Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder?

Yeah, right. But that doesn't stop the fundies from pushing abstinence on rational-Americans.

In St. Lucie County, the God Squad is up in arms about a sex education proposal that -- oh, noes! -- advocates the use of condoms to prevent AIDS.

No date has been set for board review, but the proposed curriculum has drawn fire from people who say it promotes the use of contraceptives over waiting until marriage and contains "graphic and sexually explicit" material, including instructions for the use of condoms.

They point to an exercise that asks students to find condoms at the drugstore - a lesson they dubbed the "condom field trip" - as an example of the "inappropriate" content.

"The majority of the curriculum does promote condoms," said Bryan Longworth, associate pastor at Covenant Tabernacle World Outreach Center in Port St. Lucie. "Yet it is portrayed to be a curriculum that promotes abstinence."

Longworth has been among the most vocal opponents of Get Real About AIDS. He has spoken against it at multiple board meetings, held one-man news conferences and started a petition in opposition to the program. He believes about 4,000 petitions have been collected; the district has received about 2,800.

[...]

Longworth said he agrees the health curriculum could be improved but believes a stronger abstinence program would be a better choice than one that promotes contraceptives, the use of which he considers similar to playing Russian roulette with children's lives.

He points to the failure rate of condoms as an example: Condoms fail to prevent pregnancy about 15 percent of the time with "typical use" and about 2 percent of the time with "perfect use," which is consistently and correctly each time, according to Planned Parenthood.

"If something fails 15 percent of the time, you don't tell people to use it," he said. "Nothing good is going to happen if teenagers become parents in high school."

Irony alert: Longworth would rather see kids learn about abstinence, which works 100% of the time ... until it doesn't anymore. That is, sure, you can prevent STDs and pregnancy by abstaining from sex, but the fact is, teens aren't abstaining from sex.

Sylvie Kramer, chief executive officer of Kids Connected by Design, a nonprofit organization that runs maternal and child programs in St. Lucie County, agrees, but believes sex education has to include more than abstinence, particularly since most Americans - nine of 10, according to the Guttmacher Institute - have sex before marriage and some choose not to marry at all.

"This is a health issue, not a moral one," she said.

"This business of abstinence-only doesn't work. There are studies after studies that show it doesn't work."

Welcome to the Clue Train -- next stop: Bryan Longworth.

Nine out of ten Americans have sex before marriage; therefore, 10% are abstaining. Condoms typically work 85% of the time and, when kids know how to use them, they work 98% of the time. I think 98% is better than 10%, Bryan. Maybe you don't tell people to use something that fails 15% of the time, Bryan ... but you're telling people to use something that fails 90% of the time. Do the math, dumbass.

You're entitled to your opinions, fundies. Just, please, keep them to yourselves.

UPDATE (12:40 am 8/13/07): If you're interested in a fuller comparison of abstinence-only versus sensible sex ed (yeah, I'm biased -- what of it?), go see what the lovely and talented Interrobang has to say about the subject, as she critiques the Mathematica report on abstinence-only education in the U.S.