INTRODUCTION
There has been great concern in Nottinghamshire and the whole country, especially since the Melissa Smith story broke, over what schools are teaching our children about sex and sexuality, and at the way schools seem to bypass parents. What is going on in our schools? What sort of materials are being used? Who are these ‘health outreach workers?’ What are they doing in schools and why? What are they saying to our children? What contraceptives are they dispensing behind parents' backs? In this paper, we attempt to answer these questions, before turning to look at what parents can do to protect their children.
MELISSA SMITH AND THE OUTREACH WORKER
Melissa Smith is a 14-year-old girl who attends the Brunts School in Mansfield. Her ‘steady boyfriend’ Dwaine, who was 13, got her pregnant. She spoke to a health outreach worker named Claire Chapman. Miss Chapman, 21 or 28 depending on which paper you read, and recently married, works for Mansfield Primary Care Trust. She holds weekly ‘drop-ins’ at four schools including the Brunts School in Mansfield, according to Warsop council:
http://www.warsopweb.co.uk/Notices/outreach.htm
Miss Chapman helped Melissa arrange an abortion, but on the day she went to the hospital, although she went with a school-friend, Melissa ended up alone when her friend had to go back to school. The family have said that Miss Chapman thought it was enough that day to send Melissa a short text message of encouragement on her mobile phone. Claire Chapman was put on leave when the story broke:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/15/nabort15.xml
But she is now back at work, and continuing her programme of school drop-ins. At her other drop-ins, despite having no medical qualifications, she gives out free condoms and does pregnancy tests. She is content to refer girls for abortions at all her drop-ins. All this is done without the consent or even the knowledge of the parents of the children she sees. According to the Warsop website, ‘Claire Chapman will offer you a confidential service even if you are under 16 years of age. Nothing will be said to anyone including teachers, parents or friends.’ According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, nearly half of pregnant teens opt for abortion. How many of their parents know that their daughters have done such a thing?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/30/nabort30.xml
NOBODY WILL TAKE THE BLAME
When a national newspaper tried to find someone to take responsibility for Melissa’s abortion, they found the buck was passed from the school to the LEA, to the Primary Care Trust, to the Department of Health, to the Department for Education & Skills (DfES), and then back to the school again! Irene Kakoullis, who runs the teenage pregnancy strategy for Nottingham City Council, under which schools in the City will be asked to accept health outreach workers from September, also referred the paper to the Department of Health, who referred them to etc.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/14/nabort14.xml
Finally, the DfES said categorically that confidentiality issues regarding outreach workers are the responsibility of the individual school. So if the school headteacher and governors invite in a school nurse or a ‘health outreach worker’, the responsibility for that decision and the responsibility for whether the nurse or outreach worker goes behind parents’ backs lies with the school.
GOVERNMENT TEENAGE PREGNANCY STRATEGY
The Government’s Teenage Pregnancy Strategy was introduced as Chapter 11 of a 135-page report entitled ‘Teenage Pregnancy’ by the Social Exclusion Unit in June 1999. Its remit was for England although similar strategies were expected to be put in place by the National Assembly for Wales, the Scottish Executive and the Northern Ireland Office. The strategy is intended to reduce teenage pregnancies by half by the year 2010: http://www.socialexclusionunit.gov.uk
It is based around the idea that children should make their own choices and have better access to and knowledge of contraception. ‘Preaching is rarely effective,’ it says. ‘Whether the Government likes it or not, young people decide what they’re going to do about sex and contraception. Keeping them in the dark or preaching at them makes it less likely they’ll make the right decision.’ (Teenage Pregnancy Report Page 90)
Underlying it is the assumption that it is not possible to stop children ‘having sex’ in the first place, but that it is possible through education to modify their sexual behaviour when they are sexually aroused: http://hebw.uwcm.ac.uk/healthyliving/chapter5.html
TEENAGE CONCEPTIONS ON THE RISE AGAIN
But despite the protestations of the experts, it is clear is that the policy is already not working even in its own terms. Pregnancy rates aren’t falling. In 2002, Public Health Minister Hazel Blears MP issued a triumphant press release to say that teenage conception rates had fallen in 2001 for the third year in a row. The reduction from 2000 to 2001 had been 3% in under 18’s, and the total reduction, she claimed, had been 9% over the three years since 1998. ‘These figures show very encouraging progress towards our goal of halving the under 18 conception rate by 2010,’ she said. It was not to last. The latest figures, for 2002, show conceptions in under 18’s back to over their 2000 level.
Download from: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?
The raw figures for under-18 conceptions are:
| 1998 |
44119 |
| 1999 |
42,028 |
| 2000 |
41,348 |
| 2001 |
40,990 |
| 2002 |
41,868 |
The 2001 and 2002 figures are still provisional, but they don’t usually change much. The 2002 figure is now only 5% down over 1998, 1.2% up on 2000, and the trend is increasing, with the 2002 figure over 2% up on 2001. The Teenage Pregnancy target of a 50% reduction by 2010 is now sure to go the same way as the targets in the last Government condom-based initiative, Virginia Bottomley’s ‘Health of the Nation’ programme of 1992.
Indeed, the organisation Family and Youth Concern found pregnancy rates increasing in precisely those areas of the country where the Government are most ahead with the teenage pregnancy strategy:
http://www.famyouth.org.uk/pdfs/SEOIpressreleaseweb.pdf
But the almost frenzied promotion of ‘safer sex’ has done even more damage in the rate of increase of sexually-transmitted diseases some of which have doubled in six years.
The uncomfortable truth is, for as much as they have gone along with the idea of sex education based on the ‘safer sex’ model, a large part of responsibility for the disaster of teenage pregnancy and disease really does lie with the schools. It is the school governors who bear the responsibility for the school’s sex education policy, although they will often simply adopt the local authority guidance which will be based on the DfES guidance:
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/sreguidance/sexeducation.pdf which itself relies heavily on the safer-sex idea.
ABSTINENCE EDUCATION
The Government are dismissive of so-called ‘abstinence education’ practised increasingly in America over the last decade and a half. However, the main studies cited in their Teenage Pregnancy Report, which was published in 1999, all date from the 1980s and 1990s, with the latest published in 1997. The reports on abstinence programmes they considered all dated from before 1994. Only eighteen months later, a review published in the British Medical Journal found positive abstinence studies dating from 1995 and 1998: http://www.cmf.org.uk/index.htm?nucleus/nucapr01/abstain.htm
In 2003, the Chief Medical Officer was still saying: ‘Evidence does not exist to suggest that abstinence approaches are effective.’ This extraordinarily sweeping and categorical statement was untrue: http://www.cmf.org.uk/helix/spr03/23abstain.pdf
The Americans themselves certainly believe abstinence education works, but abstinence is also promoted as an end in itself http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/up_ap.htm in an approach which would not receive much support from the advocates of sex education in the UK. But coupled with Bill Clinton’s welfare reforms introduced in 1996, which restricted benefits to teenage mothers, it has worked. The Pregnancy rate amongst girls aged 15-17 fell from 74.2 in 1990 to 48.2 in 2000, a reduction of 35%, 25% of which was achieved in the last five years of the figures. Amongst all teens, the reduction was 29%. The trend is relentlessly downward: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/teen_stats.html
President Bush increased funding for abstinence education, in a move driven by simple economics but also born of a desire to help the children themselves. The President said: "Each year, about three million teenagers contract sexually transmitted diseases that can harm them, or kill them, or prevent them from ever becoming parents. Abstinence for young people is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.”
CHASTITY IS A BETTER WORD
The President’s backing for abstinence education has helped organisations like True Love Waits and Silver Ring Thing promote an abstinence message:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/
Although ‘abstinence education’ is a popular term, a better expression than ‘abstinence’ is ‘chastity’. Teenagers seem to have a better understanding of the meaning wrapped up in the word ‘chastity’ than in the word ‘abstinence’. Many do not know the meaning of ‘abstinence’ at all. Chastity also has a clearer meaning than abstinence. You can abstain from something for a period of time, and then take it up again. There has been some evidence that taking a ‘pledge’ as is done in ‘True Love Waits’ delays sexual activity but does not make all ‘pledgers’ wait until marriage.
Chastity on the other hand is for the long term, and is strongly linked with virginity. Teenagers readily grasp the concept that you can only lose your virginity once. At the same time, those who have already lost their virginity can see the merits of a fresh start, in which chastity gives a new depth to life and brings increased self-respect. With chastity go modesty, which describes how young women should behave, chivalry, which is directed towards young men, and fidelity, upon which any stable society must be founded. It is no co-incidence that these are Christian virtues, strongly emphasised in the Bible, and that they have guided our nation for over 1,500 years. (See Gen 34:31; Lev 19:29; Isa 3:16-17; Mark 9:42; 1Cor 6:16-18; Phil 4:8; 1 Tim 2:9; Titus 2:4-8; James 4:4; 1Peter 4:3; 2Peter 2:14-18; 3John 1:11)
CONDOM VENDING MACHINES FOR SCHOOLS
The doyen of sex education advocates, the American Doug Kirby, said in the year 2000 in a paper for the Western Journal of Medicine that the evidence was ‘not conclusive’ that making condoms available in schools helped reduce teenage pregnancies. http://webtecc.etr.org/programservices/publications/publicationsList.cfm?
And yet the drive to get condoms and condom machines into schools is relentless. There was a row in May 2004 when a Manchester businessman proposed putting condom vending machines into secondary schools, where his brightly-coloured teen-targeted product would have been available to children as young as eleven: http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/news/s/115/115646 He was behind the game. Back in June 2001 the North Wales Health Authority proposed installing condom machines in school toilets: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1414901.stm
The public seemed to be less than enthusiastic, for by June 2002, the Authority decided the scheme was ‘not a priority’: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2069755.stm
Health authorities and ‘health workers’ appear to be the ones pushing the game along. There was outrage in Cardiff in June 2004 when a man and a woman told a group of teenagers in a local park that they were council youth workers and then gave a demonstration of how to unroll condoms on to a model, finally giving the children the model and encouraging them to do it while photographing them.
South Wales Police are investigating, but they may have a problem. Those who perpetrate what amounts to child sexual abuse have an escape clause. People who give sex lessons to children had to be granted an exemption from sexual ‘grooming’ offences by Section 73 of the Governments’ Sexual Offences Act 2003, and that section does not limit the exemption to teachers in a formal school setting:
http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2003/20030042.htm
So long as the Cardiff youth workers can establish they were trying to protect the children from becoming pregnant or from sexually transmitted infection, they are safe from prosecution.
A story was going round in June 2004 that a secondary school in Norfolk sent 13-year-old pupils home with a letter advising them to take condoms on a school trip to France. When the Daily Mail investigated, they could not find anyone with the letter. Disturbingly, the story has the ring of truth, but just as this author was beginning to doubt it, it was reported to him the next day that a school in Swansea advised children of the same age to ‘take protection’ on a school trip, and they were not talking about sun-screen.
Clearly the pressure is on schools to promote condoms to ever younger children, and the arrival of condom vending machines in school toilets is only a matter of time.
SCHOOL NURSES AND THE MORNING-AFTER PILL
While it is unclear exactly what contraceptive materials health outreach workers are taking into schools, school nurses are now distributing both condoms and the morning-after pill, as part of a Department of Health pilot scheme which started in 2002. The scheme was immediately taken up by Oxfordshire, where 472 packets of the morning-after pill were given out by the middle of that November in the BodyZone scheme.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?
The majority of councils were said that year to be planning to introduce the scheme. By June 2003, a school in Devon was being praised for handing out pills at lunchtime.
http://www.sundayherald.com/34594
What complicates matters is that schools are under the Local Education Authority, which is part of the Town Hall or County Hall, but school nurses are employed the Primary Care Trust, part of the Health Authority.
So-called ‘partnerships’ also come into play, so it is very hard to pin down what is actually happening on the ground. We do not yet know whether school nurses in Nottingham City or Nottinghamshire are involved in the scheme, but it would sadly be unusual if they were not.
Of course, most girls taking the morning-after-pill aren’t even pregnant. Condoms, as we see below, don’t offer much protection against sexually-transmitted diseases, but a girl relying only on the morning-after-pill has no protection at all. Levonelle, made by Schering Health, which is the most common morning-after-pill, has never been tested on this age-group, and Schering themselves recommend it isn’t taken by under 16’s.
The morning-after-pill is fifty times as strong as a normal contraceptive pill. It is a powerful artificial hormone or steroid, which may be described as emergency contraception, but it acts as an abortificaient. It kills an embryonic human being. Occasionally it kills the girl herself.
Levonelle should only be available on prescription (again, according to Schering, who are covering themselves in case of law suits) but in the UK it is available over-the counter and even free, in some Government schemes, such as the school nurse scheme. No records are kept. Nobody knows how many girls are taking it, or how often, and nobody cares.
WHAT IS YOUR SCHOOL TEACHING?
So what are they teaching our children in the schools? Are they teaching that sex should be saved for marriage, and that virginity is to be treasured and chastity honoured? Isn’t that what parents want them to teach? Are they teaching the virtues of modesty and fidelity? Are they teaching boys to be respectful and chivalrous to girls? Are they teaching that the only true safe sex is between a man and wife who waited until they got married and are utterly faithful to each other?
Or are they giving out the message that it is OK to sleep with someone ‘when you are ready for sex’ and that you can plough through as many partners as you wish just so long as you use condoms? A study by Professor David Paton of Nottingham University Business School published earlier this year concluded that the latter approach, based on the Government’s ‘safer sex’ policy, is simply backfiring:
http://society.guardian.co.uk/publichealth/story/0%2C11098%
And what about the materials they use in sex education and PSE? Are they using workbooks which break down children’s natural inhibitions? Are they ‘grooming’ your children for sex? Are they using stuff which you would be embarrassed to talk about? As a rough rule of thumb, anything from the Family Planning Association (fpa), Brook Advisory, the Sex Education Forum, Marie Stopes or from local or national government is likely to be bad. It will be promoting ‘safer sex’ and simply encouraging children into promiscuity. Anyone who doesn’t believe that is invited to follow the links from the Government’s very own Teenage Pregnancy Unit itself:
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/teenagepregnancy/dsp_Content.cfm?PageID=85
SEX EDUCATION MATERIALS
Of course it is not just Government-recommended material which is bad. The Channel 4 videos 'All about us' are so explicit they have even shocked liberal teachers. What are they doing to year 5 (9-10 year-old) children? Channel 4 'Living and Growing', 'The Primary School Sex and Relationships Education Pack', 'Taking sex seriously', and 'Beyond a Phase' are all explicit and permissive. (Parents should also be concerned if their school is using the 'Primary School Drugs Pack' and 'Taking Drugs Seriously'.)
'Sex and Sensibility' is a new resource going in to secondary schools. The impression is given all through the material that condoms remove the risk of getting sexually-transmitted diseases. The pupil book even advises: "Use a condom when giving (slang term for oral sex)." (p41)
In a chilling passage on page 21 of the teachers' book, teachers are advised: "Some may be tempted to tell their class that the only way to avoid STIs (and pregnancy) completely is to avoid sex and foreplay; there is no way that your pupils will take this seriously, so instead emphasise the importance of using condoms and taking care of one's sexual health."
In the pupil books, keeping your virginity until marriage is not an option, in fact marriage isn't even mentioned. The closest the pupil book comes is on page 15: "If you're still a virgin, it means you're simply waiting for the right person and the right moment to sleep with someone." But on the same page, we read that around two-thirds of under 16's have not had sexual intercourse. 'Sex and Sensibility' bleakly assumes it is just a matter of time before these too begin fornicating. There is no support whatsoever for the majority of teens who are not sexually active to keep their virginity and save sex for marriage. But what can we expect, from a resource produced with advice from Durex, the condom manufacturers?
HOMOSEXUALITY
Of course establishment-approved sex education materials never disapprove of homosexuality. The Channel 4 videos promote lesbianism to primary school children. An official website for youth in West Yorkshire advises against smoking (so it is possible to advise children not to do something) but not against teenage sex (‘the right time should be when it’s right for you’). As to homosexuality: ‘The important thing to remember is that it is ok! THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU! You are not 'sick', 'perverted' or 'abnormal'.’
http://www.youthfax.org/health.html
In a discussion about ‘How to get pregnant and how not to’ one page on the official BBC website has the extraordinary advice: ‘If neither abstinence nor contraception is your cup of tea, you could always try homosexuality (insert obligatory safe sex message here).’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/hub/A467912
That’s what it says. Whether with the ‘obligatory safe sex message’ or not , homosexual activity is morally wrong, perverted in the sense that it goes against the created order and abnormal (Sorry, ‘youthfax’ but there it is). Its practitioners are extraordinarily prone to disease. Homosexual men are the largest reservoir for syphilis today, and naturally the most prone to rectal gonorrhea:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/wk/mm4803.pdf
HEALTHY SCHOOLS - OR ARE THEY?
Elaine Huckerby, head of the Garibaldi School in Mansfield, proudly told Christian Voice that her school is part of the Government’s ‘Healthy Schools Initiative’. So we typed that phrase in to the search engine, and top of the list was the official Government website:
http://www.wiredforhealth.gov.uk
There are four specific websites for children of various ages. The link for 11-14 year-olds (Key Stage 3) goes to a website called LifeBytes. A few clicks later and we found the site referring us to Government-approved outside links on ‘sex and relationships’:
http://www.lifebytes.gov.uk/links/links_sexu.htm
Here we found links to just five websites: Brook Advisory, Childline, ‘Like it is’, Mermaids (promoting transsexuality) and ‘RUThinking.’
Brook Advisory specialises in giving sexual advice and contraceptives to under 16s.
http://www.brook.org.uk/content/M1_yourrights.asp
Here 11-14 year-olds are told when under-age children have consensual sex that prosecutions are rare, that under-age children can receive confidential advice and get contraceptives and that ‘a woman of any age’ even ‘a woman under 16’ can have an abortion. There is of course not a hint that abortion kills a pregnant mother’s baby. On 28th June 2004, Professor Stuart Campbell published pictures of a baby growing in the womb in his book ‘Watch me grow’:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3846525.stm
The gruesome effects of abortion are on a prolife website:
http://www.uklifeleague.com/abortion-image-gallery/Index1.htm
On the ‘RUThinking’ site, suction abortion removes the pregnancy - not the baby - and in what purports to be a true story, having an abortion turns out to be no big deal: ‘It was a bit unpleasant but no worse than a heavy period.’ ‘The only thing was I felt quite emotional. Not because I regretted the decision, more about my body adjusting to not being pregnant.’ ‘Overall I felt a huge sense of relief and really sure I had made the right decision.’ ‘I will never regret the choice I made.’ (their emphasis)
http://www.ruthinking.co.uk/girls/nicky2.aspx
That is not the experience of all women by any means, according to Anne Atkins: http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?l
ABORTION PROVIDER ON GOVERNMENT LINK
Don’t forget, all the links from ‘www.lifebytes.gov.uk’ are Government approved. The link page assures young people: ‘All the links from LifeBytes are checked before we add them to the site.’ We linked to the second site, run by the Marie Stopes Organisation, Britain’s second-largest private abortion provider. Their website http://www.likeitis.org refers children who may be going through a certain phase and unsure about whether they are homosexual or not to Gay and Lesbian Switchboard, which is a bit like referring someone who is not sure about whether to smoke or not to Imperial Tobacco. There is loads of stuff about ‘your feelings’ but nothing about what is actually right or wrong, except of course that to say something is right or wrong is wrong!
These 11-14-years olds are told on another part of the website that: ‘Learning to be good at sex takes time and practice. - you’ll soon pick it up.’ and ‘Masturbation is normal, healthy and a good way of exploring your body.’
This, sadly, is typical modern sex education.
MISLEADING CHILDREN ABOUT STD’s
The section on Sexually Transmitted Diseases (which they crassly call ‘love bugs’) is the most misleading:
http://www.likeitis.org/love_bugs.html
They say: ‘If you're sexually active or thinking of having sex, do yourself a favour - avoid all the STIs (sexually transmitted infections) below by always practising safer sex...sex with a condom.’
Did they say ‘avoid all the STIs’? Mouse-over on ‘Herpes’ and you’ll find that condoms don’t stop the Herpes Simplex Virus. It can be spread by skin-to-skin contact, orally, or whatever. http://www.ruthinking.co.uk/ takes exactly the same line, while the Brook say: ‘Using a male or female condom every time you have sex will stop the transmission of most STIs’. http://www.brook.org.uk/content/M2_4_sti.asp
Even that is not true. Doctors admit condoms are only 50% -60% effective against Chlamydia. Not one of the Government approved links in the ‘Healthy Schools Initiative’ tells the kids that. And condoms are ineffective against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) which causes genital warts and cervical cancer. HPV is alleged currently to be infecting an astonishing 60% of sexually-active adults.
http://www.ivillage.co.uk/health/whealth/stds/articles/0,,180665_183971-1,00.html
The National Institute for Health in America reported: ‘Consistent condom use does not appear to reduce the risk of transmission of HPV from men to women.’ That’s not what our children are being told at all.
CONDOMS HAVE A FAILURE RATE
A BBC Panorama programme on Sunday 27th June 2004 effectively discredited the view that minute holes in condoms allow the HIV virus (the AIDS virus) to pass through. Not once did it tackle the much thornier problem of condom failure. The failure rate is actually around 17%, according to a review of the literature on condom effectiveness written by a British GP:
http://www.cmf.org.uk/helix/sum02/20condom.pdf
So condoms appear to be around 83% effective against pregnancy, which obviously relies on the transmission of sperm. Their effectiveness is greatest amongst married couples, and worst among the young unmarried and promiscuous. So ‘safer sex’ is not ‘safe sex’. It’s not ‘safer than safe’, it’s safer than nothing. And when we add in the effectiveness, or lack of it, of condoms against STD’s, that’s not saying much.
Some sex education materials attempt to counter the high failure rate among teenagers by demonstrating in class the unrolling of condoms on models of erect penises, rather like the Cardiff youth workers did in the park. One such resource is a board game called ‘Contraception’, promoted by the National Children’s Bureau and the Sex Education Forum:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1619906.stm
Quite apart from the emotional intrusion of the exercise, which amounts to (legal) sexual abuse, such an approach encourages the view that transient sex is permissible, and invites school-children subsequently to experiment in conditions which are less than conducive to perfect condom use. In other words, it makes matters worse.
CHOICE IS LESS THAN INFORMED
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in America brought together 180 persons to discuss condom effectiveness, of whom a panel of 28 experts in the field prepared a report. Despite all the claims which have been made about condoms and ‘safer sex’, all the studies which have been done, all the medical papers which have been published, the panel concluded that it was impossible to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HPV infections, Genital Herpes, Syphilis, Chancroid, Gonorrhea, Chlamydia or Trichomoniasis:
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/dmid/stds/condomreport.pdf
But they don’t tell the children that either, not on any ‘safer-sex’ website or in any school sex education based around the UK teenage pregnancy strategy. All the material speaks of children making ‘informed choices’ but they keep back information which would help make that choice informed. You can only make your choices within a small range of the available choices, and staying a virgin isn’t among them. (Well, the Bible certainly speaks of ‘wickedness in high places’.)
‘TREATABLE’ DOESN’T MEAN ‘CURABLE’
Going back to the Marie Stopes ‘likeitis’ website: ‘Most sexually transmitted diseases are treatable’ ‘Most’ can be anything over 50% of course. Now, what’s this word ‘treatable’? They know children think ‘treatable’ means ‘curable’. But it doesn’t. STD’s have been treatable for thousands of years - it’s just that the treatments didn’t work as a cure then and they don’t now. Chlamydia - being bacterial - can be cured by antibiotics, but by that time it’s usually too late: the damage to the fallopian tubes has been done. As the website admits: ‘Most people do not get any symptoms.’ If you don’t have any symptoms, why would you go to an STD clinic? Does any school teach girls that teenage sex has a good chance of making them infertile and they just won’t know until they start trying in vain to have children of their own? That, after all, is the truth. The Health Select Committee of MPs concluded last year that Britain is at ‘a sex disease crisis point’: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=ZOAT
‘England’, they said, ‘Is currently witnessing a rapid decline in its sexual health.’
SEXUAL HEALTH OF ADOLESCENTS IS POOR
A couple of years ago, the Government found that around 10% of young women in two pilot studies who were screened by their GPs tested positive for Chlamydia: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2002/10/08/hchlam08.xml
In some areas of the country one in five teenagers is thought to be infected, and the Government have initiated a wider screening programme, relying on volunteers. However, Chlamydia is only 12% of all ST infections. The Office for National Statistics reported: ‘Between 1991 and 2001, the number of new episodes of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) seen in Genitourinary Medicine (GUM) clinics in England, Wales and Northern Ireland doubled from 669,291 to 1,332,910. Young people, in particular females under the age of 20, bear the burden of sexually transmitted infections.’ http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=721
Avert, a large AIDS charity, say that there were 1.5 million attendances at Genital-Urinary Medicine clinics in 2002, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, up 15% (they say) on 2001.
http://www.avert.org/stdstatisticuk.htm
Our population is only 59 million, and the promiscuous portion a small subset of that. Could it be that a majority of sexually-active young people are infected with one disease or another? The ONS say in the above report: ‘The sexual health of adolescents in the UK is poor.’ So much for the ‘Healthy Schools Initiative.’
A GENERATION GROWING UP INFERTILE
Statistics of some selected STD’s are given on the Avert website. New Chlamydia cases were running at 81,680 in 2002, and 36% of the females with it (and most recorded cases are in females) were under 20. But as up to 70% of cases have no symptoms, the majority of girls with Chlamydia will not even be in the GUM statistics. And Chlamydia is not the only disease which causes infertility. Gonorrhea and urethritis can cause infertility as well. HPV causes cervical cancer, which again has no symptoms. If that is not caught early enough, the womb and ovaries may have to be removed to save a young woman’s life, taking away the life she could have given to her children.
A sizable proportion of the generation now growing up will be infertile, and nobody cares. Nobody cares enough to tell them the simple, honest truth:
‘If you stay chaste until you marry, and then marry someone else who has never had sexual contact, not only will you have the wonderful experience of doing the most intimate thing any couple can do for the first time with each other, but you will not bring a sexually-transmitted disease to your wedding bed and you will have almost no chance of infertility through an STD either.’
Why aren’t we telling them that? It is the truth, after all. What are we afraid of? Is it the fact that this is God’s way of behaving that puts our secular establishment off? Or is there just too much money at stake? Whatever the reason, the establishment, and that includes central and local government, health agencies and schools, are letting young people down. They are lying to them. There may well come a time when those same bitterly disappointed, betrayed young people look around for someone to sue.
PARENTS’ RESPONSIBILITY
Teaching children about sexual morality is the responsibility of parents - and it always has been. Other adults have no right to take that responsibility over, be they teachers, or health outreach workers, or school nurses. But let us make no mistake, although there is no money in chastity, there is a whole lot of money in keeping teenagers sexually active. Health outreach workers like Claire Chapman and those in the Teenage Pregnancy Unit and its local initiative offshoots owe their jobs, frankly, to teenage sex. Condom makers and morning-after-pill drug companies depend on selling vast quantities of their wares, not least to government agencies so they can distribute them free to children. Even the fpa has a division selling contraceptives, putting the profit back into its sex education activities which then increase the demand for contraceptives. Which is neat.
http://www.fpsales.co.uk/generalpublic/ (be prepared for a shock)
Of course, no 'sexpert' is around to pick up the pieces later. Only parents care enough to be there for their children throughout the whole of life, comforting their son after yet another failed sexual relationship - or marriage - or their daughter after an abortion she didn’t actually want or when she has had to have an operation to remove all her reproductive parts to eliminate cervical cancer.
That young woman will be denied the fulfilment of children of her own, and her parents will be denied the joy of grandchildren - mainly because our schools (with some notable and honourable exceptions) insisted on not telling our children the truth - and we let them do it. We have just the same problem as the ancient nation of Israel had in 750 BC, as witness the quote from the Bible on page 1: Illicit sex and infertility through ignoring the ways of God. May God have mercy on us.
WHAT CAN PARENTS DO?
Nationally, the aim of parents must be to bring the Government’s Teenage Pregnancy Strategy to an end before it does any more damage than it has already done to the young people who have been the victims of it. In the meantime, we must honestly admit that parents face an uphill battle to save their children from becoming part of the pregnancy, STD or infertility statistics, to see their children encouraged at school to save sex until marriage, and to take back their parental responsibilities.
Parents will find that Education Authorities, Health Authorities, Primary Care Trusts and Schools (again with notable but few exceptions - especially at secondary level) are all against them. Many of these organisations are difficult to pin down, and even harder to change. Schools are the exception, and parents can exert great influence on their child’s school. The standard advice given to parents who wish to influence their school is for them to become school governors, and that is good advice for those prepared and able. However, there are only a small number of parent-governor places, you need to be voted on, elections are regular but infrequent and committee-work needs a certain sort of person. Plus it is easy to 'go native' or be outvoted. In addition, many parents do not wish to be involved in the minutiae of school life, or cannot dedicate the time involved. But they care passionately about their children. What can parents not on the board of governors do to protect their children and assert their God-given rights?
IT IS POSSIBLE TO TEACH CHASTITY
The first thing to do must be to meet the head teacher, preferably with other parents, and demand that any Health Authority or Primary Care Trust ‘Health Outreach Workers’ are excluded from the school. The school has the power to withdraw its invitation to such people. The second is to find out exactly what the school nurse is up to behind your back, and whether her activities, especially if they include the giving of sexual or contraceptive advice, or giving out condoms or abortifacients, are included in the school sex education policy. If they are not, she must stop at once. If they are, the policy itself must change.
The third thing to do is to ask to see all sex education materials used in the school, and demand that any which promote ‘safer-sex’, or tell lies about condom effectiveness, or do not promote marriage, are removed. Parents must be bold enough to stand up to heads, who are articulate, authoritative and persuasive people. Remember, if you are offended or embarrassed by such materials, what are they doing to your children? If the Head and governors will not remove the material, ask for your children to be withdrawn from the classes. It won’t harm them, and provides a good opportunity for you to share the more positive approach of chastity, coupled with proper factual information. Obviously it is better if a group of parents withdraw their children, but the school will still take notice of one parent and it is your legal right. (The one exception is that children are taught about reproduction in science by law, and parents should monitor those lessons closely to make sure nothing outside the National Curriculum is being taught.) It has to be said that there are very few good sex education materials to recommend to schools, mainly because those who would produce them in the UK are either not in favour of school sex education anyway, or short of funds, or both. However, to end on a positive note, there is at least one team of young people in the UK who are prepared to go in to schools and present the chastity message to secondary pupils in a dramatic, relevant, and non-patronising way:
http://www.challengeteamuk.org
It is possible to teach that sex can and should be saved for marriage, and Christian Voice will help parents explain that to schools. We are convinced that the ‘safer-sex plus sex-ed’ experiment of the last thirty years, in which our children are the unwitting guinea pigs, has failed. For their sake, it is time to get our children back.
Author: Stephen Green, M.A., National Director, Christian Voice. 9th July 2004
