Rick Santorum’s It Takes a Family 4

Here are some items from my latest reading of Rick Santorum’s It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good.

1.  Santorum does not support passing out condoms to teens in school, for he thinks that sends out a message of low expectations: We don’t expect for many teens to abstain, so here’s some contraception.  Against this mindset, Santorum cites the 1991 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says that 54 percent of high school students have had sex, and Santorum notes that this percentage was down to 46 percent in 2001.  That means that most high school students are virgins, even though Santorum acknowledges that it is not that overwhelming of a majority.

Personally, I’m in favor of abstinence-plus education.  I support contraception being available, but I also think that sex education should teach teens that abstinence is okay, and to respect themselves and others.

2.  Santorum thinks that the tax system should be reformed to help families.  He has problems with the marriage penalty, and also with phasing out the per-child tax credit for families making $110,000 a year, since such a family would need that tax credit if it had (say) eight children!  Santorum also talks about how the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was designed to make sure that the “super-wealthy were paying their fair share at a time when tax shelters were commonplace”, hurts families that take advantage of deductions, since these families are deemed to be paying “not enough” (pages 96-97).

3.  Santorum is a strong proponent of parents spending time with their kids.  He supports parents talking with their kids and families eating dinner together.  In the book, he also appears to be critical of mothers with kids pursuing careers, which came back to bite him during his Presidential campaign.  But he also wants fathers to spend time with their children.  In terms of how he believes that public policy can encourage this, his ideas go “from providing money for regional telecommuting planning, to providing pollution credits to companies that encourage their employees to telecommute, to giving a tax credit to individuals and companies” (page 94—-see here for information on telecommuting).  He also supports amending the Federal Labor Standards Act to allow hourly workers to choose comp or flex time over overtime.

I don’t think that women need to stay home all day to spend quality time with their children.  There is something to be said for them finding fulfillment outside of the home.  At the same time, I appreciate that Santorum does not want for parents to be so bound to the capitalist treadmill that they don’t have time to spend with their kids.  For him, there’s more to life and society than the bottom line. 

4.  Santorum believes that religion is beneficial to society.  He says that institutions affiliated with religions (i.e., Catholic hospitals) should not be forced to violate their religious beliefs, even when they receive federal funds, the same way that Planned Parenthood can act according to its beliefs when receiving federal funds.  (But isn’t Planned Parenthood barred from spending tax money on abortion?)  Santorum also talks about how Prison Fellowship, which teaches prisoners faith and morality and gives them a network to get back on their feet after being released from prison, has produced a lower recidivism rate among participants, in comparison to prisoners who are not in Prison Fellowship programs.  Santorum believes that the government should support these kinds of programs, and, against those who cry “Separation of Church and State”, he replies that such a phrase is not in the Constitution.  At the same time, in defending faith-based initiatives, Santorum states that President George W. Bush took measures to ensure that federal funds were not being used to proselytize or to condition help on participation in religious activities.

I appreciated a point that Santorum made on page 103, where he talked about introducing the Workplace Religious Freedom Act with John Kerry.  This act required the workplace to accommodate people’s religious practices, such as observance of the Seventh-Day Sabbath.  Although the ACLU has advanced legitimate arguments against this law (see here), I am appreciative of Santorum’s sensitivity to the issue, as one who has been in denominations that keep the Seventh-Day Sabbath.

Rick Santorum’s It Takes a Family 3

There was a lot of good stuff in my latest reading of Rick Santorum’s It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good.  Here are two items:

1.  On Page 62, Santorum says: “…in many states, convicted felons can never vote, practically ensuring that large numbers of black men are permanently disengaged from civic life.  That is why I have supported state laws and even voted for federal laws allowing felons to vote again, provided they have been crime-free for five years.”

Some may have issues with Santorum bringing up race when talking about felonies, but Santorum does present statistics about how crime hits the African-American community hard.  For Santorum, strong social capital can be a panacea to this problem, and that entails civic participation.  I applaud Santorum’s stance for restorative justice (if that is the right phrase), which respects the humanity even of felons and seeks ways to discourage them from committing more crimes.  Redemption was a salient theme in my reading of Santorum last night, for Santorum tells a moving story about a druggie who decides to become a good father and makes a turn-around in his life.

2. On a similar note, here’s a passage from page 75: “For decades, the [liberal] village elders have talked about the need to address ‘root causes’ of our social problems.  For decades, conservative criticism of liberal policy has argued that the focus on ‘root causes’ was merely a cover for a liberal resolution not to enforce basic laws of public order.  But there has been something even more out of whack with liberal policy: it has never really understood what the real root causes are.”

For Santorum, the real root causes of our social problems stem from the disintegration of the two-parent family, and Santorum especially focuses on the absence of fathers.  For Santorum, the two-parent family provides children with security so that they can go out into the world with trust rather than suspicion.  Santorum also notes that grandparents are a blessing for children who have two parents, for grandparents are generous and are easy for kids to talk to.

In terms of policy, what does Santorum believe should be done to strengthen or restore the family?  Well, on the one hand, Santorum thinks that government involvement in areas undermines the social capital, for it encourages people to turn to an impersonal bureaucracy rather than their neighbors.  Santorum favors a concept in Catholic social thought called “subsidiary”, and the idea here is that “all social challenges should be addressed at the level of the smallest unit possible, preferably the family” (page 68).  Santorum acknowledges that sometimes the smallest unit that can truly handle a problem is the federal government, and that’s why he supports the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Santorum also speaks positively about the New Deal.  But my impression is that, overall, he thinks that federal involvement should be the exception rather than the norm.  And he believes that the government has done more harm than good and has not addressed the real problem of family disintegration.  Santorum notes that welfare, for example, primarily goes to single-parent families, and he also refers to a statement by Jason DeParle (a New York Times reporter who covers welfare issues) that the families he studied have no problem finding day care (contra liberals who think that federally-subsidized day care is a solution) but rather finding fathers.

On the other hand, Santorum does believe that there are things that the government can do to strengthen the family.  He supports the government paying for people to receive counseling in regards to marriage, for he believes that the government should encourage marriage.  He supports faith-based initiatives, and he co-sponsored with Democratic Senator Evan Bayh a measure to give $50 million annually to “community- and faith-based programs that promote and foster healthy fatherhood” (page 81).  Santorum supports abstinence-only education, and he cites studies about its effectiveness and the effectiveness of abstinence-pledges (from such publications as the Journal of the American Medical Association and Family Planning Perspectives).  And, while he was initially an opponent of Americorps and still thinks (as of 2005) that it has some waste, he now believes that it is positive in that it encourages social capital.

I think that Santorum has good points, but also that he’s pretty selective about what data he chooses to focus on, since there are studies about the ineffectiveness of abstinence education and pledges.  What I appreciate is (1.) how his approach to crime goes way beyond “lock em up”, (2.) how he was willing to admit that he was wrong (or not fully right) on Americorps, and (3.) how he worked with a Democrat in an attempt to fashion a pro-family policy.

Tenacious Dickens; Good on Paper; Adoption; Elephants; Church Tradition; Tithed; True Church

1.  Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, page 187:

The praise, the recognition that he received by getting one story in print, changed his whole career, for if it hadn’t been for that encouragement, he might have spent his entire life working in rat-infested factories.  You may have heard of that boy, too.  His name was Charles Dickens.

Carnegie’s point here is that encouragement can bring the best out of people.  But, in his previous paragraph, we see that Charles Dickens didn’t wait for encouragement before he acted.  Rather, Dickens sent out manuscript after manuscript, receiving numerous rejections in the process.  He had tenacity, and, in some sense, he believed in himself, for he kept sending out manuscripts.  But he was also modest and slightly unsure of himself, for he mailed his manuscripts at night, when no one would see him.  I do agree with Carnegie, however, that approval by an editor encouraged Dickens to keep on writing; otherwise, he may have become discouraged and stopped sending out manuscripts.  But I have to admire Dickens for sending them out even when he was receiving nothing but rejection.  That is walking by faith, and not by sight!

2.  Robert Heinlein, Sixth Column, pages 162-163:

Here was a church that did not ask a man to subscribe to its creeds; you could come and enjoy all the benefits and never be asked to give up your old-time religion—or even be asked if you had a religion.

Sometime during the 1990′s, I read Marvin Olasky’s Tragedy of American Compassion, which was a criticism of the American welfare system.  Olasky hearkened back to the days when churches helped the poor, giving them food and bringing them to Christ, which changed their lives for the better.  In this era, there were poor people who stopped being drunks and became responsible, working citizens of society.

I got a cozy feeling when I read Olasky’s stories.  But that was before Olasky influenced President George W. Bush to try such an approach in real life, through faith-based initiatives.  That was the way the Bush II years were for me: ideas I had supported for years were finally becoming national policy.  That includes faith based initiatives, tax cuts, and abstinence-only sex education.

I wouldn’t say that these ideas were a total failure.  Tax cuts stimulated the economy, and I’m sure there were some abstinence-only sex ed programs that worked.  But these ideas were not enough.  Bush’s tax cuts did not get us out of our economic crisis, and abstinence-only sex education did not stop the sudden upswing in teen pregnancies.  Real-life doesn’t always conform to ideological pamphlets, from the right or the left!

Regarding faith-based initiatives, there was concern during the Bush Administration that poor people were getting religion shoved down their throats.  Even some Christians contended that churches should help everyone, without pressuring them to accept a religious creed.  What looks good on paper (Olasky’s book) can end up becoming complicated when applied to real life!  I can think of other examples: the Iraq War, Medicare, the Great Society, etc.

3.  Erhard Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part I with an Introduction to Cultic Poetry, page 46:

The contention that adoption was unknown or detested in Israel is rather ill founded…

Gerstenberger says this in his discussion of royal Psalms, in which (according to Gerstenberger) God adopts the king of Israel as his son. 

I vaguely recall a sermon by Garner Ted Armstrong, in which he criticized the Worldwide Church of God for stigmatizing adoption.  He was discussing Romans 8:15, which affirms that Christians have received the spirit of adoption.  I wonder why the WCG stigmatized adoption (if it indeed did).  Apparently, there were biblical scholars who did so as well, claiming that adoption was detested in ancient Israel!

4.  R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship, page 172:

There are various tales of elephants being attracted by the scent of flowers and making love to girls binding and selling wreaths…

The elephants were making love to women?  I can’t even imagine how that would take place! 

5.  R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event, page 372:

Does this mean that we must after all return to the view that Origen was restrained and influenced in his interpretation of Scripture by a ‘tradition of the Church’ independent of Scripture?  The answer depends upon what is meant by ‘tradition of the Church’…It is exceedingly difficult to determine at any moment in church history what the ‘tradition of the Church’ is.  Justin Martyr, for instance, says as plainly as possible that a literal interpretation of the Millennial Kingdom, described in Rev. 20.4, is an integral part of orthodox Christianity.  Origen says that an allegorical interpretation of this prophecy is a piece of apostolic teaching.  Gaius (quoted by Eusebius) attributed a belief very like Justin’s to the heretic Cerinthus.

When I read Catholic writings that appeal to “church tradition”, they usually make a fairly decent case, quoting a range of church fathers who have similar ideas on (say) baptism.  But there was diversity among the church fathers as well.  Not all of the fathers agreed on what teaching went back to the apostles.  I wonder how Catholics would address this.  Would they say that we should especially embrace the ideas that the fathers agreed went back to the apostles? 

6. Richard Sarason, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Agriculture: A Study of Tractate Demai, page 36:

The Israelite who consumes second tithe in Jerusalem eats it just like the priest eating holy things in the Temple, viz., in a state of cleanness.  Just as we do not require the priest to designate second tithe (and certainly not to separate heave offerings of the tithe) from doubtfully tithed holy things, so we do not require the pilgrim to do the same with regard to doubtfully tithed produce purchased in Jerusalem which becomes second tithe.  In both cases, since the whole of the produce in question is holy, and since one of the tithes to be separated would in any case be eaten on the spot by him who separates, we do not require the separation of the other tithe.

I guess what Sarason is saying is that the doubtfully-tithed produce becomes second tithe, so it’s no longer doubtfully-tithed!

7.  Felix Taylor has a post, HOW TO DISPROVE THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY, in which he quotes Robert Bowman.  Bowman believes in the Trinity, but he tells anti-Trinitarians how they can put together a convincing case (which he probably doubts is even possible).  Bowman states the following:

It’s no good telling us that you believe X, Y, and Z instead of the Trinity, if this “alternative” is your own private confe[ss]ion of beliefs. I say this because the true doctrine of God will be held by a community of believers in Jesus Christ, the EKKLHSIA (“church”).  Theologies do not exist in a vacuum, or in isolation. You are either part of a church that teaches the theology you espouse, or you are picking and choosing what you will believe from others and not committing yourself to a _way of life_ that puts a set of teachings into practice. Jesus Christ said that he would be with his people until the end of the age as they engaged in the work of making disciples, baptizing and teaching them (Matt. 28:19-20). So, what people today are Christ’s people?

I was about to make an “Oh Brother” post about this quote, but I don’t think that I can blow it off that easily.  The New Testament talks about a “church”.  Even its talk about the last days refers to believers in Jesus, which may imply a Christian community.  I think this is why there are many Christians who believe in a “true church”: the New Testament talks about a church, so they assume that God must have a recognized body that is doing his work.

In my background with Armstrongism, there was discussion about the existence of a true church.  The Worldwide Church of God said it was an organization—the WCG, whereas others said it was an organism, not an official group.  There was nuance in this discussion, for the WCG also saw God’s church in other bodies: the Waldensians of the past, the Church of God (Seventh-Day), etc.  They believed God was officially working through an organization, but they had a sense that there were people outside of that body who obeyed God’s commandments and were God’s people.

In evangelicalism, there is a distinction between the church body and the universal church.  A church body is a church congregation, whereas the universal church encompasses all believers in Christ, both those who belong to a local church, and those who do not. 

I’m not sure if we have to assume that God has an organization on earth, which fully conforms to God’s truth.  Maybe God is working through a variety of Christians, who don’t agree about everything.   

Abstinence Teacher, Death Penalty

I’m taking books back to the library tomorrow, so I want to make some last minute comments about them.

1. Source: Tom Perrota, The Abstinence Teacher (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007). For more information, see Hard-Headed Practical Wisdom.

Ruth is a liberal sex education teacher who hates having to teach her school’s abstinence-only program. Tim is a recovering addict who attends the ultra-conservative church that has persecuted Ruth. The two meet when Ruth launches a crusade against Tim because he led his soccer team in prayer.

Ruth finds herself drawn to Tim, not just because of his looks, but also on account of his vulnerability. To her surprise, he doesn’t come across as a narrow-minded, judgmental, dogmatic prude, but rather as a humble sinner trying to get a fresh start and stay on the righteous path. Although Tim feels guilty that he did not “witness” to her, in a manner of speaking, he did.

This book is not Christian fiction, although the author says in his intro that he’s attended Promise Keeper rallies. He makes fun of abstinence-only sex education and presents gay characters in a positive light. But his Christian conservative characters are likable as well. Not only is there Tim, but there’s also Tim’s pastor, Pastor Dennis, who cares sincerely for his flock. Ruth usually knew him as an angry voice speaking against her liberalism at school board meetings, but she saw his tender, human side when he came to her door, looking for Tim out of concern.

One character who sticks out in my mind is Jay, whom Pastor Dennis leads to Christ at a wedding reception. Drunken Jay tries to beat up Pastor Dennis for speaking ill of his favorite porn star, but Pastor Dennis confronts him with his need for a Savior. Jay accepts Jesus and immediately feels a sense of peace–as if he is not alone and can make a fresh start at life. But Jay eventually finds that he cannot recover that feeling, and he becomes bored with the path of righteousness. Near the end of the book, he ditches a Promise Keepers-type rally and goes to a strip bar.

That got me thinking: Is the Christian life supposed to be fun? Many people view it as an adventure, in which God uses them to accomplish something significant and enables them to bring goodness to a distressed and sinful world. It gives them meaning in life. While some may “feel” God in the course of their journey, others wonder if he’s really there at all. Even a Christian as great as Mother Theresa felt this way! There are times when I feel like I’ve found my spiritual niche, and then there are times when I feel lost: as if I’m not accomplishing much for God, or God doesn’t know my address, or I don’t know what I believe, or the certainty and zeal of evangelicals appears foreign to me. Jay experiences this, as (eventually) does Tim, who relapses, ditches the soccer team, gets booted out of the house by his wife, and goes to Ruth’s home.

The book is good because of the religious and spiritual questions that it raises. My disappointment was with the end, in which Tim hangs out at Ruth’s house. Unfortunately, as with most stories these days, The Abstinence Teacher presents romance as the ultimate solution to life’s problems!

2. Thomas Cahill, A Saint on Death Row: The Story of Dominique Green (New York: Random House, 2009).

There is a strong part of me that supports the death penalty. When I watch a movie and see a character who is so callous, so selfish, so brutal and inhumane, I shout at the screen, “Kill him!” I noticed as I looked at the program description for tonight’s Lost that Kate will try to save young Ben Linus’ life. Ben Linus is a sinister, manipulative worm of a person, and Sayid shot Ben’s younger self. “Good thing we won’t have to deal with Ben Linus anymore,” I thought. So much for that wishful thinking!

In real life, there are indeed evil people, but the issue of capital punishment can be quite messy. There’s a criminal justice system that isn’t always just and fair, especially to poor minorities. There are prosecutors and defense attorneys who care nothing for the truth and work to suppress it. There are politicians who exploit the deaths of criminals for political gain. There are the innocent people who are executed, the guilty ones who have families and friends who care about them, and the convicts who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And, believe it or not, there are the people on death row who have goodness in them.

I didn’t exactly find Dominique Green to be a “saint” as I read Thomas Cahill’s book, but I still felt sorry for him. Here is a young man who had a wretched childhood, and he was executed when he was much younger than I am. Even the victim’s family wanted the state to show him clemency, once it concluded that his trial was grossly unfair. When I acknowledge the humanity of those on death row, I’m reluctant to say “kill them” or to talk about “justice” with detached coldness. I don’t like cutting people’s lives so short, and I wonder if there’s a way to give them a second chance.

At the same time, I’m not sure if Cahill’s giving me the full story about Dominique Green’s experience (e.g., the denial of his appeals, etc.). I felt the same way when I watched the movie Hurricane, which noted examples of the system denying Hurricane Carter a fair trial and appeals. “Surely not all of the system is racist,” I thought to myself. And, sure enough, when I looked on the Internet, I saw that the system made a fairly legitimate case for its actions.

After reading this book, I am not as trigger-happy when I consider the death penalty, but I’m also not prepared to say that America should never use it. When I remember the thugs who killed James Bird, or the callous murder of Matthew Shepherd, I have a desire for justice.

Hard-Headed Practical Wisdom

Source: Tom Perrota, The Abstinence Teacher (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007) 106, 141.

On and off for the next few days, I’ll be commenting on my favorite passages from this book. Its author looks so familiar to me, but I can’t place him! The back flap says that he lives in Boston, so maybe I saw him while I was living there. Or perhaps I saw him on TV, or he looks like someone I know.

So far, I’m really enjoying this book! It has all sorts of characters. There’s the lonely divorcee teacher (Ruth) who doesn’t like the abstinence-only sex ed program she’s forced to use. Then there’s the vulnerable recovering addict (Tim), also a divorcee, who’s part of the ultra-conservative church that persecutes Ruth. One message that comes through in this book is that everyone has a story, something we should remember in our age of polarization and stereotypes.

Today, I want to deal with two quotes:

1. Pastor Dennis wants Tim to marry a nice Christian girl in the congregation– “for Tim to remove himself from the temptations of bachelorhood, to stop questioning himself and his commitment to Jesus, to bind himself to someone who shared his faith and his priorities, and to get on with his life as a father, husband, and servant of the Lord.” Pastor Dennis cites I Corinthians 7:1-2, which says that it’s better for a man to marry than to burn.

Tim’s reaction: It was a weird verse, Tim thought, encouraging marriage not as a good thing in itself, but simply as the best of bad alternatives. Hardly the stuff of love songs. And yet, like a lot of stuff in the Bible, it possessed a kind of hardheaded wisdom that resonated with his experience of the world and his circumstances at the present moment.

This quote resonates with me. In my opinion, a lot of the Bible has a hard-hearted practical wisdom to it. Watch yourself! Don’t retaliate against your enemy! Love, don’t hate! Don’t sleep with anyone and everyone, but reserve sex for your wife. These ideas can bring health and happiness to a person, or they can at least keep one out of unnecessary trouble!

This quote reminds me of Jamie Kiley’s posts, Original sin: This story resonates and Why I am a Christian. Jamie says she’s a Christian because the Bible corresponds with what she observes in real life. From what she can see, people have something within them that inclines them to evil, just as the Bible presents!

2. Tim is thinking about the topic of homosexuality. Although his church preaches vehemently against it, Tim doesn’t see what the big deal is. We learn that Tim once knew a gay person, who for years tried hard not to be gay! Tim observes that Jesus doesn’t say anything about homosexuality in the Gospels.

Tim’s thoughts: It seemed like a glaring omission, considering that Jesus had a fair amount to say on other points of sexual morality, including one that was particularly inconvenient for Tim: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery.” You couldn’t get much clearer than that, and yet Pastor Dennis hadn’t objected to Tim’s marriage to Carrie, far from it. He’d just let the whole remarriage-adultery thing slide, tempering God’s harsh law with a dose of human compassion. Tim couldn’t help feeling like gay people deserved a similar break, a recognition that a choice between a life of sin and a life of celibacy was no choice at all.

This quote resonates with me because, although the Bible has a hard-headed wisdom to it, it also appears to be utterly unrealistic in its demands! Don’t lust after women? Don’t hate? Don’t divorce? What if a husband and a wife simply don’t get along? I can see a certain logic even to these commands, since lust dehumanizes women, plus it would be nice if we could be so loving that we’d stick with someone unconditionally–till death do us part! After all, divorce can have a negative impact on children and women (as I’m seeing as I watch First Wives Club). But I’m not sure if I have that kind of love within me.

I don’t think the author gives a fair shake to the evangelical view on divorce. This is puzzling because he says in the “Acknowledgements” that he went to a Promised Keepers’ weekend. Sure, there are pastors who leave their wives for younger babes and keep on pastoring, without objection by the church. And most of the men and women on my Christian dating site are divorced. But many of them would say that their divorce and subsequent pursuit of a mate are biblical, since their mate was not a Christian. He either left them or cheated on them, and, according to I Corinthians 7 and Matthew 19:9, those are legitimate grounds for divorce.

Some argue that a Christian should not remarry, a view that goes back to the second century C.E. Christian writing, the Shepherd of Hermas (see Shepherd of Hermas on Divorce). But I heard Ron Dart appeal to human grounds this week in his critique of such a view, for he said that people crave companionship with other human beings. Why shouldn’t this apply to homosexuals as well? Why should they have to be celibate for the rest of their lives? Is this practical or realistic? Does it take into consideration how people are?

At the same time, I wouldn’t want to say that people should just follow their attractions wherever they lead, since that can result in all sorts of anarchy!

Eli Stone: Turning a Motif On Its Head

I know it’s late, but I want to comment on the season finale of Eli Stone.

One of the subplots went like this: Toby from The West Wing (only, here, his name wasn’t “Toby”) came to Eli and wanted his representation. He had cancer, and he wanted to kill himself, or discontinue chemo–something that ended his life. And he claimed that God told him to do this. As a result, he felt a lot of peace. Every now and then, you could see the Toby we’ve all come to know and love. In one scene, he did one of his customary “Toby” tirades–you know, in which he starts off speaking softly, then gets louder and madder as he approaches the end of his statement. But, overall, he came across as a serene person, much like Eddie Murphy on Holy Man.

His wife was a rabbi, and she wanted him to fight for his life. She based her conviction on her love for him, of course, but she also appealed to the teachings of Judaism, particularly the value it places on life. The case concerned whether or not Toby was fit to make his own decision. Was he sane, or was he crazy for claiming that God spoke to him?

Well, Eli gave a speech about the importance of faith and how the judge should not condemn Toby as insane. After all, wouldn’t that declare all faith to be insane? And, in the end, the judge agreed with Eli. Toby died at the end of the episode. And, in the other room, Eli Stone was fighting for his life, for he was having an operation that would remove his vision-causing tumor (I think–I wasn’t following the show as well as I should!).

I felt the same way about this episode as I felt about the sex ed one. The show was trying to inspire me, and I wanted to be inspired, but it wasn’t doing it for me because I disagreed with its message. I’m sorry, I simply could not get inspired by condom-based sex education. I want abstinence taught in school sex ed, and abstinence alone! And, similarly, I have a hard time associating the legitimacy of faith with devaluing one’s own life.

What I like about Touched by an Angel and 7th Heaven is that they have inspiring speeches that agree with my beliefs. Touched by an Angel talks about God’s love, and Andrew once gave a good defense of Intelligent Design. I didn’t care much for the anti-Joe McCarthy episode, but that was the exception rather than the rule. And, although Eric Camden is a liberal Protestant and a Democrat, he still promotes God, country, family, and (this one’s important) abstinence before marriage.

But the episode of Eli Stone about Toby’s (direct or indirect) suicide was, well, twisted. Linking faith in God with suicide? I have problems with that.

We’ve seen the motif of the supernatural entering the courtroom before. Miracle on 34th Street was probably its inspiration. Touched by an Angel once had an episode in which Monica rested her testimony on her status as an angel. In both cases, the court had to rule on the legitimacy of the supernatural.

I like the motif, but I don’t like what Eli Stone did with it. It reminded me of the value of Scripture and centuries of tradition in communicating the will of God. Toby’s rabbi wife appealed to that. Toby, by contrast, appealed to a personal revelation. Ordinarily, in my view, the latter should be subservient to the former. Christianity at least claimed to be grounded in what came before. I guess that’s the Edmund Burke conservative in me talking.

Is TV Getting More Liberal?

I suppose that television has always been rather liberal. Dallas, for example, presented rich capitalists as a conniving bunch of people. On Thursday night, however, I felt that the liberalism got more blatant.

I watch Eli Stone on Thursday nights. It is about a lawyer with a brain aneurysm who sees visions, which guide him on what to do. He believes that those visions are from God because they equip him to help people. Over the course of the show, he has changed from a self-centered jerk to someone who actually cares for others.

But last Thursday night, I had a difficult time cheering him on. On that particular episode, a teenage girl is suspended from school because she disrupted an abstinence education program. Basically, she played some sexually explicit lyrics over the loudspeaker. She decided to contest her suspension in court, and the foreign singer who wrote those lyrics graciously testified on her behalf. She was restored to school, and she asked for better sex education, the “pass out condoms” kind. The principal said that the school only received money for abstinence education, and so the singer held a concert to raise funds for the pro-condom brand of sex ed. Eli Stone was smiling at the concert, and I suppose that we were all supposed to applaud his heroism.

The liberalism was so blatant. On the stand, the singer excoriated Ronald Reagan for not speaking out against AIDS until it was too late. He also expressed admiration for the American principle of separation of church and state, and fear that it was being undermined. Hmm, I wonder if he was criticizing a certain President when he made that point, one who actually takes his faith seriously. Just a hunch I have.

First of all, most of the federal AIDS programs that exist today go back to the Reagan Administration. But even if Reagan didn’t do as much as he should have, was AIDS his fault? It spread as rapidly as it did because of promiscuous people, many of them homosexual and bisexual. Over time, it entered the heterosexual community.

Second, what is wrong with America respecting Jewish and Christian principles like abstinence? I’d say that we could use more of that value, not less. If more people saw sex as a gift from God for a husband and his wife, then AIDS and other STD’s would not be so rampant. Sex has become cheapened over the years. In one of the sub-plots on that episode of Eli Stone, one of the female lawyers sleeps with a male lawyer because he tells her his father died. When she finds out that his father is still alive, she gets upset. Well, perhaps she should have gotten more acquainted with him before she entered his bed.

At the same time, I think that Eli Stone is longing for better values, on some level. The female lawyer tells the male lawyer, for example, that he has been afraid of truly caring for a woman because he fears that she might leave him. When they are in bed, the male lawyer is disappointed when the female lawyer tries to get up before he does to avoid a deeper commitment. The singer on the witness stand said that he did not view his song as smut because he wrote it when he was in love. In the entertainment industry, there is a hunger for love, caring, and commitment, but a reluctance to embrace the Christian ideas that safeguard those values. Such ideas include the concept that sex is to be reserved for marriage, and that a man and his wife are to love each other until death do them part.

So why do I say that television has become more liberal? When I grew up, I watched L.A. Law. At some point in the course of its run, it brought on board a new character: a lawyer with conservative Christian convictions. She held off the advances of one of the male lawyers, as she upheld the value of chastity before marriage. She also bravely defended the right of a schoolteacher to tell his students about creationism. And the show did not present her as a nut job.

But that was before the Republicans took over Congress and, eventually, the Presidency. In those days, we were an interesting bunch with out-of-the-mainstream ideas (well, not really, but the entertainment industry saw us as such). When conservatives got power and started enacting their ideas into public policy, however, the other side viewed them as more of a threat. And that is why I think that Eli Stone attacked them so.

I liked the episode for one reason, though: the person who played the principal was Ethan Philips, who was Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager. I always wondered how he looks without his make-up!

Gov. G.W.Bush and Abstinence-Only Education

I said that I would review today the studies of various states on abstinence-only sex education. That project would require me to read hundreds of pages, and I’m not in the mood to do that right now. I may postpone this project for another day. Maybe I’ll read them the next time a new study dogmatically criticizes abstinence-only sex education. Or I’ll look at one or two of the studies when I don’t have any other ideas for posts. At the moment, I’ll give you the link so that you can read it, if you are interested. It is Five Years of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education: Assessing the Impact. This study was put out by Advocates of Youth, and it has links to several state studies. Advocates for Youth itself is opposed to abstinence-only sex education, but what I read in some of the state studies was more complex than “Abstinence-only sex ed is a failure.” The studies I scanned presented positive aspects of the programs or offered suggestions for improvement (e.g., greater duration, group discussions, role playing on saying “no,” etc.), without necessarily recommending that they abandon their abstinence-only message.

What I’d like to discuss today is a popular liberal argument against abstinence-only sex education. I found it when I searched under “Bush AND abstinence AND Texas” on Yahoo. The argument is that Texas under Governor George Bush funded abstinence-only sex education, but the results were nil. Texas still had high teen pregnancy and STD rates, and its reduction in the teen pregnancy rate was significantly lower than that of other states. I’ll make two points on this:

First, at least teenage pregnancy rates went down under Governor Bush. From what I can see from the Alan Guttmacher Institute’s own statistics, they did not decline under Democratic Governor Ann Richards, whose daughter currently heads Planned Parenthood. The number of AIDS and Syphilis cases also decreased under Governor Bush (see the 2001 HIV/STD Annual Report). The number of Gonorrhea cases was lower under Bush than it was during previous administrations (since 1972). Texas was far from perfect during the Bush years, since the number of Chlamydia cases increased, but my point is that we should not say that Bush’s Governorship attests to the utter ineffectiveness of abstinence-only sex education. His record was pretty good, as far as records go.

Second, looking at Texas by itself does not shed light on whether abstinence-only sex education is effective. During Bush’s Governorship, there were times when California had higher rates of teenage pregnancy than Texas, and it also increased in the prevalence of certain STDs (see HIV/AIDS, STD & TB Prevention). California is known for its comprehensive sex education, so why don’t we grade the condom-based programs poorly? Moreover, there are states with low teen pregnancy rates that have had abstinence-only programs. Iowa and South Carolina are examples. So the statistics of a single state do not invalidate the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education. The liberal appeal to Texas is a cheap shot at Bush, not a reliable analysis of sex education programs.

Public School Sex Education: My Experiences

I talked yesterday about some of the scholastic information about abstinence-only education, and I may expand on this sometime in the future, possibly this Saturday. Today, I would like to share my own personal experiences with sex education in public schools.

I said before that a John Bircher owned my mom and grandma’s health food store before they bought it. She left behind some right-wing literature that she used to sell with health food and nutritional supplements, and one example was a pamphlet by Gordon V. Drake entitled Is the School House the Place to Teach Raw Sex? Drake portrayed SIECUS‘ sex education programs as pornographic and pro-promiscuity. He upheld the Judeo-Christian ethic, which is abstinence before marriage and fidelity thereafter.

If memory serves me correctly, my first actual experience of public school sex education was in the sixth grade. It was basically a biology presentation, and I don’t remember any discussion of values or what was morally acceptable.

In seventh grade, we began to get into those issues. There was no explicit statement that premarital sex was morally wrong, but we were urged to weigh the issues carefully before we made a choice. My teacher had us vote on how far we would go, list the positives and negatives of premarital sex, and watch videos in which people said “no” because the consequences of premature sexual activity could harm their future. In the end, she said that we could use a condom, but we might have a baby on our hands if that condom broke. She asked us if we were prepared for that risk.

In eighth grade, we heard a week-long series of lectures from a Crisis Pregnancy Center representative. For those who are unfamiliar with that organization, the Crisis Pregnancy Center is a pro-life (anti-abortion) organization that helps unwed mothers. We watched a video about a single parent who wished she had waited, and we also saw a Josh MacDowell video in which he said that television is not realistic about sex and other issues. He was right about that, but he used a bad example. He asked the teenage audience how many of them ever saw a show about a child struggling with his or her parents’ divorce, and he said that he could not think of a single one. I could think of many such shows, so his argument was bad.

But what remains most in my memory is an exercise that we did to demonstrate a point. A series of boys stood in line, and a girl was given a paper heart. She tore off a piece of her heart and gave it to each boy, symbolizing the times that she had (fictionally) said “yes” to premarital sex. When she came to the last boy, the one she wanted to marry, she had only a little piece of her heart to give to him. The point was that we should wait for that special person, the one we want to marry. The Crisis Pregnancy Center lady was presenting sex as an act of love that should be limited to marriage, and this was the first time I heard that message in a public school setting.

Did this program work? I don’t know. It was only a week, and that may not have been enough to counter the barrage of immoral messages that kids got on a daily basis, from the media and their peers. Perhaps some people were affected, but those who wanted to be promiscuous probably remained that way.

My next experience was in the tenth grade, in my high school health class. The school nurse talked about sexually-transmitted diseases, and she showed us a video by Focus on the Family on the ineffectiveness of contraception. Kirk Cameron was the host, and Dr. Dobson made an appearance. She then taught us about various kinds of contraceptives and told us that they were mostly effective, though not 100% of the time.

My last experience was at Harvard Divinity School. I went to a Seventh-Day Adventist church, and someone from the Unification Church (the Moonies) was giving us a presentation about its abstinence-only program for schools. The presenter asked the audience what type of abstinence education they had, and one person (who attended a private school) responded, “The type that scares people.” The presenter then said that his program was different in that it tried to focus on the positive values of waiting before marriage. A friend of mine did not like the presented curriculum because it neglected God and Christ, the only true sources of moral authority and the strength to overcome temptation.

So what can I say about all this? In my opinion, there were positives and negatives in all of the programs. Emphasizing biology to the exclusion of morality was not right, since kids should be taught that there are important values like love and fidelity. I disagreed with the seventh grade approach that made everything about personal choices rather than an external moral standard, but I appreciated the message that we should realize that our decisions have consequences. The abstinence-only program seemed more oriented toward girls, who would be more likely to see sex as an act of love. The boys needed a message to help them counteract their hormones, and there wasn’t much of a focus on that in the lady’s presentation. My high school experience wasn’t perfect because it gave us an inconsistent message: it is best to abstain, but here are some options if you choose not to. And the options are not even totally effective against AIDS or certain STDs, making even protected sex a form of Russian roulette. The Moonie program probably had its merits, but my friend made a good point: If we exclude God from the picture (as is legally mandated for public schools), where is the moral authority or the strength for abstinence?

So young people should be told that their choices have consequences, but they should also hear about morality. Public schools can do this, but they can only go so far because they can’t teach kids about God. As a result, it is also a job for all of us: parents, churches, and the rest of society. People should be given a message that can help them control their impulses, and that message includes the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the benefits of God’s law in terms of physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

Do Abstinence-Only Programs Work?

The Associated Press has a story today entitled Report: Abstinence Programs Don’t Work. It was about a recent study conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The study concluded that “At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners” among teenagers.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the study on the Internet, or even a decent summary of it. As a result, I do not know how many abstinence-only programs the study considered. This is an important question, for the last study that supposedly “debunked” abstinence-only education, the 2007 Mathematica Study ordered by Congress, examined only 1% of all U.S. Title V abstinence-only programs (see Mathematica Findings Too Narrow). This is hardly enough to make a sweeping generalization. Moreover, there have been studies in peer-reviewed journals that have documented the success of abstinence-only programs in certain regions (see Robert Rector’s list).

One problem with the NCPTUT study is that it may promote a product. The study was written by Douglas Kirby, a senior research scientist at ETR Associates. According to the AP article, “The sponsors of the study praised Kirby for his ‘thorough research’ and for being ‘fair and evenhanded,’ but they also acknowledged that ETR Associates developed and markets several of the sex education curricula reviewed in the report. Several of the previous studies that were reviewed also were written by Kirby.” So there is a possible conflict-of-interest.

I liked the comments of Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association: “Though abstinence education has received significant federal funding for less than a decade, studies already credit abstinence programs for delaying sexual initiation, discontinuing sexual behavior and reducing both the number of sexual partners and pregnancies among teens…Kirby has previously admitted that it took more than 10 years for comprehensive sex education to document any positive results, but failed to note that in his review” (see NAEA Disputes Ideologically Driven Findings of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies) That is a good point, especially considering that government spends more money to promote contraceptives than abstinence (see this article).

I don’t have the motivation tonight to review all of the studies and statistics on this issue. There are state and private studies that oppose abstinence-only sex education, and there is research that upholds its effectiveness. I would have to look at the studies themselves to see if their evidence matches their conclusions, as well as consider teen pregnancy statistics. These are worthwhile endeavors, but they will have to wait for another day.

But I will note two things that caught my eye. The NCPTUT itself offers evidence that teenagers and college students are statistically more open to abstinence than ever before (see Facts About Abstinence), so the abstinence message must be having some impact. Also, I checked the web site of SIECUS, a big promoter of condom-based sex education, and it said, “Young people who used a condom during their sexual debut were half as likely as those who did not to test positive for gonorrhea or Chlamydia, even though the two groups reported similar numbers of sexual partners” (see Study Finds Teens Who Use Condoms During First Intercourse Are Healthier, Not More Promiscuous). Half as likely? I prefer not possible, which abstinence alone guarantees.