March 21, 2007

A Bad Heritage

By Guest Blogger William Smith, Vice President for Public Policy at SIECUS

South Carolina is home to one of the most mischievous abstinence-only-until-marriage programs in the country. Long a beneficiary of political patronage in the Palmetto State, Heritage Community Services used early funds to develop a family business that has been lucrative to the Badgleys whose reach now extends beyond South Carolina to include a presence in Kentucky, Maine, Rhode Island, and Georgia.
Run by the acerbic Anne Badgley, Heritage Community Services has created the abstinence-only-until-marriage program Heritage Keepers. My organization’s review of this program can be found here.
One of the most offensive excerpts from this program underscores what I mean by mischievous. Students are instructed that: “Males and females are aroused at different levels of intimacy. Males are more sight orientated whereas females are more touch orientated. This is why girls need to be careful with what they wear, because males are looking! The girl might be thinking fashion, while the boy is thinking sex. For this reason, girls have a responsibility to wear modest clothing that doesn’t invite lustful thoughts.”
What’s next for South Carolina’s young women? Adult-sized footie pajamas for everyday wear – just to make sure no sinful flesh is showing?
This type of material, and much more in Heritage Community Service’s curriculum, has gotten them tossed out of schools in Rhode Island and basically found to be illegal in public schools in Maine. It has also gotten them into trouble closer to home in schools in both Charleston and Dorchester County. Yet, the Badgleys continue to take in record amounts of both state and federal tax dollars (and it’s not just taxpayers in South Carolina who are supporting them, by hawking their wares in other states, they’re funneling additional funds into the family coffers).
What we need to ask ourselves is, at what cost? Heritage’s curriculum employs a virginity pledge as a final component of class instruction. Researchers from Columbia and Yale Universities have found that young people who take virginity pledges, like those used by Heritage, have poor outcomes. First, when they do become sexually active, they are 1/3 less likely to use contraception than their peers who have not pledged, thereby exacerbating their risk of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STD). And, lest one jump in and say, “well they should just have waited until marriage like they promised,” we might as well know that nearly 90% of virginity pledgers go on to have premarital sex. Hardly success. Even worse, pledgers have more oral and anal sex which they (wrongly) deem to be safer behavior that allows them to maintain “technical virginity.” All of this mess adds up to a community level impact such that communities in which more than 20% of youth have pledged virginity actually have higher rates of STD’s. That is evidence.
South Carolina has a comprehensive health education law that proves a better path for the state’s youth. But decision makers in communities hosting Heritage Keepers would be wise to consider if this program compliments or undermines more responsible attempts to create a better tomorrow for our youth, our families, and our communities.
SIECUS works to secure the right of all people to accurate, comprehensive information about sexuality, sexual and reproductive health services, and sexual and reproductive rights.