Another Grim Record - Sexually Transmitted Diseases

Some abstinence-only person explain this one to me. It's long been established you can't get any kind of VD from a toilet seat so how, if your program is working, can it be that sexually transmitted diseases are being reported at all-time record numbers? By the numbers for 2006:

- Chlamydia: one million cases.
- Gonorrhea: 358,000 cases.
- Syphilis: 9,800 cases.

More alarmingly, a superbug gonorrhea resistant to most antibiotics is starting to become more prevalent. Now condoms, properly used, stop all of these. Problem is, it takes some knowledge to use a condom properly, knowledge not exactly being promulgated in abstinence-only education. The article stops short of making this correlation, after all, it is science and science, unlike religion, has some rules.

I don't have to follow them. It's the second year straight of rising numbers. Abstinence-only is beginning to have an effect - the ignorant are spreading diseases, the infected don't know what they have and so diseases easy to wipe out are spreading again. So, in addition to unwanted pregnancies and the related abortions, here's another win for the abstinence-only crowd.

Nothing protects like a condom and good information. Unfortunately, we're arming our children with neither.