1115.org

Pick the true statement out of the following:

1) A 43-day-old fetus is a “thinking person.”

2) Half of gay male teenagers in the US have tested positive for HIV, which can be spread via sweat and/or tears.

3) Condoms fail to prevent the spread of HIV as much as 31% of the time.

4) 10% of women who have abortions become sterile, and they also become more prone to suicide.

5) Touching a person’s genitals can result in pregnancy.

Give up? Well, if you happen to look over the materials provided by some federally funded abstinence-only programs, all of these statements are true. Of course, one can make the argument that these statements aren’t supported by the facts or even common sense. But considering that we live in an age where pure faith is becoming more important than any sort of provable science, is anyone all that surprised?

Yesterday, Matt wrote about the drive to start teaching “intelligent design” (which is creationism with a fancier name) in schools, despite the fact that intelligent design is nothing more than a guess that the religious right can feel comfortable with. That same kind of unrealistic thinking is now shown to be flowing through these abstinence-promotion programs, which will receive $170 million of our tax dollars next year. And here’s what we get for our money: programs that hold theory over any sort of actual data, where education is held hostage by unproven, subjective or (in some cases) demonstrably false claims.

No one is claiming that abstinence is a bad thing for teenagers. And everyone can agree that cutting down on teen pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases is a noble cause. But what does it say about these programs when they take a total head-in-the-sand approach, and have no problem with making things up to support a conservative-friendly idealogy? And what does it say about these programs when they also include something like this:

Some course materials cited in Waxman’s report present as scientific fact notions about a man’s need for “admiration” and “sexual fulfillment” compared with a woman’s need for “financial support.” One book in the “Choosing Best” series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. “Moral of the story,” notes the popular text: “Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man’s confidence or even turn him away from his princess.”

Coming up next: The world is flat. Witches must be burned at the stake. And the sun rotates around the Earth.

(Wait a minute. 25% of Americans already believe the sun goes around the Earth. Seriously.)