuade you that you must seek sex relations to be a good sport. If you follow his advice, you are only being a fool."

Short and to the point, and an easy substitute for weeks-long curricula. And this was before there was even effective treatment for either syphilis or gonorrhea. (And before we were aware of chlamydia, herpes, and HPV.) Interestingly, the film was made in 1941, or either in the 24 days after the US declared WW2 or prior to entering WW2. Either way, it's clear that the army clearly anticipated that STIs can be a major problem, and it knew that it had to prevent STIs as much as possible, rather than waiting for them to come up. Unfortunately, there is no such common unifying impetus to prevent STIs today.

Policy proposal: given that some idealize the times before the sexual revolution, states that are reluctant about giving modern comprehensive sex education should limit themselves to material produced by state and federal government bodies prior to the sexual revolution. The vintage government films that I've seen are more practical and factual than the abstinence-only curricula that I've seen.

Three months without federal abstinence-only funding

The US had 3 months without abstinence-only funding on the books before the health reform law reinstated it: $50 million a year for 5 years for the states, the exact same level of state-level abstinence funding as in the previous administration, even though fewer states are applying for the funds. Even Alaska under Sarah Palin "missed the deadline" for abstinence grants in the last round. (No Sarah Palin jokes. Missing the deadline just seems to be the politically expedient method of not participating in abstinence funding.)

The difference between current funding and the previous administration seems to be $154 million: community organizations are no longer given abstinence grants ($141 million in 2009) and the Adolescent Family Life abstinence program is no longer listed in the budget ($13 million in 2009). Not funding AFL is surprising, and I wonder if I've missed something since that program has been funded consistently since the early 1980s, but I don't see in the 2011 HHS budget; this program generally flies under the radar and is usually not mentioned in media reports about abstinence education, even though organizations like Advocates for Youth track it.

The decrease in abstinence-only education funding from $204 million to $50 million represents additional good news: the $50 million is going to states who are scrutinized more heavily. For instance, some states have laws requiring that all sex education be medically accurate. On the other hand, increasing numbers of states require contraception to be taught in sex education, which may mean that even if the states wanted to apply for the abstinence funds, their state law mandates a curriculum that is incompatible with the abstinence education requirements. The a-h definition of abstinence education in the Title V is so restrictive that the only abstinence-only program that has ever been shown effective (Jemmott and Jemmott's research) could not be funded under Title V.

Another difference between the pre-2009 and current HHS budgets is that abstinence was featured prominently in the budget in 2009 and before. Many pages of the pre-2009 budgets mentioned abstinence, and there was a whole subsection describing all the sources of abstinence funding and their histories. The 2011 budget doesn't have any text about abstinence and only includes abstinence in the itemized totals, mostly for past years, and has "--" where future years of abstinence funding are supposed to be listed. (The new 50 million a year isn't yet listed in the 2011 budget.)

While the country had only the 3 month period between the zero-ing out of abstinence education at the end of December 2009 and the passage of the health reform bill at the end of March 2010, there's certainly a big shift.

The really interesting question is how many states will apply for abstinence funds, since more states now have comprehensive sex education laws that are incompatible with applying for the funds, and whether it would be possible for the a-h definition to be changed. Or if the $50 million will go only to the states with strong abstinence-only constituencies such as Louisiana and Texas.

Sex Education of the Weird

A recent News of the Weird had two pieces of news related to sex education, but the weirdest was in this Thursday's New York Times.

First, abstinence-only sex education was the explanation for a teen's harassment of women:

Sheriff's deputies in Austin, Texas, arrested Anthony Gigliotti, 17, after complaints that the teen was annoying women by following them around in public and snapping photographs of their clothed body parts. Gigliotti told one deputy that he needed the photos because the sex education at his Lake Travis High School was inadequate. [KXAN-TV (Austin), 2-2-10]

On the other hand, condom education isn't necessarily safe either:

Clumsy: Teacher Karen Hollander filed a lawsuit in November against the New York City Department of Education after taking a fall on "slippery foreign substances," including condoms, on the floor at the High School of Art & Design. Since schools distribute condoms on campus, she said, the department is responsible when students open them and discard them during the lunch period, littering the floor. [New York Daily News, 11-21-09]

The weirdest of all, however, was in the New York Times. In response to a new comprehensive sex education law that requires contraception education to be included in any sex education course, the district attorney of a county in Wisconsin "warned that teachers face 'possible criminal liability' for teaching youths how to use contraceptives."

As the GAO found, some fraction of abstinence-only education just isn't true. While well-intentioned, this prosecutor's warning is no exception.

The 5 year pregnancy and other religious methods of dealing with deviance

One of the recurrent issues with religious restrictions on sexuality is how to deal with sexual transgressions. If a married woman's husband away has been away for 12 months, and she gives birth, how does a religion address this? The rabbis of the Talmud 1500 years ago declared that the length of pregnancy was 9 months, but birth can sometimes be delayed by 3 months, resulting in a 12 month pregnancy (Yevamot 80b). Apparently Muslim authorities made similar declarations, saying that a pregnancy can last 2, 4, or even 5 years. Likewise, I've heard of writings that a first pregnancy can be only 3 months long and yield a full-grown baby.

The source in the linked article is decrying this unscientific thinking, but it seems like the best alternative in a religious society that denies a high prevalance of transgression. Everyone knows that pregnancies are 9 months long (+/-), and much less than this will result in a small infant and much more than this is impossible, but declaring that reality fits the moral order rather than admitting the frequency of immorality is definitely more humane than calling people out on transgressions and treating them poorly. Which the editorialist seems interested in doing:

from a moral perspective, how can I provide a jurisprudential loophole for a woman who was probably promiscuous after the death of her husband and then presented her baby, conceived in sin, as a baby of her dead husband by relying on the [notion] of a hidden pregnancy or on a fatwa issued by some [cleric] or religious school? This is what happened on December 14, 1927 at a shari'a court in Mecca. The qadi... ruled that the baby was conceived by the woman's dead husband who had died five years previously.

Obviously the best option is to recognize that it's normal for healthy people to have sex, sometimes when it's against their religion's rules, and to provide a structure so that the best outcomes can prevail: sex ed, contraception, reasonable expectations. When that's not an option, a 5 year pregnancy seems like a great alternative.

Is it possible to restore the norm of no premarital sex?

News today about gaps in sex education has a fantastically clear quote about the goals of conservative policy towards sex education:

"I don't think we'll be able to overcome this problem unless we restore the social norm of not having sex and not getting pregnant before marriage," said Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council.

Social conservatives do not generally support research about social norms about sexuality, so we do not know as much about sexual norms as we would otherwise. According to the earliest representative studies by sociologist Ira Reiss, the attitudes to allow what Ira Reiss called "permissiveness with affection" started shifting in the 1940s, and the shift was well underway by 1950 and definitely by 1960 when Ira Reiss wrote Premarital Sex in America (the link goes to the actual book). It seems unlikely that such a long-standing attitude shift could be easily reversed. By now, it is the standard that even many Evangelicals follow. If they marry right after college, it's possible they may abstain, but if they marry later, it's very unlikely, and many do marry later.

I would argue that permissiveness with affection is not a policy issue. No public health problems result from premarital sex within long-term committed monogamous relationships. Disease spread is self-limiting. Still, if changing that social norm is a worthy public policy goal, they have to look to more recent trends first.

One norm that has changed more recently are attitudes towards what Reiss calls "permissiveness without affection:" just as AIDS was emerging in the early 1980s, academics were declaring this to be the new norm. From the poll data in the link (which I would guess is an incomplete picture of the available data), it looks like endorsement of the norm may have declined with AIDS/HIV, and has begun to reemerge to some extent and even become part of public discourse, with everyone having heard of the idea of "Friends with Benefits". Unlike permissiveness with affection, there is some degree of a public health justification due to the herpes and HPV risks.

But that means you have to acknowledge that that nearly all Americans have premarital sex, and teach real sex education to protect them.

And then you have to think of a policy that can change social norms. Incidentally, changing social norms would seem to be totally inconsistent with a limited government of the sort that Conservatives say they want.

Twilight books romanticize domestic violence?

The Twilight book series has been thought of as promoting abstinence, so I've followed it somewhat because of my work. I found it interesting to read this post, which goes through the checklist from the National Domestic Violence hotline for Bella and Edward's relationship, and finds 15 signs that their relationship is abusive. Fifteen! I have only read articles about the books and movies, not read the books or seen the movies myself, so I am frankly surprised to hear that Edward throws Bella through a glass table. But even the other signs, like repeated statements of jealousy, abandoning her in a dangerous place, threatening suicide. . . This is supposed to be romantic? Religious groups can't possibly approve of these books, abstinence message or no.

Also: the view from a school librarian (and member of my Cambridge synagogue).

Political compromises on sex ed

I'm an ardent moderate, but I find the administration's compromises counterproductive. Obviously the stimulus compromise didn't work: the bill was watered down, and virtually no Republicans voted for it anyhow.

If the health bill passes, the sex education situation will go to $50 million for abstinence-only education, $50 million for evidence-based comprehensive sex education, and $25 million for experimental comprehensive sex education. That's not compromise. That's going also against popular opinion: 52% of even politically "very conservative" parents favor teaching birth control in schools, and 89% of the general population of parents. Just as most of the public and most physicians favor the public option, but that doesn't make it into policy either.

More importantly, it's going agsinst the findings of the Congressionally-mandated study finding that abstinence-only sex education doesn't work.

They're not listening to either the public or the researchers they hired.

An open letter to Senator Orrin Hatch

Dear Senator Hatch,

I am the author of two of the approximately ten published papers about the sexual behavior of virginity pledgers. I found that virginity pledgers may lie about their sexual pasts and that they are less likely to use condoms when they do have sex.

Thank you for thinking of my research when you added an amendment for $50 million of Abstinence-Only Sex Education funds to the health reform bill. If the federal government does not fund abstinence education, my research into the sexual behavior of virginity pledgers and evangelical adolescents would lack policy relevance, so I'm truly grateful for this opportunity.

Nonetheless, I have to turn down this generous offer. I have a surfeit of other research topics, and I've moved on with my research. Even most abstinence proponents have moved on with their efforts. Every abstinence proponent I've spoken with, including leading Southern Baptists, seem to accept that their approach to sex education needs to be reworked. The evangelical media's reaction to my most recent paper finding virginity pledges do not work was mild (in the case of Focus on the Family Radio and the Baptist Press) and even favorable (in the case of Christianity Today).

More importantly, as you know, the case against Abstinence-Only Sex Education was definitively made by the Congressionally-mandated evaluation of the program published in 2007 by Mathematica Policy Research.

I consider that perhaps you made this amendment for ironic effect: if your amendment stays in the bill, the Democrats who favor health reform will have to vote for your abstinence funding. If so, your point was made, and I have laughed heartily at the irony. Now you can remove it.

Best of luck in your continued efforts.

Love,

Janet Rosenbaum, PhD

Texas wins a prize for high teen births

Texas papers such as the Dallas Morning News and Houston Chronicle are the only papers in the country reporting the results for Texas of a Child Trends teen pregnancy study that is supposed to come out tomorrow. I can only assume that being allowed to break a story early is a reward for their cities' stellar performances: Dallas has the highest proportion of repeat teen births and Houston leads in births under age 15. Of course there is nothing funny about any of this.

The majority are to Latinos. About 95% of Texas schools provide no information other than abstinence to students, a policy supported by white-majority churches such as the Southern Baptist Conference. The lack of information may disproportionately impact Latinos, however, who may come from cultures where sex and birth control are not discussed and may have less access to the internet or other sources of information.

"Treasure or target?" Quiz

Feministe blog has the review of an abstinence-only curriculum that includes a quiz called "are you a treasure or a target?" They have 6 questions that are interesting situations. For instance, one question asks what to wear now that micro minis are fashionable: a micro mini, cargo shorts, or a skirt a few inches above the knee. And they label the options in that order of preference, which seems pretty arbitrary to me.

Social scientists conduct large long time frame studies to find the optimal answers, so I can't say that I know what the "right" answer is to any of these questions. Amusing to think about conducting a study where some women are randomized to wear different clothing styles to see what the outcome is. Actually that would be a fantastic trial. Five conditions:

1. Covering everything except hands and feet, though maybe not hair?, a la Little Mosque on the Prairie character Rayyan Hamoudi whose style is so admired there are blogs that try to figure out where to find her clothes.

2. Covering knee to elbow, more or less, a la Mayim Biyalik or the Hot Chani style. As far as I can tell, this is roughly the Mormon guidelines as well as the guidelines for those who consider themselves to practice "Authentic Judaism".

3. Regular tomboy style: jeans, cargo shorts, loose t-shirt.

4. Mainstream Evangelical Christian style, so a bit more conservative than normal: no cleavage, no midriff, small number of inches above knee.

5. Standard US fashion style. Whatever is featured by H&M, Zara, etc.

I'd love to see the experiment that would randomize people to different styles to see whether they acted in a way that fit their clothing. Separately, I wonder if you randomized people to dress straight out like a member of a religion (e.g., non-Muslims actually wearing a hijab or non-Mormons actually wearing the secret undergarment), some people would end converting to the religion. Such an experiment would answer a really fundamental question in social science about to what extent behavior is determined by internal cues or social cues. It would also be enormously un-PC.

But that's neither here nor there. Quizzes are arbitrary and we have no way of knowing what the "right" answer in these circumstances.

The general idea of choosing dates who are interested in long-term relationships seems like a valid concern, as shown by Bogle's Hooking Up book and Laura Sessions Stepp's book that late adolescent women who choose dates without knowing (or in denial of) their dates' relationship objectives often end up disappointed and frustrated by a lack of long-term relationships.

Of course asking about claimed objectives isn't enough. I went on a date with a gentleman who professed serious interest in a long-term relationship and eventually marriage, and he seemed considerate and sensitive. On our third date, I asked him about his sexual history (one of the privileges of my profession). He told me that in addition to his 5 relationships that lasted more than a year (in some cases much longer), he had gone out on 3-5 dates with 20-35 women whom he had sex with and he stressed earnestly that at the time he had sex with them he had intended to go out with them again. He trailed off.

I have no idea what gives him only a 12.5-20.0% chance of deciding to initiate a year-long relationship with a woman he has sex with, and perhaps he doesn't either. Going purely on the statistics, this guy seems like an unlikely bet, which honestly didn't surprise me: something about him had led me to keep my distance. Giving the benefit of the doubt, I'm guessing this is what the quiz is trying to get women to be aware of, and that seems reasonable also from a third wave feminist perspective: knowing the prior probabilities can't hurt; if a woman doesn't care for a long-term relationship and just wants a sexual relationship, that's her choice as well.

Review of You're Teaching My Child WHAT?

Dr. Miriam Grossman, formerly Anonymous MD, has written another book, entitled You're Teaching My Child WHAT? A Physician Exposes the Lies of Sex Education and How They Harm Your Child. My thoughts about this book are almost identical to my review of her earlier book, perhaps because the books have nearly identical tone and content. As I stated in that review, "This evident alarmism --- PC is so insidious that the author must remain anonymous or risk Birkenstocks being thrown through her front windows --- that pervades the book may cause parents and aggrieved social conservatives to pick up the book, but it does no good for Dr. Anonymous's arguments and alienates people who might otherwise agree with her." As in her previous book, Dr. Grossman makes valid points in the most invalid ways, alleging cover-ups and duplicity and a single radical academic agenda when none exists.

I have three responses specific to this book.

First, Dr. Grossman refers multiple times to a controversy between parents and experts, for instance saying "The `experts' are wrong, and parents are right." presuming parents are opposed to the allegedly radical agenda of comprehensive sex education. In fact, nearly all parents, even very conservative parents, favor school sex education that teaches birth control: 89% of all parents, more than 80% of Born Again Christian parents, and 51% of parents who call themselves politically very conservative.

Second, Dr. Grossman identifies herself in this book as an Orthodox Jew. I find it strange that she spends an entire chapter lambasting the sex education advocacy group SIECUS for encouraging sexual experimentation rather than abstinence when the only sex education curriculum developed by Orthodox Jewish institutions is based on SIECUS guidelines (Life Values and Intimacy Education sponsored by Yeshiva University's Center for the Jewish Future, published by KTAV, all institutions considered arbiters of "Authentic Judaism"). She does not try to reconcile this discrepancy, I suspect because that would blur the simple dichotomy she is trying to create between religion/parents/tradition (=good) and academia/sex education advocates/SIECUS (=bad).

Third, her chapters on homosexuality and gender identity, the latter entitled "Genderland", are problematic in ways beyond the scope of this review. She cites some legitimate research such as Lisa Diamond's fantastic 10 year longitudinal qualitative study of lesbian and bisexual women published in the 2008 book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire. Diamond found that nearly all of her women subjects' sexual orientations seemed to change spontaneously. Grossman uses spontaneous sexual orientation change among women to bolster the case for attempting to induce changes in sexual orientation among both men and women. Besides the spontaneous vs. attempted induced changes difference, Diamond looked only at women. Grossman lists many differences between men and women in the realm of sexuality earlier in her book, all of which would imply that a study of women's sexual orientations has no relevance to men's sexual orientations. Of course mentioning NARTH is a total non-starter.

This book does make some valid points and could be readable if all the alarmist bits were pulled out and the rest toned down. As I stated in my review of her previous book, I don't think that her points are repressed at the level of academic research, but as in many areas perhaps research simply is not adequately disseminated: this certainly wouldn't be the first area where quality of health care suffered because practitioners followed their intuitions instead of evidence-based guidelines or the evidence was never disseminated in the first place.


Cutting out the alarmism would make the book about 20% shorter but would give it a chance of being looked at by those she critiques. It seems like she's not interested in dialogue, just in fomenting alarm among the alarmed. Too bad. It could have been otherwise. She wrote this book while a recipient of a Clara Booth Luce fellowship, a fund that has funded moderate research by journalist Laura Sessions Stepp, also an affiliate of the moderate group National Campaign Against Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

What a wasted opportunity for dialogue.

Sociologist suggests lowering age of marriage

Mark Regnerus, one of the world experts on the sexual behavior of Evangelical Christians, wrote a long article in Christianity Today that states a few important facts.

1. Evangelicals are only slightly more sexually conservative than other Americans: about 80% have premarital sex by his estimate, and other estimates have higher numbers.

2. On average, like most Americans, Evangelicals have increased their average age at first marriage by 5 years, which goes along with a change in the view of marriage. As Regnerus puts it, "Most young Americans no longer think of marriage as a formative institution, but rather as the institution they enter once they think they are fully formed."

3. Women who want to get married have trouble finding men because 60% of evangelical young people are female: 3 women for 2 men.

My addition: recent research from Journal of Evolutionary Psychology indicates that a favorable male:female ratio alone may cause men to dally in making commitment to marriage, as is predictable.


The implications of these facts are not straight-forward because there's little good research on the subject of age of marriage, so conclusions are necessarily speculative. His conclusion is that people should get married earlier. My conclusions are that marriage age among evangelicals will probably stay high until there is an equal gender ratio, but there's unlikely to be an equal gender ratio because across societies women are in general more interested in religion than men, so pronouncements about what should happen aren't useful.

Just stating these facts may help to reframe the abstinence discussion.

"True Lunch Waits"

Study: Abstinence-Only Lunch Programs Ineffective At Combating Teen Obesity, a brilliant story in the Onion. The entire thing is fabulous but I love this part:

"I'm never ever going to eat, because eating is wrong, and I'm worth more than a chicken sandwich with asparagus and rice pilaf," Woodbridge seventh-grader Tracey Holmes said. "I heard Jennifer Hines eats all the time, like 50 times a day. I heard she eats all her ice cream upside-down, though, so she doesn't get fat. That's how it works."

"It's really hard, though," Holmes added. "I get so hungry sometimes. Especially after hours and hours of unprotected sex."

Thanks to Arthur for forwarding it.