A researcher at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville is questioning results of a Ohio State University study in February that claimed teens who lose their virginity earlier than their peers are more likely to become juvenile delinquents.  According to the Washington Post article, “so obvious and well established was the contribution of early sex to later delinquency that the idea was already part of the required curriculum for federal ‘abstinence only’ programs.”

There was just one problem: It is probably not true. Other things being equal, a more probing study has found, youngsters who have consensual sex in their early-teen or even preteen years are, if anything, less likely to engage in delinquent behavior later on.

The new study “really calls into question the usefulness of abstinence education for preventing behavior problems,” Harden [a leader of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville study] said, “and questions the bigger underlying assumption that all adolescent sex is always bad.”

A New York Times blog post draws a comparison between the seemingly unrelated driving exam in South Africa and abstinence-only sex education in the U.S.

Health educators risk students’ well-being by being too politically correct, according to a column in WorldNetDaily.com.  The author cites Miriam Grossman, author of the book “Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student.”

According to the article,  Dr. Grossman has garnered media attention because of her claim that health educators risk students’ health by promoting a “particular ideology – usually a combination of feminism, androgyny and ‘anything goes’ liberalism.”

The commentary goes further, saying that young women are particularly hurt by this ideology.

One fact absent from most sex education programs is that young girls are more susceptible to STDs than mature women. They don’t include information about the cervical transformation zone (or T-Zone), a ring of cells that is vulnerable to infection. The transformation zone is dramatically larger in a teenage girl, but shrinks as she gets older.

The commentary says the rationale for this ideology is that “sex educators like the idea of telling teens to have sex as soon as they feel ready not because it’s good for them, but because they see it as the values-neutral position.”

For more about Grossman, you can also read a recent San Francisco Chronicle article in which she discusses her book and what she sees as dangers in the casual “hook-up” environment on college campuses.

What do you think?  Do you think sex education programs are too politically correct to the point of being permissive, sending the message that it’s okay to have sex early?

According to the Christian Post and CitizenLink.com, a study published in the Jan./Feb. 2008 issue of the “American Journal of Health Behavior” will show that programs by the Virginia health department’s Abstinence Education Initiative resulted in a “significant reduction in teen sexual initiation.”

The Institute for Research and Evaluation evaluated the impact of the programs by examining the behavior of seventh-graders from five different Virginia schools. The study concluded that those students receiving abstinence education were about one-half (45.7 percent) as likely to initiate sexual activity as students who did not receive abstinence education.

News of the study broke soon after this week’s announcement that Virginia’s governor had decided to halt funding for abstinence-only education programs.  It also comes on the heels of a nationwide study that stated abstinence-only education is unproven for stopping teen sex.