Separation of church & state 5: Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder? Apparently not!

It's probably just the weird way my mind works sometimes, but when I think of the school district's sexual education program, which emphasizes abstinence, I always think of the old proverb about absence making the heart grow fonder.

[For the more literary minded, the Roman poet Sextus Propertius gave us the earliest form of this saying in Elegies: Always toward absent lovers love's tide stronger flows.] 

At any rate, the school district developed a sex education program some decades back that emphasized abstinence as the only sure way of avoiding sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancies, and all of the other ills that go with today's culture of twerking and rapid coupling. Abstinence-based sexual education is commonplace in school districts in the U.S., but less so in Canada. While birth control is taught, it does not extend to fitting condoms on bananas and so on. The contents of the program, by the way, were developed completely by teachers in the district.

While we have letters on file from medical people thanking us for this approach to sexual education, and have received inquiries from around the continent about it, here in British Columbia we have been laughed at, ridiculed, and are now being challenged by the human rights watchdogs for failing our students. Here's a sample:

The BC Humanist Association, a community of atheists, agnostics, and what they call freethinkers, has written a letter to BC’s education minister asking him to look at the Abbotsford school district sex education curriculum.
Executive Director Ian Bushfield says his group is opposed to focusing primarily on abstinence without teaching the use of contraceptives.

“We found a policy in Abbotsford which promotes what we see as a religious, morally inspired view of human sexuality that maybe deprives a number of non-Christian or non-religious students in the district of a full comprehensive sex education.”
Bushfield says abstinence should be a part of any sex education program, but not the only part. (Source: Star 98.3, Nov. 29/2012. Emphasis added).

This illustrates what I was suggesting in an earlier post; i.e., that moral positions that are not aligned with what are perceived to be current societal norms--as interpreted by the media, advocacy groups, pollsters, politicians, and so on--are pretty quickly vilified, ridiculed, dismissed, and worst of all, seen as religion intruding on an unwilling society.

This is why people like Justin Trudeau, who is all about societal norms, take the position that our current regimen of abortion on demand is the only acceptable one. While only about 30% of Canadians actually support abortion on demand, another third are accepting of abortion in some instances--everything from age of viability; to end of first trimester; to incidents of rape, incest, and endangerment of the mother's life (in this latter case less than 5% of all abortions, by the way). Since the 20-30% of Canadians who oppose abortion, and the 30 - 40% of Canadians who accept it with restrictions, by and large aren't kicking up a fuss about the issue, it is easiest for the politicians to stay the course and avoid criticisms from those who are most vociferous in supporting abortion on demand and who tend to get the national media's uncritical attention. See, for example, "Onward Christian Soldier" in the Full Pundit section of the National Post, August 28. 2014 where it is reported that in a documentary on Prime Minister Harper's evangelical beliefs, that Harper would like to reopen the abortion debate but won't because he knows that it's a political non-starter.

This is why I take the position that the political process is a poor way to bring down the abortion rate. On this issue our political leaders are, by and large, moral cowards for whom staying in power will trump almost any principle once held while out of politics or in opposition. 

Excuse the cynicism. On the other hand, show me I'm wrong.