CUMBERLAND, Md. — At the YMCA in this northern outpost of Appalachia is a rarity: a federal social program that President Bush wants to beef up.
A group of teens and preteens is gathered in a windowless cinder-block room playing a game called "basket of consequences."
A boy whose flattop looks like freshly mowed grass reaches into a basket, pulls out a plastic egg, cracks it open and takes out a picture of a ghost. The ghost represents death, the middle-school student says, adding that you can die of AIDS if you have sex.
"Good," the instructor says, as she pushes the lesson one step further. "How about: A ghost can haunt you, and you can be haunted by decisions you make that might seem good to you right now but aren't--like having sex or drinking or taking drugs?"
In a budget tight for almost everything but defense and homeland security, Bush has asked Congress for $135 million next year--a 30% increase--to encourage teens to abstain from sex as their only form of birth control.
To qualify for federal money, local programs must deliver a very strict message of abstinence, one that omits any guidance regarding birth control. During the 1996 overhaul of federal welfare programs, Congress said abstinence programs were supposed to focus exclusively on the "social, psychological and health gains" to be realized from avoiding premarital sex.
"We never discuss where to get birth control or anything like that. We can't," said Kelli Lehew, who teaches the curriculum at the Cumberland YMCA. "We do tell them that birth control is ineffective and that at least three types of sexually transmitted diseases can get through condoms."
The issue of teaching abstinence to the exclusion of other forms of sex education goes to the core of deeply held moral values and a long-standing dispute concerning Washington's proper role in guiding people's most intimate decisions. The White House push for abstinence-only funds angers proponents of comprehensive sex education, who criticize it as unduly prescriptive and not very effective.
California, alone among the states, has gone so far as to turn back federal funds for abstinence-only programs. State lawmakers, led by Democrats, cited concerns that the state's own abstinence-only program did not work.
But advocates of the program say that diluting the abstinence message destroys it. Claude Allen, deputy secretary of Health and Human Services in Washington, put it this way:
