Snipped from AlterNet.org.

With Mitt Romney rising in popularity as a Presidential candidate, my antennae go up. For those who think that values or faith don’t play a part in politics are naive and gullible to the campaign rhetoric trying to convince you that it doesn’t. All it takes is to look at President Bush’s administration which is rife with policy based on faith, to see that it does. The Iraq war is a perfect example. In a series of articles entitled What the White House Doesn’t Want You To Know, I presented evidence of a man whose foreign policy is based on a “Mission From God” wherein he stubbornly presses ahead with a failed policy because he feels like it’s a mandate from God. Well, the same can be seen in Bush’s AIDS initiatives as well. I recently wrote an article entitled Sex, Religion, Conservatives and Hyprocrisy in which I outlined the far right’s position on abstinence only in the global fight against AIDS. Well, now we have it again crop up, now in our domestic sex education policy. I came across an article entitled The Mounting Failure of Abstinence Education on alternet.org which spells out the Bush domestic “faith-based” initiatives for which millions of dollars have been spent on something that has already been documented not to work.

The point man for the Bush administration’s conservative social policy — and often morality-driven — such as abstinence-only sex education, has resigned. His name is Wade Horn and he has left a trail of failed abstinence only policy that we just don’t know will go away. Only time will tell whether his programs remain federal policy. As the former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, his policy initiatives are widespread and entrenched.

Here is a portion of the article that explains the failed policy and how entrenched it is.

“At this point we’ve spent more than a billion dollars on this program that was never proven in the first place,” said Heather Boonstra, public policy analyst at the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization specializing in reproductive health issues.

Under Horn’s leadership, abstinence education became “abstinence until marriage” or “ab-only” education, meaning that the curricula went beyond discouraging teen sex and instead targeted all sex outside marriage without explaining the preventive role of contraception. (”Abstinence-plus” education also discourages teen sexual activity but offers information on contraception and STD prevention.)

Last fall, a congressional report said abstinence-only education fed students false information about pregnancy and birth control, and in the last six months of Horn’s tenure, six states announced they would no longer accept federal abstinence funds.

Then a study released in April found no evidence that abstinence-only programs deter sexual activity. Perhaps as a result of these events — and most certainly due in part to a Democrat-controlled House — funding for abstinence-only education will run out this summer without assurance of renewal.

“There seems to be increasing concern about spending money on abstinence-only education programs. We don’t have evidence that they are successful,” said Bill Albert, deputy director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. “Over the past four to six months, when a number of states decided not to take the abstinence-only money … it felt like a sea change.”

Albert added that surveys show Americans support teen abstinence but want teens to get information on contraception as well, which is not an option under the current ACF approach.

“The American public sees abstinence and contraception as complementary strategies. They do not see them as conflicting strategies,” Albert said.

Nonetheless, abstinence-only education is not expected to die quietly, particularly when several years of federal largesse have nurtured and empowered a coterie of professional chastity activists.

“The legacy of Wade Horn has to do with building up an entire movement in abstinence-only education. There are associations, clearing houses and a medical institute” devoted to the cause, Guttmacher’s Boonstra said. “It’s not the end. They are fighting hard. It remains to be seen whether policymakers are going to listen to the evidence.”

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