Recon: Virginity For Sale
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• Since President Bush took office, almost $1 billion in federal funds has been committed to abstinence-only education.
• Free Teens USA, which last year received $600,000 to teach abstinence in schools, is linked to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who said that "the separation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most."
• An exercise recommended by Free Teens has students spit into a cup, trade cups with another student, and then drink. Students are told that sex is more intimate than drinking someone else's spit.
• In 2005, the CDC awarded an abstinence education group $200,000 to develop a sexual-health curriculum for doctors in training. The group tapped Dr. David Hager—opponent of Plan B and author of As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now—to head the project.
• The National Abstinence Clearinghouse, whose budget has increased more than 500% since 2001, has received $2.7 million in government funding to develop abstinence-only curricula.
• This year, the Abstinence Clearinghouse's annual conference had a "Wizard of Oz" theme, including a panel titled "Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead! Which Old Witch? (The 'Safe-Sex' Witch)."
• Between 2001 and 2005, more than $30 million in federal abstinence funds went to more than 50 crisis pregnancy centers, anti-abortion clinics that give false information to women.
• Cotillions where girls escorted by their fathers pledge chastity are known as Purity Balls.
• At Purity Balls, fathers read this pledge: "I choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity…as the high priest in my home."
• Virginity pledgers are much less likely than non-pledgers to use contraception the first time they have sex, are equally likely to contract stds, and are twice as likely to engage in anal sex.
