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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRepublicans Have It Backwards When It Comes to Science
http://www.alternet.org/belief/republicans-have-it-backwards-when-it-comes-scienceUnfortunately, Thou shall understand scientific facts is found nowhere in the Bible. More troubling still is that the Christian Right provides the foot soldiers for the Republican Party, which has profound implications for not only the GOPs ideological agenda, but also the nations efforts to deal intelligently with complex economic, social, and environmental problems.
While many of us may be a little foggy on the details, most are aware that when it comes to science and modernity, things are pretty bad in the Republican controlled states of the Bible belt. If youre looking for laugh-out-loud-cry-on-the-inside specifics, consider that in the state of Mississippi, more than 60 percent of school districts have adopted a sex-ed curriculum that instructs teachers to conduct purity preservation exercises, like one that asks students to unwrap a piece of chocolate, pass it around class and observe how dirty it becomes.
Marie Barnard, a Mississippi public health worker and parent, told the Los Angeles Times: They're using the Peppermint Pattie to show that a girl is no longer clean or valuable after she's had sexthat she's been used. That shouldn't be the lesson we send kids about sex. In Mississippi, abstinence-only is taught instead of contraception use. Unsurprisingly, Mississippi has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the nation, followed by a swathe of red states that include New Mexico, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.
Californias teen birth rate has dropped nearly 60 percent since the expansion of sex education programs, but blue states tend turn towards science rather than Leviticus when it comes dealing intelligently with their problems. In fact, the states with the lowest rates of teen pregnancy include liberal bastions New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts.
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Republicans Have It Backwards When It Comes to Science (Original Post)
xchrom
Jun 2014
OP
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)1. You would think the teen pregnancy rates would be a wake up call.
But science deniers don't need no stinkin' statistics.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)2. I don't understand the comparison with a dirty piece of chocolate.
Does that mean, I can only have sex if I purify myself afterwards by taking a shower?
What about cooties? Did they teach the boys they could catch cooties from a girl?
ladjf
(17,320 posts)3. "Ignorance is a terrible thing". Thanks Poppa.