More than nine out of ten Americans have had premarital sex, reports the Guttmacher Institute.Those of us who reside in the reality based sphere of America will not be surprised to learn that the War on Sex is going the same way as the War on Drugs.
Marijuana is America's biggest cash crop, and 95 percent of Americans have had premarital sex.
Unlike smoking pot, engaging in sex without a government issued license does not always put you at risk of a prison sentence, but that could change. (Especially so if you live in Georgia.)
So while the Bush Administration throws hundreds of millions of dollars into abstinence only 'educational' programs, Americans continue to marry late, or never, and refuse to live celibate lives just because their government tells them to do so.
Oh yeah, the U.S. Government is also losing the War on Iraq.
Is there any war the Bush Administration is not losing?
"This is reality-check research," said the study's author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades."
Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.
The study found women virtually as likely as men to engage in premarital sex, even those born decades ago. Among women born between 1950 and 1978, at least 91 percent had had premarital sex by age 30, he said, while among those born in the 1940s, 88 percent had done so by age 44.
"The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government's funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds," Finer said. . .
"It would be more effective," Finer said, "to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active -- which nearly everyone eventually will."
via memeorandum
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