By: William A. Smith
Vice President for Public Policy
SIECUS
Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States
http://www.siecus.org/
Last week, SIECUS held our 6th annual “Back to School” briefing for Members of the United States Congress and their staff. This year we continued the tradition of shining a light on what types of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs are receiving tax-payer money, and being carried out in schools across the country.
SIECUS has long focused on the on-going need to combat the advance of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs in South Carolina. Previously, for example, we have reviewed the curricula of Heritage Community Services, the state’s most well-funded abstinence-only-until-marriage provider. But this year, we looked at another of the state’s four ab-only programs; Life Support Inc. which is based in Darlington and receives nearly $600,000 in federal money (from 2007 through 2011).
Life Support uses the Healthy Images of Sex (HIS) curriculum, which was co-written by Sheri Few, the head of South Carolina Parents Involved in Education’s (SC PIE), yet another of the state’s ab-only providers. You may recall that Ms. Few also used to work for Heritage Community Services so the state’s strong tradition of keeping the millions of dollars “in the family” persists. So we were very interested in seeing what HIS had to say.
First, even though Life Support has been quoted in news sources as being involved with “many schools” in Marlboro County, make no doubt that this is a religious program through and through. Let’s start at the very beginning, the title itself, “HIS,” is suggestive in and of itself because more fundamentalist Christians refer to themselves as belonging to Jesus Christ – we are HIS and our behavior should reflect this. HIS the abstinence-only-until-marriage program makes certain that students recognize that this means no sex outside of marriage.
One way this program seeks to make its abstinence-only-until-marriage message crystal clear is by scaring the heck out of young people. HIS compares pre-marital sex to getting hit by a truck, putting fire in your lap, injecting poison into your veins and eating worms. Worse still, HIS suggests that the decision to engage in pre-marital sex is similar to using planes to hit the World Trade Center or allowing children to play with guns. And, the sex drive is described as so powerful and potentially destructive that teachers of HIS are told to create a parallel between it and “the power of water as evidenced by Hurricane Katrina in and around New Orleans in 2005 and the tsunami in and around Indonesia and Thailand in 2004.”
HIS of course also teaches that marriage is a panacea. The benefits of marriage are listed as “health, money, child doing well in school, child feels good, happiness, long life” while cohabitation is contrasted as bringing about” risk of illness, lack of money, child doing poorly in school, child misbehaving, anger and shorter life.” Single parenthood brings similar misery including “risk of illness, poverty, child failing in school, child abused, child in jail and depression.” If the nail was not sufficiently driven home, teachers are encouraged to “Tell students not to be confused – a popular statement today is ‘I would like to be married or in a solid committed relationship’ – marriage is a solid committed relationship, anything less in not commitment or solid. Let’s stop the confusion!” We have to wonder what such statements mean to kids who have single parents, divorced parents, or those who live together but aren’t married.
And of course, no abstinence-only-until-marriage program in South Carolina would be complete without the pervasive anti-choice ideology that serves as the wellspring for Life Support, SC PIE, and Heritage Community Services. HIS describes abortion as “death of the baby” and, not surprisingly spreads medically inaccurate information such as telling students that abortion leads to increased risks for breast cancer and infertility. It goes on to also say that those who choose abortion are likely to experience “guilt over the decision to take the life of another human being, anxiety, coldness, depression, flash backs, eating disorders, [and] drug abuses.”
Twenty-five states have now withdrawn from the federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funding because they have had enough of the extremist nonsense advanced by the likes of HIS, Life Support, Ms Few, and others like them around the country. Unfortunately, while the rest of the country has taken new steps to limit the advance of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, South Carolina continues to expand its involvement. Making matters worse were shady shenanigans in the state house this year that allowed this industry to continue to flourish without check and saw some longtime allies of comprehensive sex education on the wrong side of the fight.
That is why it is even more important now to remain vigilant and keep up the policing and watchdogging of the ab-only grantees in the state. The tide is shifting against abstinence-only-until-marriage programming and even if South Carolina is not currently part of that wave, sustained advocacy can make sure that the receding national tide takes this junk with it. To help empower your advocacy, SIECUS has many resources including our State Profile on South Carolina at www.siecus.org/SC and full reviews of HIS and one of the Heritage Community Services curricula at www.communityactionkit.org/reviews.
