{"id":906,"date":"2013-04-19T17:52:55","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T22:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/?p=906"},"modified":"2013-04-19T17:55:18","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T22:55:18","slug":"the-abstinence-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/the-abstinence-adventure\/","title":{"rendered":"The Abstinence Adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Hairpin<\/a> comes the story<\/a> of a high school student in West Virginia protesting an abstinence-only assembly (at a public school, no less) taught by none other than Pam Stenzel. First of all, kudos to her for standing her ground even after the principal threatened her future college career. Second of all, it reminds me of that one time in high school that we had Pam Stenzel talk\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To tell you the truth, I don\u2019t remember all that much about it, being something like 15 years ago. Having gone to a Catholic school, there was no issue with the fact that Stenzel\u2019s presentation is explicitly religious: we were going to have to attend whether we wanted to or not (if you want to hear what it’s about, just use the Google). Based on this news story and what I remember of the presentation, she really hasn\u2019t changed her spiel very much. It really is little more than polished slut-shaming. The good thing is that I remember my friends and I generally dismissed it as a bunch of nonsense, because that\u2019s what it is: the belief that adults are incapable of having healthy sexual relationships outside of marriage.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, despite the fairly obvious ridiculousness of the presentation, there is an insidious undercurrent that runs through a great deal of these kinds of teachings. So much so that, even though the claims that condoms don\u2019t work were very easy to dismiss as hogwash, the overall antagonistic and guilty view of relationships was another brick in the way that quite honestly distorted my views of what healthy relationships looked like for many years afterwards.<\/p>\n

A huge part of the reason I don\u2019t consider myself religious is precisely because of this message. It\u2019s hard to reconcile messages from, for example, the Christian Social Justice class we took, with the belief that making sexual health choices is sinful, an example of your base animalistic nature, or proof that your parents hate you. Talking down to young adults who are capable of knowing better isn\u2019t just a terrible way to make your point, it’ can make people feel incredibly uncomfortable, which isn\u2019t exactly the point of religious beliefs.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, with the internet and the other resources available these days, it\u2019s much easier to see that yes, when a woman decides to use birth control it doesn\u2019t mean she\u2019s a slut sleeping her way to popularity. After reading stories like these, however, it\u2019s clear that there are still people who put credence in the terrible message that people like Stenzel propagate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Hairpin comes the story of a high school student in West Virginia protesting an abstinence-only assembly (at a public school, no less) taught by none other than Pam Stenzel. First of all, kudos to her for standing her ground even after the principal threatened her future college career. Second of all, it reminds me… Continue reading The Abstinence Adventure<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[185,190],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-education","tag-religion","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t