Whose Standards

Last week the Federal Court upheld the Philadelphia school system's condom policy, which allows public schools to counsel students about birth control and safer sex, and even supply them with condoms. The counseling is conducted in centers that a student could elect to visit.

If parents don't want their children to have access to such centers, parents would turn in an "opt-out" form.

Opponents to the system weren't satisfied with the "opt-out" provision. They wanted all children to be denied access to these medically based centers, unless parents give their specific permission.

Would that schoolchildren elsewhere had the means to opt out of another program, a truly insidious $87 million federal program that is being pushed across America. That program promotes abstinence and only abstinence. Wisely, the Philadelphia school system has declined to participate in this Abstinence-Only Curriculum for a number of reasons.

The fed program is practically designed to soak up local and state dollars for sex ed, requiring a $3 local match for every $4 from the feds.

The fed program specifically forbids any discussion of safer sex and birth control.

The feds further demand that children be virtually indoctrinated with certain "standards" that any thinking person knows aren't valid.

That "a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity."

Not true. Less than 7 percent of men and 20 percent of women are virgins when they get married.

That "abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage is the expected standard for all school-age children." "Sexual activity" means all activity, including kissing and petting.

In fact, the average age for intercourse is 17 for men and 18 for women.

And here's the most outrageous "standard."

That "sexual activity outside of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects."

In other words, people who choose not to marry or who aren't allowed to marry—like gay people—are hurting themselves real bad.

These are not medical or social standards. They are the fantasy wishes that zealots jammed into a 1996 welfare reform bill that funds the fed-funded educational program.

According to the non-profit Sexuality and Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), there is no evidence published in professional literature that indicates that abstinence-only programs will result in young people delaying intercourse.

So, the Philadelphia system turned down the fed dollars, joining the city of Richmond, VA, and the states of New Hampshire and California.

Good for them. Good for the kids. Good for the rest of us who are forced to fund these harmful programs with our tax dollars.

Thank goodness there are some standards left.

Standards of intelligence.