When Religion Is Hazardous to Our Health

According to the New York Times this a.m., health care professionals are beginning to speak out about the Bush administration's clamp-down on sex education out of an apparent "Christian" attitude that preaching total abstinence to 18-year-olds is far better than dealing with the reality of sex in people's lives.

"Never have we experienced a climate of intimidation and censorship as we have today," said James Wagoner, the president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based organization devoted to adolescent sexual health.

The International Working Group on Sexuality and Social Policy, an association of researchers and other professionals, released a report two weeks ago citing examples of what it called sex policing under the Bush administration. The report cited, for example, changes in factual information about sex education and H.I.V. transmission on government Web sites as well as questioning by members of Congress about research grants approved by the National Institutes of Health.

The American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists has taken a novel approach. They are calling the Bush administration's increased financing of abstinence-only programs at the expense of comprehensive sex education a violation of "children's human rights." "Over 40 percent of 15-year-olds are sexually active and they're not getting information on how to protect themselves from pregnancy and diseases," Barnaby B. Barratt, the association's president, said in an interview.

Nils Daulaire, the president of the Global Health Council, an international group of health care professionals, said in a recent speech in Washington, "It's time to say to those who would stifle debate and dialogue, and to those in power who would allow them to prevail, Have you no shame?"

No, to answer Mr. Daulaire, they have no shame, but they do evidently have their fair share of illicit, illegal, and immoral sex. When it's Bill Clinton doing it, there aren't enough forests in the world to make enough paper pulp to print the moralistic denunciations coming from the Holier-Than-Thou choir, but let a Republican get caught with his pants down around his loafers (and don't make me start listing 'em, 'cause Henry Hyde, Newt Gingrich, and Bob Livingston already have restraining orders out on me!), you've never seen such quick changing of the subject in your life!