The Purity Myth

by Jessica Valenti

  Despite its history of fear-based messaging and regressive goals, abstinence education is becoming decidedly more upbeat as of late. Perhaps recognizing that herpes slideshows and threats of cinder blocks to the crotch weren’t quite cutting it, abstinence educators are now pumping up the “youth” factor in their presentations.

  Bringing in peer educators, hip-hop groups, and comedians has become par for the course in recent years. As has a healthy dose of consumerism—why let MTV have all the fun? Students can buy shirts proclaiming their virginal status with messages like CHASTEGIRL, CHASTE COUTURE, and (my personal favorite) NO TRESPASSING ON THIS PROPERTY, MY FATHER IS WATCHING.21 Abstinence Clearinghouse also sells promise rings, posters, bookmarks—anything you can think to slap a purity message on is there for the buying.

  Abstinence leaders are joining in on the fun, too. In a continued effort to revamp its scaremonger image into something more mainstream, the annual conference for abstinence educators, organized by the Abstinence Clearinghouse, decided to have annual themes. In 2006, it was a Wizard of Oz conference, complete with panel titles like “If I Only Had a Brain: The Effects of Sex on Brain Physiology,” “A Horse of a Different Color,”bb and “Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead! Which Old Witch? (The‘Safe-Sex’Witch).”22 To further avoid being perceived as out of touch with youth culture (because what says “hip” like a movie from 1939?), the 2008 conference hosted a contest called Abstinence Idol: “Performances can include the following, but are not limited to: singing, drama, oratory, pantomime.”bc23 And who among us can deny the draw of chastity-based pantomime?

  But whether it’s by using comedians or Velcro gloves, retro textbooks or ruby slippers, these programs are working hard, and not just to get teens to hold off on sex until marriage. Abstinence-only education seeks to create a world where everyone is straight, women are relegated to the home, the only appropriate family is a nuclear one, reproductive choices are negated, and the only sex people have is for procreation.

  CHASTITY CASH

  Though controversy over abstinence-only education, as well as criticism thereof, are fairly recent—the Bush administration’s sex-education policies made it quite a popular subject—this kind of “teaching” has been alive, kicking, and well endowed for over twenty years.

  Abstinence-only education programs have received more than $1.3 billion dollars since 1996; they’re currently slated to receive $176 million in federal funding in 2008.24 But abstinence education was really born in 1981, thanks to the passage of the Adolescent Family Life (AFL) Act under the Reagan administration.bd The AFL authorized the funding of pregnancy prevention programs, but only those that offered abstinence as the only appropriate course of action—no money was to be given to programs that “encouraged ” abortion.25

  Because the AFL’s programs often advocated specific religious values, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in 1983, claiming that the programs violated the separation of church and state. After a decade-long court battle, a 1993 settlement forbade AFL-funded programs to include religious references and required the information they dispensed to be medically accurate, among other stipulations.

  The virginity movement’s next win happened in 1996, when a provision attached to the welfare-reform act allotted $50 million a year for five years for abstinence-only programs. (The states that choose to accept those funds are required to match every four federal dollars with three state dollars.)26

  The programs that use these funds must follow an eight-point definition (often called the A-H guidelines) of what appropriate abstinence education is. The requirements include program participants’ teaching students that “sexual activity outside of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects,” and that “bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society.”27

  In addition to its endorsement by the AFL and its funds earmarked through welfare reform,28 abstinence-only education receives funding from the Community-Based Abstinence Education Program (CBAE), created in 2001 by conservatives in the House of Representatives. CBAE is controlled by the Administration for Children, Youth, and Families and is the strictest—and perhaps most damaging—form of abstinence funding: Under it, grants often go to private, faith-based organizations like crisis pregnancy centers. Grantees must teach all eight points of the abstinence A-H guidelines, must target children ages twelve to eighteen, and absolutely cannot provide students with any positive information about contraception. Naturally, the virginity movement is a big fan of CBAE subsidies; since the program’s inception in 2001, funding has increased by 465 percent and reached a whopping $113 million in 2007.29

  THE PLAYERS

  So who are these elusive leaders of the virginity movement? The major players are the Abstinence Clearinghouse and the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA). They’re the leading lobbyists, organizations, and providers of “educational” material in the United States. And while proponents of abstinence education run the gamut from legislators to community leaders, it’s large organizations like these, and their powerful ties to conservative Christian think tanks (and more), that make them so very influential.

  The National Advisory Council for the Abstinence Clearinghouse, for example, includes members from Focus on the Family, the Heritage Foundation, and numerous crisis pregnancy centers. The organization, which receives more than half a million dollars a year in government grants and contracts, also has a strictly anti-choice medical abstinence board, which must “not only support abstinence-only-until-marriage programs” but also not “counsel, prescribe, or distribute condoms or contraceptives to youth.”30 (In addition to its connection to the abstinence movement, the organization has ties to campaigns that aim to limit access to the HPV vaccine and contraception.)

  Perhaps the most important aspect about the Clearinghouse is that Leslee Unruh, arguably the most well-known leader of the abstinence and anti-choice movements, heads it. Unruh, who gained national attention in 2006 when she was campaigning in South Dakota for a ban on abortion (even in cases of rape and incest), frequently makes the rounds on radio and cable television, touting abstinence-only education and deriding abortion, birth control, and premarital sex. Her debating style is quite . . . original. A 2007 Fox News segment featured Unruh and Mary Alice Carr, of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, debating over a new oral contraceptive called Lybrel. After arguing that the birth control pill was poison and that women needed to be protected from it, Unruh ended the segment by shouting over Carr, “I want more babies. More babies! We love babies!”31

  Unruh loves babies so much, in fact, that she founded an organization called the Alpha Center, which aims to convince women not to have abortions. In 1987, the Alpha Center pled no contest to five misdemeanor charges of unlicensed adoption and foster care practices. (Nineteen charges, including four felonies, were dropped.) Tim Wilka, the state’s attorney in Minnehaha County, South Dakota, at the time, told the Argus Leader, “There were so many allegations about improper adoptions being made [against Unruh] and how teenage girls were being pressured to give up their children. . . . Gov. George Mickelson called me and asked me to take the case.”32 Apparently, Unruh had been promising pregnant teens money to stay pregnant so she could later put their children up for adoption.

  The NAEA doesn’t have a much better record. In 2007, the organization, whose board comprises a virtual who’s who of abstinence education, hired the public relations firm Creative Response Concepts—known for the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans ads slamming John Kerry—to spearhead a PR campaign for abstinence-only education policies. In 2006, NAEA executive director Valerie Huber, the head of Ohio’s abstinence programs, was suspended after a state ethics investigation found her guilty of neglect of duty for hiring a company she was affiliated with to do state work.33

  Another abstinence organization, Heritage Community Services (which runs after-school abstinence programs and training workshops for teacher
s and sells abstinence-only curricula), receives a staggering $3 million a year in government contributions and grants. Like the Clearinghouse and the NAEA, Heritage’s leadership is wrought with ethical red flags. The women’s legal-rights organization Legal Momentumbe reports that the Heritage curriculum is produced and sold by Badgley Enterprises, a for-profit company run by Heritage founder and CEO Anne Badgley and her husband.

  Heritage Community Services purchases its Heritage Keepers textbooks from Badgley Enterprises. Public records show that Badgley Enterprises earned $174, 201 from the sale of its textbooks to Heritage in 2004, and that Badgley herself earned $51, 000 as a writer for Badgley Enterprises. Additionally, Badgley’s husband , daughter, and son-in-law are all paid Heritage employees. Accusations have also been made that Badgley Enterprises was used as a personal account for various members of the Badgley family.34

  In addition, it came out that the organization had paid $11,000 in 2002 to send two South Carolina state employees to an abstinence conference in California. Badgley defended the decision by calling the trip “inexpensive.”35

  These organizations and leaders have strong ties to the anti-choice movement and conservative Christian groups. They have no place in public schools, yet the power they wield over American youth, even in our public schools, is a little more than unnerving.

  BATTLING BACK

  This abstinence-only world is a far cry from reality (residing somewhere in Oz, perhaps?), and not even close to what people want for themselves and their children. According to a study published in Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 82 percent of Americans support programs that teach contraception as well as abstinence, and half of all Americans oppose abstinence-only education altogether. Even among those who describe themselves as conservatives, 70 percent support comprehensive sex education.36

  Some parents—those who aren’t about to sit back and watch their kids get taught that condoms don’t work and sex is dirty—are fighting back. The wonderful documentary Abstinence Comes to Albuquerque follows the story of a New Mexico mom, Susan Rodriguez, who was outraged when she found out that a faith-based private organization—funded by federal dollars—was teaching her daughter about sex.bf37 Rodriguez went to the Albuquerque school board in 2005 and started complaining, and more and more people in the community took notice. Community members, local politicians, and lawmakers made enough of a fuss that, after a yearlong fight, the state stopped funding these programs in middle and high schools.

  One mother, Kristin Phillips, told me in an email that her daughter came home complaining about an STD assembly she was required to attend when she was a sophomore at a Missouri high school.

  “The woman leading the assembly told them calculated untruths and misleading statements about how condoms have very high failure rates, and [said] there was no reason to get the HPV vaccine,” Phillips wrote.

  Phillips discovered the program violated state law, which required sex ed teachers to provide medically accurate information and contraceptive options, and that parents be notified about and informed of the content of any sex ed programs their children would be attending.

  “I was directed to the school nurse who was in charge of setting up this program every year,” Phillips continued. “I told her I was concerned about the things the students had been told, and that I had a problem with [their] being given false information about contraception and the HPV vaccine. I pointed out that the district was in violation of the state law, but she said that was ‘my interpretation.’”

  Rodriguez and Phillips are not the only parents fighting back—thank goodness. The Internet—teens’ public forum of choice—makes calling out misinformation easier, especially for young people. One student, wary of an abstinence lecture at his high school in Spencer, Iowa, filmed the presentation with his cell phone and posted it on YouTube. In addition to telling run-of-the-mill lies about contraception and STIs to the adolescent audience, the lecturer claimed, “The base of most of the lipstick sold in our stores comes from aborted babies.”bg38 The video made the rounds on political blogs, exposing abstinence programs’ outrageousness even further.

  On Facebook, users have created over 150 groups dedicated to shining a light on how dangerous and illogical abstinence-only education is, including popular groups like Abolish Abstinence-Only Education—which has nearly one hundred thousand members and posts action items, news alerts, and informational-website links—and the more irreverent “Abstinence only sex education is just like hold it potty training.”

  Political and feminist blogs have taken abstinence-only education to task time and time again, whether it’s RH Reality Check calling out corrupt abstinence leadership or Feministing.com covering the legislative angles while mocking the bad T-shirts.39

  Abstinence-only programs have also been criticized by organizations ranging from the Society of Adolescent Medicine—which called the abstinence curricula “ethically problematic” and a threat to “fundamental human rights to health, information, and life”—to the American Psychological Association.40 But despite all of the political, organizational, and community outrage over abstinence-only education, the programs continue to be funded—heavily.

  THE END OF ABSTINENCE?

  Thankfully, there does seem to be a light at the end of the abstinence-only tunnel. In addition to concerned parents, teens, and progressive organizations, state governments and school boards are catching on. To date, almost half of the fifty states have refused federal abstinence dollars, namely because of the way those subsidies limit schools’ ability to talk about contraception—and all the evidence indicates that more states will join them.41

  But that doesn’t mean abstinence proponents are going anywhere—far from it. In early 2008, the NAEA launched a $1 million campaign called Parents for Truth, the goal of which is to enlist one million parents to support abstinence-only education by lobbying school boards and lawmakers.42 The organization timed the campaign to coincide with Congress’s debate over whether to authorize approximately $190 million in federal abstinence funds.

  Not surprisingly, there’s not much truth telling going on in this campaign—its website’s headlining video reports that comprehensive sex education tells children it’s okay to take showers with each other and instructs them on how to give partners orgasms.

  James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, an organization that helps young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health, calls this characterization of comprehensive sex education “absolutely misleading.” In an interview The Washington Post, Wagoner noted that Parents for Truth is “a classic fear and smear campaign.”43 Par for the course for abstinence proponents, of course, and for the virginity movement as a whole.

  No matter how successful abstinence leaders might be, and whether they continue to receive funding or not, Americans are nonetheless going to have to deal with cleaning up the mess that abstinence-only education leaves in its wake. After all, we can’t teach false statistics and medically inaccurate information for twenty years and expect that a generation of young people will be just fine.

  A 2007 study Congress ordered found that middle school students who had received abstinence-only education were just as likely to have sex as teenagers as those who had not. The same report showed that the teens who had taken abstinence classes were more likely to say that condoms were ineffective in protecting people against STIs—over 20 percent said that condoms can never protect against HI V.44 So if students who take abstinence classes are just as likely to have sex as their peers, but have less information about how to protect themselves from pregnancy and STIs—or, worse, believe they cannot prevent pregnancy and STIs at all—that leaves them completely unprotected.

  It makes sense, then, that a 2005 report showed that teenagers who took abstinence-only education classes and pledged their virginity were not only less likely to use condoms, but also more likely to engage in oral and anal sex.45

  Clearly, this is
n’t what we want for young people. What these students are proving is that the shaming and scaring isn’t working. Less information isn’t helping—it’s hurting.

  I’m not going to reinforce the “they’re going to do it anyway”bh argument. I believe it’s time to take a stance on sex education that isn’t so passive—young people deserve accurate and comprehensive sex education not just because they’re going to have sex, but because there’s nothing wrong with having sex. Allowing educators to equate sexuality with shame and disease is not the way to go; we are doing our children a great disservice. Not only are we lying to them, we’re also robbing them of the joy that a healthy sex life (as a teenager or in adulthood) can provide.

  Young people deserve to be equipped to make well-informed decisions for themselves. Enough with teaching young women that they’re somehow “ruined” if they become sexually active. Enough with telling students that sexuality is shameful. Enough. I’m reminded of the title of the Abstinence Clearinghouse’s 2007 annual conference: “Abstinence Is a Black & White Issue: Purity vs. Promiscuity.” That’s what we’re fighting against—it’s time we inserted some nuance and empathy into this national disaster we call sex education.

  CHAPTER 6

  legislating sexuality

  “A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated.”

  BILL NAPOLI,

  Former South Dakota Senator, responding to

  a question about what kind of woman

  should be “allowed” to have an abortion