Count on Rep. John Boozman. Abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work. It might even be counter-productive in terms of teen pregnancy. So Boozman wants to keep pouring the coals (in the form of federal tax dollars) to this discredited scheme for shipping tax money to fundies. Release on the jump.

He plays fast and loose with facts. I don’t doubt that 80 percent of parents would prefer that absintence be emphasized over birth control and that most parents wish their kids would wait until marriage to have sex, even if few of them did. But I don’t believe the research shows that many parents want their kids’ eyes and ears covered when the subject of birth control comes up. That’s the big difference. Good sex education courses DO teach abstinence. Also use of condoms and pills.

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Here, for example, is just one of the polls that obliterates Boozman’s misstatement about public opinion polling. A majority in this poll favor comprehensive sex ed over the abstinence-only approach.

UPDATE: A little more research turns up interesting info. The Zogby “poll” that Boozman cites isn’t really a valid public opinion poll, but message-testing research from foes of sex education and apparently created by the folks who brought us the Swift Boat ads. The questions are shaped to produce desired results and thus reveal the best tactics for achieving those results. Respondents are not ever asked whether they support ONLY abstinence-only education. They are offered some emotional hot-button situations. This is a fair political strategy, to test messages. But the results shouldn’t be misrepresented by Boozman — and the other right-wingers currently parroting them — as scientific public opinion research. Here’s a good analysis, which rounds up a number of legitimate polls on the question as well as exposing the faulty methodology and Zogby’s VERY careful response to questions about the use of the poll numbers by opponents of sex ed.

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