abstinence rant
This article is about a group of people who went to Las Vegas to preach to people they found on the street about the virtues of abstinence. I have no problem with this. I may not believe in saving yourself until marriage but if it works for you and you want to tell others about doing it, go for it. But if you're going to do it, give people real information. You can talk about unplanned pregnancies, you can talk about STDs, you can talk about AIDS, but don't use misinformation to scare people.
Studies show that in the United States there are about 45 million cases of herpes, 20 million cases of human papillomavirus (HPV) and 900,000 people living with AIDS.
"There's no condom on the face of this earth that can prevent HPV. It's so highly contagious," said Melodi Hawley, a 21-year-old director of a sex and family education office in Denham Springs, La. "And we're not told this. I tell kids, and they say, 'human papa-what?'"
They're right, I had no idea what HPV was. So I looked it up online. Turns out it's the virus that causes genital warts. Most people have heard of genital warts, and reminding people that condoms don't always protect you from them is fine. But don't start using a term they haven't heard of simply because you think it sounds scary and you're hoping that it'll be confused with HIV.
Also, what the hell is this?
"The earlier a girl had begun sexual activity, the less likely she was to be happy in her life many, many years later," said Robert Rector, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a speaker at the convention.
What study is this from? Who did they talk to? Is it even a study, or is he just making an assumption? It's never explained, and his statement is just thrown into the article like it's an obvious fact.
Edited to add: For more information on HPV, you may want to check out burgundy's comments to this entry. It can also cause cervical cancer. Most people are at some point exposed to it, but we never have any symptoms. Getting HPV testing as part of an annual PAP smear can help diagnose it early enough to treat it. It's not so much the fact that the abstinence people mention HPV that bothers me so much is that it doesn't sound like they explain it so much as just try to scare people with it. And they overstate the AIDS statistic by using HIV stats instead, which is just plain incorrect. This also helps fuel my theory that part of why they talk about it without fully explaining it is to further confuse it with HIV, which makes sense since they don't even seem to know the difference between HIV and AIDS.
Studies show that in the United States there are about 45 million cases of herpes, 20 million cases of human papillomavirus (HPV) and 900,000 people living with AIDS.
"There's no condom on the face of this earth that can prevent HPV. It's so highly contagious," said Melodi Hawley, a 21-year-old director of a sex and family education office in Denham Springs, La. "And we're not told this. I tell kids, and they say, 'human papa-what?'"
They're right, I had no idea what HPV was. So I looked it up online. Turns out it's the virus that causes genital warts. Most people have heard of genital warts, and reminding people that condoms don't always protect you from them is fine. But don't start using a term they haven't heard of simply because you think it sounds scary and you're hoping that it'll be confused with HIV.
Also, what the hell is this?
"The earlier a girl had begun sexual activity, the less likely she was to be happy in her life many, many years later," said Robert Rector, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a speaker at the convention.
What study is this from? Who did they talk to? Is it even a study, or is he just making an assumption? It's never explained, and his statement is just thrown into the article like it's an obvious fact.
Edited to add: For more information on HPV, you may want to check out burgundy's comments to this entry. It can also cause cervical cancer. Most people are at some point exposed to it, but we never have any symptoms. Getting HPV testing as part of an annual PAP smear can help diagnose it early enough to treat it. It's not so much the fact that the abstinence people mention HPV that bothers me so much is that it doesn't sound like they explain it so much as just try to scare people with it. And they overstate the AIDS statistic by using HIV stats instead, which is just plain incorrect. This also helps fuel my theory that part of why they talk about it without fully explaining it is to further confuse it with HIV, which makes sense since they don't even seem to know the difference between HIV and AIDS.