Abstinence

In the latest battle over Santa Ana Unified's sex education policy, the school board voted late Tuesday to reject an abstinence-only curriculum, saying it did not meet state requirements. The 3 to 2 vote against Game Plan, an abstinence-centered curriculum the board had been considering since last fall, capped a contentious night. "It's a good plan and I believe in abstinence," board member Sal Tinajero said. "But I believe there is a need to give knowledge because knowledge is power."

On a recent Sunday, 39 teen-agers promised to remain virgins. Relatives with video cameras edged in for close-ups of the girls in white dresses and boys in shirts and ties as they recited their vows. Younger brothers and sisters balanced on tiptoes to get a better view. And after the ceremony, the whole congregation of St. Stephen's Baptist Church in La Puente gave a blast of applause.

Virginity pledges, in which young people vow to abstain from sex until marriage, have little staying power among those who take them, a Harvard study has found. More than half of the adolescents who make the signed public promises give up on their pledges within a year, according to the study released last week. The findings have raised the ire of Concerned Women for America, a prominent conservative organization that advocates adolescent sexual abstinence.

Carlos Collins, an 18-year-old college-bound senior at George Washington Preparatory High School in Los Angeles, tried sex when he was 16. Now, he is into no sex. "As a matter of fact," said Collins, "me and my friends are kind of abstinent because we know about the horrors that are out there, like AIDS and everything. I have some friends who are into one-night stands, but that is not my style. To me personally, it's not worth it."

The Roman Catholic Church's teaching on human sexuality is clear--sex should only occur between a woman and a man who are married to each other. So how does the church reach out to gay men and lesbians without bending the rules? That is an issue with which the church as a whole and Father Peter J. Liuzzi of Los Angeles in particular have been grappling. Liuzzi is director of the Los Angeles Archdiocese's Ministry With Gay and Lesbian Catholics and liaison to the larger gay and lesbian community.

Alcoholics who were given a medication approved for quelling nausea were able to cut back on their alcohol intake, researchers reported. The medication, ondansetron (Zofran), could become a readily available therapy for helping some alcoholics become abstinent. The study, published Wednesday in the American Journal of Psychiatry , is based on research on a gene known as 5-HTT that is important to the serotonin system of the brain. Certain variants of this gene can increase the risk of psychiatric disorders, such as depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and addiction.

Re "Abstaining from federal sex-ed funds," April 8 Since when does intolerant religious dogma dictate the national policy on sexual education for our children? Since President Bush and Republicans forced an abstinence-only agenda on states for federal funding. The stated goal: Achieve chastity for our hormonally active children. I would have had to lock my six daughters in their rooms for the duration of their teenage years to achieve this goal. The absurdity of the abstinence-based programs became apparent last year when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a memo stating that states "must not" promote contraceptive and condom use to receive funding.

Sexually transmitted diseases -- so easy to get, so difficult to remember how or when. That's not quite the conclusion of a new study published Monday in Pediatrics, but suffice to say: Don't take a young adult's claim of abstinence as proof he or she is disease-free. (The same may well hold true for older adults, but this study was limited to the young variety.) Researchers at  Emory University analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and tested 14,012 of the respondents (with their permission)

Abortion has become birth control for many, rich and poor. The "dirty" word no one wants to hear in this "me-first" sexually promiscuous age is abstinence. Abstinence, for those who don't know, means if you don't want to risk getting pregnant, you shouldn't have sex at all. That's where "choice" begins, not after conception. Abstinence, not abortion, is the foolproof birth control method with choice. WENDY LEECE Costa Mesa

Be serious! Abstinence is not ignoring sexuality, it is introducing a "new" idea and way of dealing with one's sexuality. Also, rather than making a judgment that everyone is "doing it," why doesn't the author of this editorial do a study on teen-agers who are aware of practicing abstinence and the zero number of pregnancies in that group? It is odd also that this writer thinks of sexuality in terms of intercourse. Our sexuality is a part of who we are as persons whether we ever have intercourse or not, and believe it or not most people are aware of his or her sexuality as a small child.