Bush blows $1 Billion on anti-sex campaign

[Moonbiter]

This has to be one of the dumbest things I've read in a while:

$1bn 'don't have sex' campaign a flop as research shows teenagers ignore lessons | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

A billion dollars blown just to kiss up to the right wing Christian goose-steppers.

[Tricky]

A ring generally serves to improve sexual relations (not to mention fetishes). And how would that cost one billion?? Those are very odd figures. How many teenagers are there in the States anyway? A few dozen million? I don't assume they all participated. And how much would it cost to make one ring?

Are you sure this article isn't some kind of hoax? The Bush administration is already painfully oblivious enough of the national debt as it is. It would be.. it would require a new word.

Edit:
Another thing I find amusing about this campaign is the nature of the reward and the assumption that a reward should be needed for a campaign to succeed. Stop them naive younglings from doing pagan norty stuff to one another by buying their celibacy with shinee SILVER! Ok, so they're not so much trying to buy land from native Americans with mirrors, it still strikes me as funny. It's very.. not so much conservative as something I'd solely expect from the Bush administration. It might have been a whole lot easier just to give them money.

"You're not going to sleep with that guy? Great here's a hundred dollars!"

It would still be cheaper than those thousand dollar rings and I have a gut feeling teens will react better to money than silver. Silver doesn't buy you your methamphetamines.

[VonDondu]

Abstinence programs are rubbish, and you would think that everyone already knows that. Conservative Republicans, including those who preach abstinence, have just as much sex, adultery, and divorce as any other segment of the population. It's not like ANY Congressman or Congressman's child could be held up as an model for the abstinence crowd. John McCain? Newt Gingrich? George W. Bush? They are all party boys who obviously mean, "One standard for me and one standard for thee." Just imagine what a joke it would be if Bush's own daughters were appointed to be "abstinence ambassadors". The whole "family values" thing is a joke because of the way that its supporters conduct their own personal lives.

[Chanak]

Conservative Republicans, including those who preach abstinence, have just as much sex, adultery, and divorce as any other segment of the population.

Indeed. Just as well, the evangelical "conservative" Christian crowd (the very ones whom this program was designed to placate) has the same incidences of divorce and adultery as everyone else, too.

It's not like ANY Congressman or Congressman's child could be held up as an model for the abstinence crowd. John McCain? Newt Gingrich? George W. Bush? They are all party boys who obviously mean, "One standard for me and one standard for thee." Just imagine what a joke it would be if Bush's own daughters were appointed to be "abstinence ambassadors". The whole "family values" thing is a joke because of the way that its supporters conduct their own personal lives.

Right. Example: while Newt Gingrich was condemning Bill Clinton for his alleged sexual misconduct and pushing for his impeachment, he was engaged in an extra-marital affair. LOL!

[DarthMarth]

where does the government get off in thinking it can make these types of decisions for us in the first place? they should have no jurisdiction in peoples mistakes. It's almost as if they're looking at some demographic charts and going nuts that Norway is beating us in some useless statistic.

[k2jaggededge]

Stop late teen kids from having sex.........
Right................
While were at it lets spend federal tax dollars to stop death

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

To quote the mighty Megatron...

Edit:
Another thing I find amusing about this campaign is the nature of the reward and the assumption that a reward should be needed for a campaign to succeed. Stop them naive younglings from doing pagan norty stuff to one another by buying their celibacy with shinee SILVER! Ok, so they're not so much trying to buy land from native Americans with mirrors, it still strikes me as funny. It's very.. not so much conservative as something I'd solely expect from the Bush administration. It might have been a whole lot easier just to give them money.

"You're not going to sleep with that guy? Great here's a hundred dollars!"

It would still be cheaper than those thousand dollar rings and I have a gut feeling teens will react better to money than silver. Silver doesn't buy you your methamphetamines.

[url="http://jewelry.search.ebay.com/chastity-ring_Rings_W0QQcatrefZC6QQcoactionZcompareQQcoentrypageZsearchQQcopagenumZ1QQfgtpZQQfposZQ5AIPQ2fPostalQQfromZR2QQfsooZ2QQfsopZ2QQftrtZ1QQftrvZ1QQlopgZQQsacatZ67725QQsadisZ200QQsaprchiZQQsaprcloZQQsargnZQ2d1QQsaslcZ2QQsbrftogZ1QQsofocusZbs"]Use your imagination...[/url]

[Grombag]

Personally I think it is a difference in perception. The "grown up" politicians think the "kids" teenagers see anything in the symbolism of the ring. The teenagers (or at least you guys/girls) don't see that. The problem is most christians see sex as something evil, but can't explain that in a society that doesn't look upon it that way (imho).

[fable]

The problem is most christians see sex as something evil, but can't explain that in a society that doesn't look upon it that way (imho).

I don't know of any survey that's been done on Christians to determine their views about sex, but given the amount of sexually based stories and activities in all media in cultures that are predominantly Christian, I don't think your point is made. Even Christian doctrine doesn't say this. What's your source for this kind of thing?

[Tricky]

Well if we're going to put sex into relation to religion, we'd better come up with a proper function or definition of religion first. People subject themselves to a doctrine need its laws and restrictions to apply to everyone around them as much as themselves. People want to be governed.

Why is that? And why does that need want sex to be governed as well? If you look outside of religion for a moment, I think you'll find that it more or less full fills a (ecological) niche that can only be described as socio/biological. It does after all have a direct impact on conception. Think of it as population control, even in the religious sense. Betrothals are a nice example; letting the parents choose which girl has the widest hips, which boy comes from the most economically viable family, etc. That happened right here not too long ago. I wouldn't be surprised it that is still happening around here in some of the more closed communities. It's just evolution of a different kind.

Religion having an influence therefore wouldn't necesarily be a bad thing. One could argue we are still doing that, except now we let Vogue decide instead of our parents. Not accepting that the times are always changing and wasting a billion on a revival campaign however is 'bad'.

Ok someone please smash my arguments to pieces, I'm having a terrible week.

[Grombag]

The problem is most christians see sex as something evil, but can't explain that in a society that doesn't look upon it that way (imho).

I don't know of any survey that's been done on Christians to determine their views about sex, but given the amount of sexually based stories and activities in all media in cultures that are predominantly Christian, I don't think your point is made. Even Christian doctrine doesn't say this. What's your source for this kind of thing?

Actually I'm not being completly accurate (I should know better ). Afaik the position of the Roman catholic church is the folowing (unlike last post did some seaching before posting).

As God created the human body in his own image and likeness, and because he found everything he created to be "very good,"[58] then the human body and sex must likewise be good.
...
However the Church does teach that sexuality outside of marriage is a capital sin because it violates the purpose of human sexuality to participate in the "conjugal act" before one is actually married.

Actually the official "name" for this particular sin is lust.

17. Which are the seven Capital Sins?

1. Pride; 2. Covetousness; 3. Lust; 4. Auger; 5. Gluttony; 6. Envy and 7. Sloth.

This leads to the folowing statement:
The problem is most christians see sex before marraige as a sin, but can't explain that in a society that doesn't look upon it that way (imho).

Well if we're going to put sex into relation to religion, we'd better come up with a proper function or definition of religion first.

Well actually we're not the first one to put that into that context. They do it for milenia . Actually why I brought it up was because president Bush is pro christian (if not a christian himself).

People subject themselves to a doctrine need its laws and restrictions to apply to everyone around them as much as themselves.

So pretend I'm not a christian, why do I have to put myself to their restrictions. If you're living with a group of people who slam their head against the wall every morning, would you slam your head against the wall just because they do it?

People want to be governed.

Indeed the people don't know what's good for them so lets tell them

Why is that? And why does that need want sex to be governed as well? If you look outside of religion for a moment, I think you'll find that it more or less full fills a (ecological) niche that can only be described as socio/biological. It does after all have a direct impact on conception. Think of it as population control, even in the religious sense. Betrothals are a nice example; letting the parents choose which girl has the widest hips, which boy comes from the most economically viable family, etc. That happened right here not too long ago. I wouldn't be surprised it that is still happening around here in some of the more closed communities. It's just evolution of a different kind.

Actually the reason that the church takes that position, is that the bond of maraige is a sacred bond. Besides that I don't have anything against arainged marriages, if and only if the choice to continue is to the couple themself.

Religion having an influence therefore wouldn't necesarily be a bad thing. One could argue we are still doing that, except now we let Vogue decide instead of our parents. Not accepting that the times are always changing and wasting a billion on a revival campaign however is 'bad'.

I can follow that, but the choise of the having influence should remain with ourself

Ok someone please smash my arguments to pieces, I'm having a terrible week.

Very well, I'll get the big hammer :laugh:

[fable]

Actually I'm not being completly accurate (I should know better ). Afaik the position of the Roman catholic church is the folowing (unlike last post did some seaching before posting)...Actually the official "name" for this particular sin is lust.

The sin, yes, but that's considered the cause of sexuality out of wedlock. My point in any case was that Christians do not as a rule see sex as evil. There are always going to be psychopathic exceptions, and I suspect quite a few of the "Old Church Fathers" who wrote so much commentary back in the first 5 or 6 centuries of the Christian Era suffered from this. But it certainly didn't affect the average Christian-on-the-ground then, and aside from the celebacy laws of the RCC, it doesn't seem to affect many, now. I can offer anecdotal evidence in the form of several Christian ladies whom I knew quite intimately before getting married, and who clearly saw sex as anything but evil.

The Bush administration also doesn't see sex as evil. Indeed, judging from the activities of its advocates, it has no problem with same-sex couples, sex before marriage, or, we might suspect, with sex between an individual and a dead hedgehog. (Though I'm only making this last one up. It's nothing I would wish on anybody. -Well, okay. Newt Gingrich.) The difficulty for the Bush administration has been making a public case which differed from the private one; but as Bush's former Special Assistant Kuo served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, David Kuo, notes, this has never really been a problem for the administration. Bush has been willing to play the cynical card of fobbing off evangelicals with policies like the one at the basis of this article, while pursuing main objectives which are as far from acceptable Christian social positions as possible.

And if money is wasted in third world nations on programs that help no one instead of programs that could save lives, why should Bush care?

[Chanak]

The problem is most christians see sex before marraige as a sin, but can't explain that in a society that doesn't look upon it that way (imho).

I have difficulty with this statement for the following reasons:

1. Christians comprise the overwhelming bulk of Western societies. They make films, write commercials for television broadcast, design advertising in print media, etc., etc. Their religion also strongly influences the laws of these same societies. In fact, some laws are derived directly from the Christian bible.

2. Statistically, professing Christians have divorce rates and occurences of teenage pregnacies identical to other portions of the total population in Western societies.

I am confused when I see claims such as the one I see in the quote above...then look at the fact that most of Western society is Christian.

[fable]

Very few Christians see sex as a sin, and those are largely 1) elderly male Roman Catholic bishops, 2) Calvinists, or 3) dead. Some of the rest may put various restrictions on sex, but most of them manage to find a mediating ground between all that self-contradicting dogma and what they want out of life.

[Planet_Guardian]

First off we are creatures of image(dry). We are the wizards casting incantations, spells, auras, ect into the atmosphere. Images come in infinite forms, thus the obvious is the infinite pixels we see with our eyes, the sounds we pick up with our ears, the touch of solids, liquids, gasses with our physicallities, and our metaphysical minds that dream the infinite oceans and drown in the illusions of other man's/woman's perceptive 'realities'. And we can change the meaning [value] of these images like [true = true] to [true = false]. Images make or break us into the beings we are now. We want things to be defined, to make sense to a certain degree, but the further we go into detail...the more we realize that everything really is gray and perhaps infinite or empty- set-like [null, nothing, void]. This life that we all claim to exist in (or perhaps say we don't exist in), offers one great thing...and that is that it is the biggest RPG-video game ever to exist (or not to exist).

The easiest way to put this is that some ppl just want thier rpg realities to exist and other rpg-realities not to exist. It's like the saying from the Highlander movies, "there can only be one."

I have found where the institutional religion societies have gone wrong in their belief. They got confused by thinking that their belief had to equal true or truth. Belief has nothing to do with truth, falsie-ness, fiction, ect. "You believe in me, or you don't. You believe in this rock, or you don't. You believe in heterosexuality or you don't." But, I guess all this war-ring over realities makes sense once you get more than one person in a room together.

[Person B eners same room that Person A always was in]
Person A: "What do you believe in?"
Person B: "I believe in my ownself...that is to say I believe in Person B."
Person A: "EEEeent! Wrong Answer. Your supposed to say you believe in me, Person A."
[Person A reaches for Person B's neck, wringing Person B's throat, and kills Person B]
Person A: "There can only be one. Thus sayeth, Person A."

And this is why it will always feel like either you are insane, others are insane, the world is insane, and/or the Presidents/Leaders/Kings/Queens are all insane. Someone has to be insane, unless we're all sanely-unsane or unsanely-sane. [Throws-hands up in air, and goes back to insanity] I know end my insane rant. Thank-you and g'day.

Oh, and for my vote...I'm not even sure money exist at this point when a government can get into trillions of dollars in debt...and I've personally never held a $1,000US bill in my hand. But, go figure!

[VonDondu]

Less than 24 hours after this story was posted, it's no longer on the front page of CNN. I wonder why. But I can't think of a more fitting commentary on the "abstinence movement", or on the Bush administration and the Republican party, for that matter.

"On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the 'Pamela Martin and Associates' escort service 'to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage.' Tobias, who is married, said...that recently he had been using another service 'with Central Americans' to provide massages."

"Central Americans". I guess it's fitting that he reached out to people from other countries, since he was the guy in charge of America's international aid and development assistance. He was also "a top official overseeing global AIDS funding to other countries." Here's the best part:

"As the Bush administration's so-called 'AIDS czar,' Tobias was criticized by some for emphasizing faithfulness and abstinence over condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS."

In hindsight, such criticism was well-deserved not only because it was bad public policy, but also because Tobias himself is incapable of being abstinent or faithful to his wife.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm reading The Onion.

[fable]

On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the 'Pamela Martin and Associates' escort service 'to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage.' Tobias, who is married, said...that recently he had been using another service 'with Central Americans' to provide massages."

I guess the obvious question is, was a using a condom when he was getting those massages?

[VonDondu]

Actually, fable, I'd rather not think about that.

Tobias has already used what some people are calling the "Haggard defense" (i.e., "I didn't have sex"), and I'd rather not give him the opportunity to use something like the "I didn't inhale" defense.

[fable]

The sheer hypocrisy of it is gauling. We had Foley, a Republican congressman so prominent in protecting children from pornography, revealed as a child predator. Then there was Haggard, one of the nation's foremost evangelical homophobe preachers, revealed as a closet homosexual. (Except his homosexuality was "cured" with the aid of plenty of money and a sendoff, as I recall.) Now, there's Tobias, the Bushian AIDS Czar, condoms no, abstinence, yes, engaged in securing high priced hookers from a call girl agency. I am reminded of the last year of the the former British PM, John Major, with his party making political hay out of its claims to moral superiority, being forced to eat crow as one scandal after another erupted.

Just read this from James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International, about Tobias:

Activists give Tobias much more blame for efforts to protect big drug companies from competition from generic manufacturers of AIDS drugs, for example, by undermining the World Health Organization's program to certify generic AIDS drugs (the WHO pre-qualification program) and forcing U.S. taxpayers to unnecessarily pay top dollar for brand name AIDS drugs in PEPFAR treatment efforts. This policy has been poorly covered in the press, but it is far more consequential than Tobias' sex habits.

He's certainly right. Tobias has been very active in raising the cost of AIDs anti-virals, and as a consequence, furthered the spread of the disease in the third world where the funds simply aren't there for the enormous costs charged by Big Pharma. Still, there's something singularly satisfying about the AIDS Czar being toppled because his habits out of uniform were the exact opposite of the hymns he shouted when fully dressed.

Of course, these three are only the most public and obvious of self-destructs. Others may never happen, since Bush has no respect for the law. Gonzales, head of the Department of Justice, now a ceasepool of corruption--perhaps he'll be next? Or Mr. Anti-Corruption among the highly placed, Paul Wolfowitz, found guilty of using his power to secure his girlfriend a highly placed position and extraordinarily high security clearance?

[VonDondu]

The scandal involving Tobias is much bigger than I realized:

"ABC News’ Brian Ross revealed tonight that the list of customers of an alleged Washington-based prostitution service includes White House and Pentagon officials as well as prominent attorneys.

“'There are thousands of names, tens of thousands of phone numbers,' Ross said. 'And there are people there at the Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers — a long, long list.' Ross added that the women who worked for the service, potentially as prostitutes, 'include university professors, legal secretaries, scientists, military officers.'"

Somehow, Washington, D.C. and the word "abstinence" just don't seem to belong together.