Get Up and Clap for Jesus

Eight years of pious propaganda about abstinence have left Teen America more ignorant, more pregnant and more chancred than before, according to a report by the Centre for Disease Control. Teenage pregnancies, which had been declining for fourteen years, have risen in most states since the single election won by George W Bush. The number of teenage girls with syphilis has risen by almost fifty per cent; the number of adolescent boys with AIDS has risen by almost a hundred per cent; and the gonorrhea rate, too, is making a healthy recovery after a period of negative growth. The southern states, where abstinence is preached the hardest, tend to have the highest rates of visits from the stork and subsequent little miracles.

Naturally, not everyone is convinced of the correlation. A spokesbeing for American Values, which supports traditional marriage, said that it was "ridiculous to say that a programme we nominally invest in has failed when it fails to overcome the most sexualised culture in world history". It is ridiculous to accuse a programme of failure just because the programme happens to have failed. Similarly, "it seems very bizarre that the sex education establishment rejects the idea that we should talk to kids about what is best for them"; a rejection so bizarre, in fact, that it does not appear to be taking place, at least on the present planet.