Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Abstinence program offends 'nontraditional families'

Actually, I'm not at all sure what WorldNetDaily makes of the frankly silly spectacle of the Lansing (NY) Board of Education canceling an abstinence program from a local crisis-pregnancy center. About the only real indicator of parental objection to the program is this paragraph:
[M]any parents are upset with the program's basic message of waiting for marriage, and the mother of one student complained abstinence should be taught as a health choice, not a moral choice.
What, I ask, is wrong with the message of waiting for marriage? Am I to understand that some parents actually want their kids to be "free" to engage in premarital sex? Is this irresponsible or what??

Let's also look closely at the false dichotomy of "health choice v. moral choice." First, too many people deny the health benefits of abstinence. In point of fact, sexual intercourse is the most intimate bodily contact that two people can ever have, other than pregnancy and gestation. A lot of diseases spread chiefly or only that way. Furthermore, abstinence is the only method known to prevent pregnancy in all cases, when practiced "properly"--and the only proper way to practice abstinence is "without exception or regard to romantic circumstance." That is also the only way to prevent the spread of those diseases I mentioned.

Now I ask you: when is a health choice not a moral choice? What is morality, anyway, but a code of practice that your values dictate? What shall we say, then, of any person who places so little value on her own health that she will not insist on abstaining as a way to protect her health?

And I haven't even mentioned mental or emotional health. Abstinence has an obvious physical benefit--though I might more accurately say that abstinence is a perfect method for avoiding certain physical hazards. Why do we hear so little about the mental and emotional hazards of adultery and fornication? I think I know why, actually: so many people don't want to admit any such hazard. All they see is the gratification of their pleasures and desires of the moment. Never once have any of them considered that they are on a treadmill to oblivion (or worse)--and that, even apart from any afterlife consideration, they will never be satisfied. No attachment that they make will have any lasting quality--not after they've gotten so used to making and breaking such attachments.

Who coined that phrase "nontraditional families" anyway? That came from the Board of Education. They have no evidence to support their claim, other than a few complaints that defy logic. Besides, the very phrase "nontraditional family" is an oxymoron and a neologism (literally a made-up word or phrase). Family, properly understood, means father and mother and children. It does not mean two overly-intimate roommates, with or without children.

And finally, if a "program's Christian affiliation [is] inappropriate for a public school," then maybe public schools are inappropriate places to send a child if you want to raise that child right.