of believability in their claims. Abstinence education relies more on scare tactics to frighten young people away from sex, rather than helping them come to their personal feelings on sexuality. These scare tactics, are not merely limited to exaggerations of the truth, but often consist of complete, unqualified lies. For example, the Guttmacher Institute revealed, "Some abstinence-only programs have distributed information stating that HIV can pass through latex condoms. Even though they've been told that this is absolutely false, they continue to disseminate it," (Shelton). Students, viewing this information as coming from a definitive authority source, would never think to check up on the information, and so will forever walk through life fearing their next sexual encounter. Facing Reality, an abstinence-only program, includes a litany of the consequences of premarital sex, including: "inability to concentrate on school, shotgun weddings, selfishness, poverty, loss of faith, fewer friendships formed, loss of self-mastery, difficulty with long-term commitments, aggression toward women, loss of honesty, depression, and death" (McIlhaney). Considering that four out of five Americans have had their first intercourse as teenagers (Teen) the country must be a pretty bleak place to the average abstinence proponent. So bleak that new federally endorsed abstinence-only sexuality education Trinchieri 13guidelines have just been released. These guidelines assert the following warped statements, "*The only way to prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancy and STDs is by sexual abstinence *Monogamy within the context of marriage is the socially expected standard for sexual conduct *Sexual expression outside of marriage will probably have detrimental mental and physical effects" (Elia). It is troubling that this program requires adults to tell young people that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the standard o...
