AJC.com > Opinion > Woman to Woman > Archives > 2007 > October
October 2007
Are Schools encouraging students to have sex?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Rebuttal
Have you walked through the halls of your local middle school lately? It’s pretty shocking-Teachers piping Usher’s “Seduction” through the sound system, filling classrooms with lit candles, massage oil and giant pillows…
Alright, I’ll stop. School-sanctioned sexual activity isn’t very funny, and that goes double for pregnant eleven-year-olds.
You want to hear a real joke? Try the government’s continued push for abstinence-only education, despite years of research indicating that it has no statistical impact on teens’ age of sexual initiation or eventual number of partners.
If abstinence-only programs were merely worthless, we might laugh them off. Yet a 2004 congressional study showed that most commonly-used curricula were filled with falsehoods regarding reproductive health: Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission 31 percent of the time. AIDS can be spread through sweat and tears.
And it’s not only kids who are being misled. That Zogby poll? Please. Contracted by an abstinence group, it repeatedly positioned abstinence education as including “age appropriate discussion of contraceptives” with a “higher emphasis” on self-esteem building over “condom usage skills.”
Who wouldn’t say yes to that? Yet the survey couldn’t be more misleading; abstinence-only programs contain no discussion of contraceptive use. (Parents used as political pawns in this report should contact Zogby and ask for their time back.)
Pregnant teens? No one wants that. Yet I doubt the solution lies with people like Pam Stenzel, a Bush appointee to the Department of Health and Human Service’s task force for abstinence education guidelines. Here’s Pam, when she thinks she’s only among “friends,” addressing the effectiveness of an abstinence-only curriculum at a religious convention: “I don’t care if it works, because at the end of the day… I’m answering to God.”
She adds, “AIDS is not the enemy. .. a hysterectomy at twenty is not the enemy…. An unplanned pregnancy is not the enemy. My child believing that they can …sin without consequence …spending eternity separated from God, is the enemy!”
Well, Pam and I agree on one thing: know your enemy. As for dispensing vital birth control and healthcare information? We owe it to the next generation not to abstain from that.
What is the significance of Dear Abby’s approval of gay marriage?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
“I believe if two people want to commit to each other, God bless ‘em” Jeanne Phillips has said of gay unions, adding, “I don’t think I’m a flaming radical.”
Yet Jeanne Phillips, a.k.a. “Dear Abby”, recently moved from advice columnist to headline story when it was announced she’d receive the “Straight for Equality” award from Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).
When Ms. Phillips took over Dear Abby duties from her mother Pauline several years ago, she took Mom’s endorsement of PFLAG to the next level. In this, the Phillips’s reflect the increased acceptance succeeding generations have shown toward homosexuality.
A recent NY Times/CBS/MTV poll underscores this trend, showing that young people have significantly more progressive attitudes toward gay marriage and civil unions than did their parents. In 2004, The University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey even showed increased tolerance of gay troops among younger soldiers. Therefore, when the most widely syndicated columnist in the world promotes this civil rights issue, the sky no longer falls.
Abby’s words could have comforted my old neighbor Mitzi Henderson when her younger son came out in the 1980’s.
“When Jamie came out to us, we didn’t think we even knew anyone gay” admits his deeply religious mother. After five years of “praying and reading whatever I could find”, Mitzi finally found solace in a local chapter of PFLAG.
Through Mitzi’s involvement with PFLAG she went from being a woman who desperately needed advice to a role model for her generation, eventually serving as national president for the organization. No wonder this grandmother of seven shared accolades this month with Dear Abby herself, both women receiving PFLAG awards for their work in support of gay people and their families.
Our country is still deeply divided on the issue of gay marriage. Yet my former Camp Fire group mentor Mitzi assures me that change is coming, thanks to a new generation with a more relaxed perspective.
“The more people see gays and lesbians in everyday life, the less they see them as stereotypes or threats,” she explains, “They see them as human beings. It takes the fear away.”
Rebuttal
Because I spend a lot of time speaking in conservative and religious circles, it’s not surprising that most people I interact with disagree with gay marriage. But of those thousands of individuals, I’ve never run across a single one who viewed gays or lesbians as a threat. And I’ve also never met anyone who had some amorphous “fear” that needed a good debunking.
What I have found is that most gay marriage opponents - like me — simply have a different opinion on the issue. Our reasons range from religious or moral values (since most religions consider same-sex relationships morally wrong) all the way to formal public policy considerations (since several other countries’ redefinition of marriage had a negative impact on the traditional variety). But when we have friends or relatives who are gay, it doesn’t change our friendship. We usually handle it like, “You and I just disagree on this issue. Where do you want to go for dinner?”
Sure, some gays may be stereotyped — but they’ve got company. Because in our tolerant culture, those of us who raise the unpopular question of whether it is a healthy lifestyle are certainly negatively stereotyped, too.
I do believe that Dear Abby’s newly vocal support actually reflects a cultural shift rather than causes one. But I doubt our culture will ever shift into complete comfort with gay marriage. Most Americans can support the idea of “live and let live,” be committed to preventing discrimination against gays, and yet still want to protect the traditional definition of marriage. The difficulty, of course, is that many gays view the actual prevention of gay unions as discrimination — whereas traditionalists view legalizing them as discrimination against the very institution of marriage itself.
A July 2007 Pew poll found that 57 percent of Americans still oppose gay marriage, while only 32 percent favor it. The millennial generation that grew up with “Will and Grace” offers, at 44 percent, a bit more support. But nearly 70 percent of Americans also agreed that “A child needs a home with both a mother and father to grow up happily.” I disagree with Dear Abby’s politics, but I appreciate her compassion and respect for the gay community. Hopefully, she will extend the same respect to readers who respectfully disagree.
Is science or politics leading the global warming debate?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Let me say right up front that I deeply appreciate Al Gore’s efforts to wake up the public about carbon emissions and global warming. I confess my husband and I had avoided watching An Inconvenient Truth until my ardent Democrat parents cornered us with it. The message affected us so much, we bought a hybrid car a week later.
And it’s because the issue is so grave that I’m even more concerned about how political it has become. Scientists must continue to investigate global warming from every angle. And yet, the co-founder of Greenpeace, ecologist and consultant Dr. Patrick Moore warned in an interview that it has gotten so politicized that many scientists are hesitant “to do their duty as a scientist - which is to challenge thinking and predictions.”
Over the last year, highly respected researchers have been stunned to be attacked for quite reasonable statements - such as that different computer models would dramatically change Gore’s predictions. How rigorously will global warming research be pursued, if scientists know in advance that they’ll be embarrassed to share unexpected findings?
Few scientists dispute that CO2 levels are at dangerous levels and rising due to emissions - but there is still deep disagreement on whether it is the primary cause of climate change, and what to do about it. For example, Dr. Moore’s research puts him at odds with his former agency, by showing that using more wood instead of steel, replacing the forests, and even using more nuclear power is better for climate health than the rigid forest-protection advocated by many environmentalists.
And in just one of many climate-change theories, fjord-bed core tests have found a fascinating correlation of climate change with sunspot cycles. According to a Financial Post article by leading Canadian geoscientist R. Timothy Patterson, solar scientists predict that a weak sunspot cycle in 2020 will propel us into an extended period of global cooling - and that governments must immediately prepare for global cooling, to avoid a serious disruption to agriculture.
Rebuttal
By driving around in a hybrid car, my colleague makes an admirable decision, one that constantly reminds her of priorities in a time of environmental crisis. Shaunti is also perceptive in wanting scientists to “work free of political expectations.”
If only the White House felt the same way. Instead, a congressional hearing entitled “Allegations of Political Interference with the Work of Climate Change Scientists” detailed years of obfuscation. In censoring scientists and touting industry-funded skeptics like Dr. Moore, the administration has conducted a systematic campaign to confuse the American people.
“There is a debate as to whether it’s man made or naturally caused,” the president declared of global warming just last year. Such pronouncements create media buzz around a scientific controversy that doesn’t exist, encouraging us to accept White House inaction.
Fortunately, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is immune to such manipulations. It backed up scientists at the EPA, NASA and other federal agencies with an emphatic report that underscored the lack of real debate. Over 2,500 of the world’s leading scientists stated that it is “very likely,” over a 90 percent probability, that human activity has caused most of the temperature rise.
My colleague is right to drive a hybrid; I’m inspired by her choice. Yet I can’t ride along with her depiction of climate experts cowering in their labs, terrified of bucking Al Gore. Scientists love to disprove common theories; in their world, that’s a career maker. Ever met a scientist? The words “hesitant” and “embarrassed” don’t exactly spring to mind.
No, the hesitancy is the Bush administration’s, years after the Kyoto Protocol, still refusing to offer up anything but the most voluntary programs. The embarrassment is ours as the world wonders why a country responsible for 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions does so little to forestall a nightmare.
Forget about politics? Good idea. Only then will we accept that pain-free cures aren’t going to pay us a surprise visit, here in the waiting room.
Instead, check out the lab down the hall. There you’ll find real scientists, working on real solutions. Unafraid and undaunted, they’re eager to tell us the truth.
Is feminism to blame for the ‘happiness gap’?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Bad news this month for women, experts at trying to Be All Things to All People: You’re flunking Self-Esteem 101. Two separate research studies, by economists from Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, reveal a troubling fact: Men are happier than they were 30 years ago, while women are less satisfied. Thus, the “Happiness Gap” is christened.
Hear that crunch in the forest? It’s right-wing pundits, gathering kindling to burn the women’s movement at the stake. After all, what else could be to blame for our discontent?
Yet if we can grab the matches away from the anti-feminist brigade - ironically, filled with women whose big careers and supportive mates are byproducts of the movement - we’ll understand the true complexities that face us.
It’s telling that the Pennsylvania study showed increased dissatisfaction across the board for women, regardless of marital or work status, age or income. Also revealing is data showing that kids get happier at equal rates - until young women approach adulthood.
Why? Though the study considers fallout from the woman’s movement as a possible factor, more theories point to the anxiety that comes from multi-tasking ourselves into the ground. Unlike men, we can’t seem to let go of putting everyone on our To Do list, even as that list grows longer than our commutes and carpool routes.
Yet men report having fewer unpleasant tasks each week, even as they’ve increased their domestic loads to accommodate working wives. So much for the old hue and cry that equality demanded female gains at the expense of men.
Feminism is also hardly to blame for the surge in plastic surgery and persistence of Martha Stewart Mania. It’s more that, in this fast-paced world, we view every new idea as a royal command - and we’re the queens, commanding ourselves to perfection.
Limiting our career options won’t increase happiness; lowering our stratospheric standards just might. After all, choice is what we fought for, but it never meant choose everything. So add up your accomplishments, cut yourself some slack, and learn to say “no,” Ladies. Your very happiness is at stake. Don’t send it up in flames.
Rebuttal
The reason women feel so pressured isn’t because the choices exist but because feminism told us we should seize them all! Feminism wasn’t just about equality for women, but about pushing the Superwoman addiction. But as all frazzled Superwomen know, that’s a recipe for nervous breakdown - or for years of regret down the road.
I was blessed with a college-graduate mom who chose to be a domestic engineer. But in the 1970’s she was ridiculed so much for her stay-at-home status that she dreaded talking about it, and hearing condescending women say, “That’s all you do?”
Yet I’m sure my mother is far more happy - not less - for her choice to wait on her nursing career until we were older, instead of trying to have it all, all at once.
Carrie Lukas, VP of the Independent Women’s Forum and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism, shared in an interview how hurtful feminist messages can be to women’s happiness. For example, she found feminist literature tended to “Only focus on the negative problems of marriage, which contributes to the idea that marriage is disposable. But married women in general are much happier!”
One of feminism’s biggest and most devastating myths is that you can “have it all,” but as Lukas also pointed out, “Having choices doesn’t mean you don’t have to make a choice. There are going to be sacrifices no matter what choice you make.”
I agree it’s significant that the “Happiness Gap” study found increased dissatisfaction for women across the board - but for a very different reason. Most women have a deep desire for someone to share their life with, to have children and watch them grow. There’s nothing wrong with seizing our modern workplace opportunities. But if a woman pursues those opportunities at the expense of those personal desires, and then finds that she’s lonely, past child-bearing age, or has missed the key moments in her children’s lives, why wouldn’t she have regrets?
I believe women would be far happier if feminism had been content with just pressing for equality for women - and hadn’t made that last paragraph so politically incorrect.
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Commentary
By Shaunti Feldhahn
King Middle School in Portland, Maine has handed out condoms to 11-year-olds since 2000. And the school board just decided to provide prescription contraceptives without parental approval. So the school nurse will know a young girl is sexually active, privately put her on the pill so she can avoid pregnancy, and keep that knowledge from parents who wants to teach their daughter about sexual choices. If this isn’t encouraging students toward sex, I don’t know what is.
Last year, 5 of 134 students visiting the school nurse reported having sex. This problem needs to be addressed, but this is a terrible way to do it. Does anyone really think fewer students will have sex once the pill is available?
Portland school committee member Rebecca Minnick defended her reasoning to the press with, “If it saves one girl from getting pregnant too soon, it’s worth it.” Really? At the cost of sending an incredibly damaging message to hundreds of other students and parents? And how about helping the little girl with the self-destructive choices make better ones, for heaven’s sake?
This is an extreme example, but unfortunately many American schools are not helping children stay abstinent — which is the only real solution for emotional and physical health. Instead school actions often undermine abstinence lip service and send the message that, really, everyone is doing it. Oh, like that helps! Students have enough internal pressure toward sex; they need authority figures to help them fight it, not help them give into it!
As Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association emphasized in an interview, “The Maine decision is a symptom of a bigger problem. Our children are saturated with a sexual culture. In all media and in conversations with classmates, they hear and see sex. In such a culture, schools should promote the best message. On other public health issues, like alcohol or drugs, the school message is always on the best health side. But with sex, the schools often compromise the message and put children at risk.”
Once parents understand abstinence education, a Zogby poll for Huber’s group found they prefer it over comprehensive sex ed by a 2 to 1 margin (61 percent to 30 percent). Schools simply must stop undermining parents and help kids avoid sexual activity.