Tomorrow, there will be a press conference in Washington, D.C. that is being organized by those who are opposed to congressional reauthorization of federal funding for abstinence-only sex education. The coalition of 35 national organizations will release a statement decrying abstinence-only programs. Two major arguments will be made: funding of such programs amounts to censorship and is an affront to the principle of separation of church and state.
Catholic League president William Donohue remarked as follows:
“Those organizations that are opposed to abstinence-only sex education are, predictably, those who reject traditional moral values. They range from anti-Catholic groups like Catholics for a Free Choice to the sexperts at the Sexuality Information & Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). Along with the ACLU, People for the American Way, NARAL and Planned Parenthood, this motley crew of well-heeled activists has long been at odds with the ethic of moral restraint that undergirds abstinence-only education. And in the case of many of these groups, they have a vested financial interest in the effects of promiscuity.
“If it is censorship to provide federal monies for abstinence-only sex education, then it is also censorship to allow public funding of Planned Parenthood: this group spends tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in programs that reject abstinence-only. Moreover, the argument that abstinence-only programs should be banned because they violate the principle of separation of church and state also implodes: the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ are among the 35 organizations that constitute the anti-abstinence coalition. Ergo, according to the logic of the coalition, the presence of these two religious bodies signals the imposition of a religious view on the public.
“From True Love Waits to Sex Respect to Best Friends, the evidence is clear: abstinence-only works and the SIECUS method bombs.”
