A while back, Ben wrote about the demise of federally funded abstinence education programs. It’s an interesting story, especially if you go back to the guidelines that got put into the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and the trace the increasingly incredible (as in not credible, and also outrageous) actions of HHS during the Bush years.

Personally, I think we ought to make all of our sex ed programs center on the concept of meaningful consent. How to give it (including how to be safe about disease, how to prevent pregnancy, and how to respect your moral and religious beliefs) and how to get it, an equally important concept that seems to elude some men especially and lead to all kinds of sticky situations. My fifth grade girls were shockingly knowledgeable about disease and pregnancy, but lacked any sort of framework for thinking seriously about consent.