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While teen births continue to decline in the United States, the regional differences are hard to miss. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly all of the states with the highest rates for teen pregnancies are in the Deep South (a.k.a., the "Bible Belt"), where abstinence-only policies are the norm.
So, while Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire lead the nation with the lowest rates, states like Mississippi and Arkansas lead the nation in the other direction.
Tennessee, meanwhile, is roughly tied with Alabama in the top 10 (or bottom 10, depending on how you look at it), and policymakers in the Volunteer State are eager to address the problem. Might that include scrapping ineffective abstinence-only policies that clearly only lead to more teen births? Well, no. The new solutions involve banning "gateway sexual activities."
Tennessee teachers can no longer condone so-called "gateway sexual activity" such as touching genitals under a new law that critics say is too vague and could hamper discussion about safe sexual behavior.
Gov. Bill Haslam's office Friday confirmed to Reuters that Haslam had signed the bill.... Under the law, Tennessee teachers could be disciplined and speakers from outside groups like Planned Parenthood could face fines of up to $500 for promoting or condoning "gateway sexual activities."
Parents could sue outside sexual education instructors, according to the Tennessean newspaper, while school district employees would be exempt from prosecution.
What constitutes a "gateway sexual activity"? That's not nearly as clear as it should be -- the proposal defines "gateway sexual activity" as "sexual conduct encouraging an individual to engage in a non-abstinent behavior."
Similarly, the new state law doesn't explain what "condone" means, either. Educators are left with no idea how or whether they discuss certain aspects of sexual health in a classroom setting without being accused of condoning and/or encouraging that behavior.
Though interpretations of the law vary, some have suggested hand-holding might even be problematic, which would presumably make The Beatles guilty of condoning gateway sexual activity in 1964.
It's probably too off the wall to even consider in Nashville, but wouldn't a reevaluation of failed abstinence policies be easier and more effective than combating alleged and ill-defined "gateway" behaviors?
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The best thing about a faith based policy is that it is immune to fact-based attacks.
Is this a Henry Cobb original? I, for one, plan to quote you.
me too. doing it now
Will TN high schools start banning senior proms? Young people dancing can be dangerous...
Don't laugh, they have already done that in lots of the Southern States!!
Dancing....a vertical expression of a horizontal desire. Ban it all! (sarcasm intended.)
Quick! Call Kevin Bacon! He can fix this!
Margeret Atwood would probably be appalled to know that the GOP has taken The Handmaid's Tale as their Instruction Manual for social morality.
Or as the old joke goes... Why don't they permit sex? Because it might lead to dancing...
I suspect this will end dances. Who would want to chaperone with the possibility of a $500 fine for allowing kids to be kids hanging over your head?
That's how Irish step dancing (think Riverdance) came into being. Rigid torso arms flat against the the sides of the body just to be sure no hands touch.
One of the main reasons that the fundies hate dancing is because it looks sexual. These yokels probably think that you'll go to Hell just for bobbing your head.
Footloose!
I think this law doesn't go nearly far enough. For one thing, I'd like to see a ban on the mention or display of buttons, which can easily lead to thoughts of unbuttoning.
I just spit out my damn coffee...thanks! But the ridiculousness of it all is hilarious. Still sad, yet HILARIOUS at the same time
No more gym class! Unbuttoning in the locker room could lead to gateway homosexual activity!!
I think it also means we have to ban marriage. I'm pretty sure that's a "gateway" to sexual activity. (And they don't offer any qualifications on what kind of abstinence they are promoting.)
They've had a brainstorm, in order to preserve purity and prevent temptation, they'll just have all the women wear snuggies and ski masks.
They say that they can't remember where they got the idea from. but "When I thought of it IRAN all the way home to tell the wife."
Believe it or not, that's why catholic priests' garments have all the buttons covered.
As of this moment, it's illegal to mention "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"!
If Southern women start wearing birkas, I'm moving to France. Because they have already outlawed them there. Its only a matter of time if people don't watch. Its like a slippery slope only the other way.
If only they had a new world to take their Puritan ideals to.
They would be so happy with the scarlet letters, public stockades and witch burning .
Jes' like Jebus used to do
We should've let the south stay its own country. Eventually, it would've collapsed and they'd have had no choice but to advance like the rest of us.
Lee, Nice sentiment but, you know, we (the north, smart, liberal) beat the crap out of them 150 years ago, then gave them a hand up and they still haven't advanced one step!
What does a teacher say when a student asks about the most powerful gateway of all: masturbation? We all remember what happened to Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders when she answered such a question: struck by conservative lightning.
Stopping masturbation is easy: ban all broadcasts of any movie or TV show that features anyone in any kind of erotic pose.
Or thoughts.
The number one gateway to sexual activity is being born with genitals. Number two is teaching shame about human bodies instead of being open about what human physiology engenders. One can not legislate puberty or stop curiosity with censorship. Mankind according to Genesis was given one proscription, yet curiosity trumped the mandate. "When will they ever learn."
"The number one gateway to sexual activity is being born with genitals."
Please don't give them ideas. They could turn their state into Hillbilly Heaven's Gate.
Hate to break the news, peeps, but in a recent legislative debate over dropping Medicaid coverage for circumcision, one of the reasons offered for keeping it was to reduce male sexual sensation, thus hopefully preventing teen sex.
And, no, imaginative as I may be it's impossible to make this stuff up.
This is so over the top nutty that I will have to confirm it. Throw out circumcision despite medical benefits but argue to keep it because it may make sex bad? I've heard it all now.
The absolute best thing to do to get a teen , to do some thing is to tell them they cant do it.
Oh lord DC. They have done studies that have debunked this lack of sexual pleasure claim over and over again when it comes to circumcision...but then again the arguments don't sound fact-based and instead sound like more surface logic. Siiighs
And absolutely nothing would make the head of a penis more sensitive than having it covered with skin all the time. then when it gets out, its VERY sensitive. lol
Tennessee: the state that makes even Oklahoma go "whoa! Dude, that's pretty f***ed up!"
Highly ashamed that I live in Tennessee; just when I think they've legislated the worst they can do, they whip this out. Whatever happened to the jobs legislation?
Jobs?? What jobs are they creating? Morality police? I know the GOP loves Saudi style theocracy, and it sure looks like they want to create a retarded Old Testament version of it here in the US, but I do seem to remember them campaigning, not on abortion or homophobia, but on job creation.
Honestly, where are the jobs? Besides increased jobs for lawyers fighting the unconstitutional laws they're forcing thru in every Red state, besides jobs for superpac operatives, dismanteling unions, probing women's vaginas against their will, and monitoring the most intimate parts of our lives - what jobs have they created?
As I noted elsewhere, every southern state is in a race to see who can be the most backwards.
There needs to be an "American Idol"-style show in which every southern state competes to be the most backwards, ignorant bunch of inbreeding redneck hicks. I don't know who would win, though.
The only reason Texas hasn't fallen into the ocean is because Oklahoma sucks.
Will they ban cheerleaders at football games? 'Cause everyone knows that cheerleaders jumping up and down leads to impure thoughts which leads to gateway sexual activity.
And girls' volleyball... mmm...
it always did me. in Texas we couldn't wear shorts even when it was a 100 deg out and buses had no AC like the school pukes have now but cheerleaders could still wear their outfits. Yes it was distracting but sure beat learning Trig.
and male atheletes slapping each other's butts and then showering naked together!
Burkas for everyone!!
No, ban ALL athletics! After all, those programs require people to show some skin, and that plants all sorts of dirty thoughts in everyone's minds. At least that's what the American Taliban probably thinks.
I thought they used to say that all that athletic exercise keeps those young boys from thinking about sex. Haha. I guess the hormones are too strong. I'm willing to bet that a male could think about sex after a ten quarter overtime.
Right. Can't let the kids play with balls. That's wrong for the girls, and doubly wrong for the boys (because the balls aren't theirs).
Wow. For all of the efforts that conservatives made trying to make Obama out to be a Muslim, their legislative actions, like this one in Tennessee and other Bible Belt states, are more and more becoming to resemble Sharia Law. Who knew?
You'll notice more and more the conservatives are being referred to as the Taliban ... there is a valid reason to draw this conclusion.
The "CHRISTaliban" !!
We knew! We've been screaming about it for years!
I don't think the Left really believed the Right was this nuts. But they are.
I swear, the GOP thinks "The Handmaid's Tale" is an instruction manual.
No kidding. How soon before one of these states calls for public executions of people who "do gay things"?
No drinkin' no dancin' no holdin' hands, no wearin' red, and DON'T you shine those patent leather shoes, girls!
In fact, don't even move your faces, since that could look "sexual".
And STOP THAT SWEATING!!!!! lol
In high school I had a job being a "peer educator" to middle school kids. It was in a hospital but we were working from an abstinence only grant from the fed. It was enraging to have to give the chintziest shred of statistics like how condoms aren't 100% effective, and how there could be semen residue in your urethra which could get into a vagina so just keep your penis out. "Ya know, they've found HIV in saliva! and what if you have a cut on your hand or inside your mouth?"
I hated lying to the kids about how scary sex was.
Then after high school I got promoted to the full time hospital and worked on all of our grants, one of which was a state grant that taught safe sex and sexual responsibility, among other things. It was a much more honest and open class, we told them you shouldn't have sex, it may not be worth it (it was a very casual discussion so we'd joke about how "you don't need the wrong chick getting attached to you cuz of a one night stand" or "what if you get pregnant and the guy pretends you don't even exists, then you're a single mother the rest of your life and he's just a player") we warned them of disease and cultural collateral... BUT if you WERE going to have sex, protect yourself, try to know your partner well, etc.
P.S. when it was time to go recruit more high school kids to be future peer educators we had a girl come up to the job fair table, a 10th grader, about 6 months pregnant and she said: "Oh [program name], I was in that!"
Wait. Wait.
I thought it was Kansas that was banning Sharia law and creating their own, even more radical version.
Now Tennessee is banning kissing and hand-holding?!
What do you suppose is in the water in these bible belt states?!?!
Whatever it is, it seems to be highly contagious.
Maybe the FDA should investigate.
Wait. No, they want to eliminate the FDA, don't they?
Are we absolutely certain Kansas and Tennessee are part of this planet?
What I can't figure out is which state is more backwards. KS gave us Fred Phelps, while TN targets "gateway sexual activities". Is it any wonder why H.L. Mencken, reporting on the Scopes Trial, depicted the townspeople as a bunch of half-witted dumb***ks?
I don't know that it makes sense to blame all of the disparity in teen pregnancy rates on abstinence-only sex ed. We actually have it here in MA (at least officially), a parting gift from Etch. Some other regional differences are probably at least equally responsible:
- access to birth control
- parental attitudes toward birth control for teens
- teen attitudes toward birth control and pregnancy
and there are probably a few more I haven't thought of.
The statistics I've seen on abstinence-only versus other sex-ed programs say that kids who've gone through abstinence-only programs do tend to delay sex longer, but when they do become sexually active they're less likely to use birth control, so the effect on pregnancy rates is basically a wash.
All of that said, scrapping abstinence-only programs in favor of giving kids as much info as possible couldn't hurt.
but half of those "other differences" are predicated on abstinence only education. The parental attitudes is included, if the parents teach abstinence only rather than having a proper birds and the bees talk contributes to the kids' ignorance.
Not only do they not use protection when they finally get around to having sex, but they're ignorant to the concequences. "we can't get pregnant the first time" "I can pull out" (but for some reason lots of teen boys don't know what it feels like when they are about to ejaculate [maybe they don't masturbate because of religious or cultural fears]) so they accidentally ejaculate inside of the girl. and if they do get sperm inside the girl, she can jump the sperm out, she can douche with a coke because the carbonation kills the sperm. They certainly aren't going to get a plan B pill, just in case. And when they get pregnant they hide it as long as possible, in the meantime they eat horribly, sometimes they continue to drink and smoke, they don't get pre-natal care.
Just because it's not in the confines of school abstinence-only education is terrible. Kids need to understand everything about sex.
You don't skip over how to properly handle a weapon, "don't worry about the safety, or pointing away from people, you aren't ready for such talk, just know when you're ready, you shoot the target!" You don't avoid teaching about adjusting your mirrors and putting on set belts because "you won't be driving without an instructor anyway"
In everything in life we try and learn as much as possible, so all the variables are covered, except in sex where we plug our ears and shut our eyes. it's dangerous.
AMEN!
Abstinence only has worked really well for Catholic Priests. duh.
Oh the irony of "Liberty" College.
Oh they want liberty, all right. Liberty to impose Christian sharia on the country.
There is no article!
Can't read the post... And WON'T if I'm required to link maddowblog to my FB page!!
Keep intruding and you'll lose a viewer as well!
Then don't who needs you?
Just because the founder of Facebook has denounce his US citizenship to "avoid" paying taxes to the country that gave him the freedom and security he needed to be a success is no reason to...wait a minute.
It isn't "the founder of Facebook." It's Eduardo Saverin, a former college room mate of the guy recognized as having founded Facebook. Saverin only owns a 4% stake in the company.
well we are so sorry for your ignorance sir!
Shame on me I should keep better track of creeps I reckon.
I don't seem to see an actual story about this--am I missing something?
I read about this last week-just google it.
Ah yes the almighty google where you can find the answer you seek or if you try real hard and get to the right spot you can find the right answer.
When you repress sexual energy this much, it comes out the other way: violence.
But violence is perfectly acceptable!
UMMM doesn't take a rocket scientist too @!$%#ing condom get your ass walmart get condoms how stupid can you.......b oh umm ok
Just remember: this is the State that has the Jack Daniel's distillery in a dry county.
Besides that, it's all about guilt. Conservative christians are big on the "I was a shameless slut but came [1] to Jesus" script. If nothing else it makes for a lifetime of leverage against the woman involved.
Of course, it doesn't work unless she gets knocked up first.
[1] maybe I should rephrase that
I'm going to speculate and guess that a lot of TN's ignorance springs from inbreeding.
First let me say, I believe in being chaste and dressing modestly and I also believe that abstinence is appropriate outside of marriage BUT I also believe that simply saying "don't do it" doesn't work! Parents need to talk to their kids about all aspects of sex, its consequences and protection, they have to lay out options and nurture an environment where their children are not afraid to ask questions and they have to monitor their kids behavior. The state can pass all the laws they want regarding behavior but unless conduct is reinforced in the home it won't make a bit of difference.
I "enjoyed" the section of the article where parents could sue the sex ed instructors?!? At what point did the parents stop being responsible for teaching and being an example to their own child? Maybe state mandated parenting classes would be a better use of the governments time and money!
Another option is they could split the state, put up a big wall: boys on one side and girls on the other.
"Maybe state mandated parenting classes would be a better use of the governments time and money!"
Considering that it's harder to adopt a pound puppy than it is to have a baby, you may be right.
Next we're going to need tablecloths on all the school lunch tables big enough to cover the legs, lest some young lad looks at the table, thinks of his true love's appendages, and gets ideas.
When I went to high school some of the desks had modesty panels.
Meanwhile, gotta paint everything the same color, lest the different colors look "gay".
"...wouldn't a reevaluation of failed abstinence policies be easier and more effective than combating alleged and ill-defined "gateway" behaviors?" The answer is, "No." Because like some many things in our culture today, this has absolutely nothing to do with facts, proof, reality, statistics, etc. It is all about unquestionable religion-based moral dictates. They will propose and believe in this nonsensical stuff despite all evidence to the contrary. Because to admit that abstinence-only policies don't work would then cast doubt upon all the other things they believe with no evidence to support them. It's the Gateway to Doubt, and that's really what this is all about.
In Tennessee having a sister is the biggest gateway activity...
Maybe that's why they come up with these laws: all that inbreeding screwed up their brains.
I have to say this law is not in any way reality based. It is right up there with the Bishops thinking Roman Catholic women still think birth control is a sin (most of them don't in reality, and think the Bishops should mind their own business) and will love not to be "forced" to do it. Note to Republicans and Conservatives: "Just Say No", "Abstinence means no sex education is necessary" "if kids are prevented from sexual feelings they will be pure" DON'T WORK. Waste of time and effort. What we get from these is unwanted babies who will become a burden to their mothers and families and society. Get it?
Don't argue with people who can't think logically.