// posted November 01, 2006 by Lou Schuler

This news doesn't come as a huge surprise:

Monogamy is dominant across the world, but multiple partners are more common in rich countries, according to the study published in the Lancet. This was despite developing countries having higher rates of sexually transmitted infections and HIV.


London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine researchers gathered data from 59 countries for the study. They said factors such as poverty and mobility had more of a role in sexually transmitted infections than promiscuity had.

So people in wealthier, more industrialized countries have sex with more partners, but suffer fewer consequences. And the study also found that teens in developed countries don't start having sex earlier than their counterparts in poorer countries -- in the U.K., the average age of first intercourse is 16.5 for men and 17.5 for women. Across the globe, the study says, the kids start getting their jollies between the ages of 15 and 19.

A researcher throws in this rather pointed comment:

[T]he report's author, Professor Kaye Wellings, said: "This suggests social factors such as poverty, mobility and gender equality may be a stronger factor in sexual ill-health than promiscuity."


And she added that the results showed flexible approaches to tackling public health had to be adopted.


"Men and women have sex for different reasons and in different ways in different settings," she said. ... "The selection of public-health messages needs to be guided by epidemiological evidence rather than by myths and moral stances."

It's not hard to guess which country she means when she talks about "myths and moral stances" guiding public-health policy. Here in the U.S., the anti-sex message just gets louder and weirder:

The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.


Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.


The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.


"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90 percent of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."

Here's the government's response:

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the revision is aimed at 19- to 29-year-olds because more unmarried women in that age group are having children.


Government data released last month show that 998,262 births in 2004 were to unmarried women 19-29, the ages with the most births to unmarried women.


"The message is 'It's better to wait until you're married to bear or father children,'" Horn said. "The only 100 percent effective way of getting there is abstinence."

So here's a question:

At what point does religious ideology cross the line into condescension?

I understand that zealots have a need to keep repeating the same things over and over; if they were capable of forming original thoughts they wouldn't be zealots.

But I'm beginning to wonder if some of the people making health policy in our government truly believe that young adults in America don't understand the connection between sex and children. Do our bureaucrats think anyone is unclear on the whole sperm-and-egg concept?

If they do, they'd better start rethinking "no child left behind," because clearly the people making government policy need some remedial education on what goes on in the real world.

Tags: sex