When I read this story in USA Today, I thought I’d lost five months out of my life. Surely this is better suited to April Fools’ Day:
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.
Wow. Now that’s what I call a brilliant way to spend $50 million of taxpayer money… and my goodness, look at this startling information:
The National Center for Health Statistics says well over 90% of adults ages 20-29 have had sexual intercourse.
Only 90%???? I’m stunned.
So — these folks think the best solution to unmarried adults having children is to provide federal funding to encourage abstinence. For some bizarre reason, information on contraception is just too… what? Slow? Secular? Intelligent?
Since I just don’t think abstinence is likely in adults, Polimom thought perhaps the government might consider a couple of alternatives:
For instance — we could just raise the age of consent to 30. I realize there might be a bit of confusion about things like voting, drinking, or driving, but hey… if they’re fooling around without a spouse, they deserve to go to jail!
Or as an alternative (since eventually the GOP will surely catch on to American irritation with this government-in-your-bedroom tendency of late) — perhaps we could just re-institute that time-honored tradition of blood-stained bridal sheets on the morning after. Gotta be sure to have the neighbors standing by ready to stone the sinners if the sheats aren’t stained, though. (Yes, it’ll have to be both of them. Sorry… )
And then there’s the arranged marriage approach — my personal favorite. Since marriage is the Holy Grail, and all problems are solved thereby, I think we should make it a law that everybody must be married as soon as they finish high school. Simultaneously (since the root of so many of our problems is the breakdown of the family), let’s make divorce illegal.
Ahem.
Then again, the government could just go ahead and admit that contraception might not be the worst possibility. Or no…. wait… that’s a bad thing.
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Attywood, The Carpetbagger Report, and Your Right Hand Thief have some thoughts on this, too.
Myself, I can’t imagine how anybody can make sense of this, regardless of political affiliation.