Perhaps Morally Correct, Definitely Practically Dumb

July 1, 2009 11:36 PM

o, I was thinking about something I don't understand.

There are some people who think that premarital sex is wrong. That's fine, people can think that. People are also free to teach their children that premarital sex is wrong. And people are free not to discuss sex and reproduction with their children at all. That's not what I'm going to do with my kids, but, hey, I'm not going to tell you how to raise yours.

So if your goal is to teach your children that it is morally incorrect to have intercourse before marriage, fine. But let's say that your goal is something else. Let's say that your goal is to reduce instances of pregnancy and STD infection in teenagers. As a policymaker, wouldn't the best thing to do be to evaluate the effectiveness of various strategies--say, abstinence-only education versus education on STDs and proper condom use--and decide, based on that evaluation, which approach would be most effective?

You'd think that yes, that would be the best thing to do, right?

But there are still people in this country that think that we have to implement abstinence-only sex-ed everywhere, even though it's been demonstrated to be less effective, because we have to keep from appearing to encourage the evil of premarital sex.

People who are of the opinion that sexual education in the schools should consist only of a stern warning are dumb, at least insofar as they actively take a position which is unlikely to bring about their ultimate goal.

All of that is fairly clear to me. Please tell me why you disagree if you do.

But then I started thinking: what if there are areas in which I am as just as dogmatic as the abstinence-only people? I mean, certainly there are certain moral imperatives on which I would not accept a compromise. So I'm wondering: in those areas, am I likely to be blinded by my ideals to the point that I'm incapable of evaluating policy on the basis of its efficacy?

This is going to keep me up at night.

1 Comments

The Reeg said:

Your concern about being too dogmatic to intelligently evaluate policies is good, and it's something I think everyone should look out for as they're thinking about things.

Abstinence-only sex ed, however, is a poor example of this mental trap because the True Love Waits folks don't CARE about STD rates or teen pregnancy. It's a religious objection, and according to those who think this way individuals who contract HPV or get pregnant even though they don't want a child deserve it--it's their punishment for having sex outside of marriage. So they don't want to minimize the consequences of premarital sex via comprehensive sex ed because then the punishment is gone (or its risk significantly reduced) and--gasp!--people might sin and "get away with it."

Your idea of efficacy--preventing STD transmission and reducing the number of 14-year-olds who have kids--is not their idea of efficacy. Their idea of efficacy is everyone (mainly women) being virgins until they marry, and those who stray from this path getting really sick and dying painfully or stuck raising a kid they don't want with someone they don't love.

July 2, 2009 9:22 AM

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