Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

first place. By the way, my favorite part of the study was the finding that of those who did not
break their virginity pledges, 55 percent had engaged in oral sex. The study did not explore
the incidence of spooning.
A less interesting but more significant study by Peter Bearman and Hannah Bruckner
at Columbia University found that students who had gone through "virginity pledge" programs
were a third less likely to use contraceptives when they first had sex. A researcher explained
that young people who have made a solemn pledge to God to remain chaste are less
likely to carry condoms.
Bush might have gotten a clue from his term as governor of Texas, where he spent
over $10 million on abstinence-only education. Texas has the forty-sixth-worst teen pregnancy
rate in the country. While he was governor and Bill Clinton was president, teen birth
rates went down throughout the country. But if you look at how much each state improved,
Texas was ranked second to last.
Now, many people would look at all these statistics and conclude that it's time to stop
funding abstinence-only education. I don't agree. I think the problem is not the programs
themselves, but our cultural climate. TV and movies glorify sex. The cast members of
Friends hop in and out of bed with one another. And just look at the Internet. There are
whole websites devoted to Friends!
There's one way to make these abstinence-only programs work. We need to change
the whole culture. We need to show these sex-crazed, hard-bodied teens that it's "cool" to be
a virgin. And that's why I have sent the following letter to twenty-seven of our nation's most
respected public figures.
Here's a copy of the one I sent to Attorney General Ashcroft.
Attorney General John Ashcroft
U. S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001
Dear Attorney General Ashcroft,
April 21, 2003
I am currently a Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where I
am working on a book about abstinence programs in our public schools entitled,
Savin' It!