Yes. Kids are capable of understanding these concepts at very young ages if you’re just honest with them and don’t dance around facts. It’s the lies, obfuscation, misdirection, and misinformation that makes them confused and prone to stupid permanent decisions and unhealthy/unsafe experimentation.
Just say no was an abject failure. Same with abstinence only sex education. Every attempt to hide the facts from kids ends with kids finding out the hard way.
What’s more, it’s often painfully obvious when a child born with male genitalia has a female brain, and vice versa, and stopping or delaying puberty is a reversible way to make their transition as adults much more successful and less invasive. There’s no legitimate reason to oppose that type of reversible treatment when everyone involved agrees it’s called for.

No. Ignorance ALWAYS does more harm than good….as do palatable lies.

Keeping kids ignorant leads to dangerously ignorant adults….something you know about.
More knowledge is always better and leads to informed, well considered decisions.
More ignorance is always worse and always leads to kids making uninformed decisions, often horrible decisions.

But the GOP says “to keep ‘em dumb, get ‘em young.”

The idea that informing curious children that their sex can be altered (with years of difficult, very expensive treatments and eventually painful risky surgeries after years of long term psychological counseling and doctor consultations) is “grooming” them, is convincing them to alter their sex, is moronic and says WAY more about those that claim it than they understand.
Did you want to change your sex from the first time you heard it was possible? Is that why right wingers say they think that? It’s the only logical conclusion.


Sad you are still incapable of addressing the traitor Ashley Babbitt who fucked around with police and found out. That says volumes.

No, it's not really a no brainer. The few studies done, when other known factors are considered, showed that virgin marriages had <2% difference in satisfaction, probably within the margin of error....divorce rates are obviously skewed because most virgin couples are extremely religious, which accounts for lower divorce rates...it doesn't mean they have happy or successful marriages.
STDs and unwanted pregnancy are easily avoided with responsible safe sex...granted, most teens aren't very responsible.

Your reasoning is flawed...if Christians raise Christians, (and I assume you think the same goes for other religions) where do atheists come from? Also, you do know that children given abstinence only sex ed, usually Christians, have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and STDs, don't you? Very few follow church instructions once outside of church, that's why less than 5% of marriages are by virgins.

Many, if not most, that oppose places like Planned Parenthood, and oppose most methods of birth control, oppose it, because they think it encourages promiscuity. Sex is of course limited only to marriage in their world view, which is why heavy red states have abstinence only education... which tends to result in them having the highest teen and repeat teen pregnancy rates. And some would argue that the only function of sex is for procreation. The Bible even forbid pulling out (Gen. 38:8–10), though one could argue that was for one guy in particular. Anyhow, basically they see pregnancy as part of God's design and purpose for sex. The fact it has physical pleasures, is a gift from God for the married couple.

In the case of IUDs, they believe the old myth that the IUD causes abortions, that it lowers the chance that a fertilized egg will implant. The reality is that it doesn't at all, at least for modern, non-copper clad IUDs. Once upon a time, the old copper ones did have a very small impact on the chance a fertilized egg could implant, and even modern ones that have far less copper cladding on a wire around it, can have a very very small chance of decreasing implantation. But those ones aren't really used that often. Basically, the IUD is the most effective form of birth control, but it is opposed to stereotypes and lies. Modern IUDs work to prevent fertilization in the first place, via the hormones in them and design, if an egg is fertilized, it still has the same chance of implantation... however the chance of an egg being fertilized is very low, as sperm mobility is seriously hurt, and of course the woman's body lowers egg release too.

Plan B also doesn't stop implantation, or if it does, it is near modern copper clad wire IUDs (and more recent evidence shows it is likely even far less than that). It prevents the women's body from releasing an egg... if an egg is released already, it won't do any good. However, once again, facts don't matter to those on the right, and they promote it as a morning after abortion pill.

Of course, a healthy young woman, who's optimally fertile, only 30-40% of her fertilized eggs will implant, meaning that God Himself aborts about 60-70% of babies (since they define it as a full baby and human life at conception) in optimally fertile women. Now.. you have to add to that, natural miscarriages for other reasons... and the odds of having a baby really are against you naturally. (There are links to medical journals here: http://ask.metafilter.com/203529/What-of-fertilized-human-eggs-die and in this Healthcare Triage video about IUDs: https://videosift.com/video/IUDs-Are-Pretty-Great-So-Why-Arent-They-More-Popular)

I always thjought america had a schizophrenic relationship with sex. I think it's a quote from Jack Nicholson that goes something like this: 'Show a nipple and your movie get's a R, cut a breast off with a sword and it get's a PG'
There a few countries with such a giant adult entertainment industry and at the same time abstinence only sex education.

Repressed sexuality is never a good thing.

Couldn't get any of the embeds to work ... so I took "alternative measures" and downloaded/watched the whole show. Perhaps there is some parallel to be made between region blocking and abstinence only sex-ed...

Other than that, I agree with @eric3579 -- pretty depressing until the end... Which is probably the best ~3 minute sex ed video EVER. Seriously schools, make that the opener of any sex-ed program for your students!

Please read again...and write again, reading what you write before submitting. I can't follow your first paragraph. What little I can understand completely ignores what I wrote and makes stuff up to argue against.

I didn't say atheists have a monopoly on morality, I said morality doesn't come from religions, and atheists are more moral than religious people. I gave clear statistics about criminal behavior to prove my point.
EDIT:It seems you are saying if it's not religious in origin, the only thing left is political affiliation!? OMFG! That's so wrong I don't know where to start, I hope I just misunderstand you.
Reading/writing comprehension matters.
read my last paragraph in the post above...you exhibit those symptoms.

The answer to all your demographic questions, the religious group.
Religious 'morality' allows for murder, rape, and slavery of the non devout, and so is more responsible for the decline, and for many of the schisms in society.
You watch too much fox news, liberals don't 'control all major media and schools'. "Conservatives" (which are not conservative, they want to be more 'progressive' than liberals by "going back" to a time that never existed) never shut up pushing their insane, debunked ideas day and night. Their morality supports slavery and rape and wage disparity so disastrous that it may lead to class warfare. (how you treat the least of your brethren...etc.)
(EDIT: also investigate the saying 'eat the rich'-Jean-Jacques Rousseau )

More abortions for Christians than atheists, they can't be seen haveing out of wedlock children and many can't use birth control.
Abstinence only sex-ed actually promotes pre-marital sex (if you look at the results).
Christians have more adulterous affairs... for entertainment, and more divorce too.
Religious 'morality' is all 'morality decided by self'. (You don't stone non Christians or people who work on Sunday, do you? If not, you absolutely don't take your morality from the bible.)
Religion totally enslaves the poor.

Any other fallacies you need me to destroy?

>> ^L0cky:
I looked at a lot of sources, including CDC. They have a helpful compilation of their stats in the form of their CDC's 2007 chart book. It shows that firearm related deaths and poisoning are always less than motor vehicles; firearms are more likely to cause an early death; while death from poison is more likely to get you in middle age (possbily this includes long term effects of poisoning, ie working with hazardous materials when they were younger?).
It also doesn't show non death injuries; nor can the stats reflect the fact that every household has potential poisons while around half of households have firearms.
I took a look at the pdf, and while the charts are nice, they cover various date ranges and present their results in different formats, and I think you're misinterpreting them. What I did was use the search feature and look at the raw data. You can also search for non death injuries, but gun related non deadly injuries, accidental or intentional, doesn't even make the top 20, and it doesn't show anything below that.

>> ^L0cky:
In absolute terms it's inarguable that there are a lot of gun related deaths and injury in the US (around 31,000 deaths and 70,000 injuries per year give or take). This doesn't change simply because there are other causes of death and injury.
You just said that your source doesn't show non death injuries, yet now you're claiming 30,000 deaths and 70,000 injuries per year. You claim to be getting your sources from the same place, but the data from the CDC shows that between 1999 and 2010 the average homicide by firearm is 12,807 deaths per year. If you add accidental deaths involving firearms the total comes to 21,146 which accounts for 9.6% of all accidental and intentional deaths (this does not include suicide, illness and disease related deaths).

>> ^L0cky:
Let me be clear, my argument is that non sport firearms don't add anything positive to society that justifies the resulting gun related injury, death and crime. The granting of firearm licenses for hunting and sport should require strict licensing that's based on a requirement of training and testing. Gun control laws should be purposefully strict.
We already have plenty of gun control laws. More laws are not going to stop someone that has no intention of obeying them. You obviously did not read the whole article I linked to as it points out that "93 percent of the guns obtained by violent criminals are not obtained through lawful transactions that are the focus of most gun control legislation.

>> ^L0cky:
I haven't objected to this. My objection is to the suggestion that a societal need to teach children how to use firearms can be used to justify their existence. It's circular logic; and I'd prefer not to live in a society where learning to use firearms is a requirement of safety.
No one said that you need to teach children to use guns to justify their existence. You were a kid once (or still are), and at a certain age didn't you do the opposite of everything your parents said? If there is going to be a gun in a house, even if they are told it's dangerous and not to be played with and you do your best to lock it up and keep it away from them, if they do get their hands on it wouldn't it be better that they knew how to properly handle it so they don't end up adding to the accidental death by firearm statistic? Cars are dangerous too, but we teach our kids how to be safe in and around cars (wear your seat belt, look both ways before crossing street, etc.), why are you so freaked out about teaching a kid gun safety?

Your philosophy that kids shouldn't be taught how to use guns because guns are bad is basically the same as abstinence only sex education, AKA teaching ignorance.

>> ^L0cky:
I'm not stating this, I'm questioning it. You yourself said you own them for self defense.
I said I own guns for many reasons, self defense being one of them. You still seem to be confused about why someone chooses to carry a gun for self defense. It looks to me based on what you've written is that you assume someone carries a gun only to protect themselves from other gun owners. As I already pointed out, only 10% of violent crimes involve the use of a gun. I carry to protect myself from 100% of crimes.

>> ^L0cky:
That has zero effect on the number violent crimes that DO involve the use of a gun.
You can't pick out a small portion of a larger statistic to base your argument on, you need to take into account the whole picture. That's like saying 2001 was a slow year for terrorism, if you don't count the World Trade Center attacks.

>> ^L0cky:
This isn't a useful number unless you can show that those crimes would not have been prevented without guns; and would still have occurred without guns.
I don't know what more you expect, a crime was in progress, a lawfully armed citizen stopped it and it was reported to the police. What your asking isn't possible as the only way to know what would have happened in the other situations is to invent a time machine.

>> ^L0cky:
I guess your point is that gun ownership reduces crime. I'm open to that - if it can be shown more clearly.
What is clear from comparing to other countries, particularly those with comparative gun ownership is that the lack of gun control in the US correlates to an increase in gun related death and injury by an order of magnitude. The problem isn't gun ownership in and of itself; it's gun ownership without lack of appropriate gun control laws.
If guns don't reduce crime, then why do we give them to the police? Once more back to that article you didn't read:

"In 13 states citizens who wish to carry arms may do so, having met certain requirements. Consider Florida, which in 1987 enacted a concealed-carry law guaranteeing a gun permit to any resident who is at least 21, has no record of crime, mental illness or drug or alcohol abuse, and who has completed a firearms safety course. Florida's homicide rate fell following the enactment of this law, as did the rate in Oregon after the enactment of a similar law. Through June 1993, there had been 160,823 permits issued in Florida. Only 530, or 0.33 percent, of the applicants have been denied permits. This indicates that the law is serving the law abiding. Only l6 permits, less than 1/100th of 1 percent, have been rescinded because of the commission, after issuance, of a crime involving a firearm."

>> ^L0cky:
You're right, if guns suddenly vanished tomorrow there would still be crime and violence. However, it would be crime and violence without guns; and I think, that (of itself) is preferable. How could it not be?
Are you fucking serous? Why is a murder with a gun any worse than a knife, baseball bat or even bare hands? A murder is a murder no matter what tool is used to commit it. Other crimes besides murder would be better off without guns, but what part of 90% of violent crimes do not involve the use of a gun did you not understand? If you take away guns from everyone, you're only removing 10% of the tools used by violent criminals, and that doesn't guarantee that violent crime will drop by 10%? In reality you wouldn't be removing anything from criminals because "93 percent of the guns obtained by violent criminals are not obtained through lawful transactions that are the focus of most gun control legislation. So you essentially want to take away every law abiding citizen's right to defend themselves with a gun without doing anything to stop criminals from committing crimes with guns.

>> ^L0cky:
Crime in the UK has reduced dramatically according to The Office for National Statistics between before then (1999/2001) and now, including firearm offences. In Australia assault is up, robbery is down and sexual assault is about the same according to the Australian Institute of Criminology. Homicides involving firearms have continued to decline to their lowest on record.
From your source: "Provisional figures for the year ending June 2012 show that 5,507 firearm offences were recorded in England and Wales, an 18 per cent decrease on the previous year (6,694)." In 1997 when the ban was enacted only 2,648 crimes were reported involving guns. It looks like that ban has worked well.


>> ^L0cky:
I pulled it from the same source you are correcting me with
The CDC - Injury in the United States: 2007 Chart Book, page 24.
Statisticslol
This is where you have misinterpreted the graphs. The vertical portion of that graph is in deaths per 100,000 population. If you dig up the raw numbers from the search engine this is what you'll find:

Motor Vehicle Accident = 22%
Homicide by Firearm = 13%
Accident by Firearm = 0.5%

The difference between religion and science is that science updates its knowledge based on evidence. That's how we make fun of religion: pointing out they do not update their knowledge based on evidence. Your question is about why we make fun of religion. The answer is that for a set of knowledge that is contradicted by evidence, we believe religion has undue influence, and we seek to reduce that influence. One example is that abstinence-only education programs correlate with rises in sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Abstinence-only education is religiously motivated. Science would recommend giving people condoms and educating them on how to use them, reducing both unwanted pregnancies and STIs.

People can read and believe whatever they want. When it starts to matter is when people who believe false things gain real political power and create laws that harm people based on the false information. Another's right to act on their faith ends when it begins to unduly affect the lives of others.>> ^dirkdeagler7:

Some nice hidden gems in there, like the doors reference
I do think that poking fun at the bible, and the old testament for that matter are seen as more clever than I feel they really are. I mean religious people could make endless videos about some of the most brilliant men in history PROVING to the world something that we now know to be not quite right, and then using them to make the point that science changes its mind and has inconsistency too (is matter points or waves people?)...but what would be the point?
Harping on the lack of logic in a book written by and for people in antiquity is a waste of time, even if the book was divinely inspired why assume that it would be any different than all the other books/literature at that time? If a prophet spouted off things about big bangs and everything being made up of tiny dots that sometimes acted like waves back then...he would have been laughed at or burned!

>> ^entr0py:

>> ^kceaton1:
Utah, used to be the old number one, for insight. BTW, we are also a VERY heavily abstinence leaning state--outside of Salt Lake City, Park City, and Ogden. Some adults I know personally didn't truly know what sex was--fully and all its implications until they were 25 years old, almost seniors in COLLEGE...
Utah. Utah is almost all low to high middle income Caucasian urbanites... It's incredibly homogeneous. But, you could say due to the LDS church's influence this is a special scenario. Yet, in other states religion tends to be one of the highest reasons this subject comes up.
Luckily, my parents taught me early and I had Sex Ed in my health class and knew by 14 the full implications. Utah (our idiotic political carpetbaggers that have carved the state up so they can get these things into the pasture and passed easily due to the higher numbers of their types in office; that are all affiliated with the Tea Party strangely enough--and like Glenn beck...), this year, tried to BAN Sex Ed in its legislature. But the governor was forced to veto the bill due to public outrage (strangely enough, it pissed off a lot of people here). Basically they passed a bill that would have forced abstinence ONLY education even though (I believe) we are number two behind Mississippi.

I'm dubious about that. In fact, here's the first data I came across with a google search. Check out page 15. Utah is way below average and among the lowest in the country for every year they have data, going back to the 80s. In 2005 we were number 45 out of 50 in teen pregnancies.
But then again we're not an abstinence only state. If republicans manage to change that, as they nearly did, I guess we'll have a good case study.


Strange I'll have to check that out. Of course, I'm COMPLETELY basing everything I'm saying off of what a KSL report said pre-veto (of the 2012 Utah legislature's "Abstinence Only" Bill). Perhaps they had their data misconstrued and presented it the wrong way. I'll post the KSL story if I can find it in their history; then look at our information and statistics and then see what they may have possible misread and thought it was us, for some reason--they specifically said the previous cycle year to this study; so I'm confused to.

Thanks for catching that for me @entr0py, I appreciate that sort of thing.

So I admit I may be wrong, sorry if I am! I'll release another, "I'm sorry", later when I have better detail of why I got bad reporting.

>> ^kceaton1:

Utah, used to be the old number one, for insight. BTW, we are also a VERY heavily abstinence leaning state--outside of Salt Lake City, Park City, and Ogden. Some adults I know personally didn't truly know what sex was--fully and all its implications until they were 25 years old, almost seniors in COLLEGE...
Utah. Utah is almost all low to high middle income Caucasian urbanites... It's incredibly homogeneous. But, you could say due to the LDS church's influence this is a special scenario. Yet, in other states religion tends to be one of the highest reasons this subject comes up.
Luckily, my parents taught me early and I had Sex Ed in my health class and knew by 14 the full implications. Utah (our idiotic political carpetbaggers that have carved the state up so they can get these things into the pasture and passed easily due to the higher numbers of their types in office; that are all affiliated with the Tea Party strangely enough--and like Glenn beck...), this year, tried to BAN Sex Ed in its legislature. But the governor was forced to veto the bill due to public outrage (strangely enough, it pissed off a lot of people here). Basically they passed a bill that would have forced abstinence ONLY education even though (I believe) we are number two behind Mississippi.


I'm dubious about that. In fact, here's the first data I came across with a google search. Check out page 15. Utah is way below average and among the lowest in the country for every year they have data, going back to the 80s. In 2005 we were number 45 out of 50 in teen pregnancies.

But then again we're not an abstinence only state. If republicans manage to change that, as they nearly did, I guess we'll have a good case study.

>> ^dag:

I'm all for sex ed, but correlation is not causation - as is quickly skimmed over by Cenk, ethnicity, income etc would play a much larger role than just a few crppy high school health classes.



Utah, used to be the old number one, for insight. BTW, we are also a VERY heavily abstinence leaning state--outside of Salt Lake City, Park City, and Ogden. Some adults I know personally didn't truly know what sex was--fully and all its implications until they were 25 years old, almost seniors in COLLEGE...

Utah. Utah is almost all low to high middle income Caucasian urbanites... It's incredibly homogeneous. But, you could say due to the LDS church's influence this is a special scenario. Yet, in other states religion tends to be one of the highest reasons this subject comes up.

Luckily, my parents taught me early and I had Sex Ed in my health class and knew by 14 the full implications. Utah (our idiotic political carpetbaggers that have carved the state up so they can get these things into the pasture and passed easily due to the higher numbers of their types in office; that are all affiliated with the Tea Party strangely enough--and like Glenn beck...), this year, tried to BAN Sex Ed in its legislature. But the governor was forced to veto the bill due to *public* outrage (strangely enough, it pissed off a lot of people here). Basically they passed a bill that would have forced abstinence ONLY education even though (I believe) we are number two behind Mississippi.

Wait, abstinence only education makes you poor?
>> ^Barseps:

Hmmmm...... Coincidence perhaps?
Wikipedia confirms. (Scroll down)

>> ^dag:

I'm all for sex ed, but correlation is not causation - as is quickly skimmed over by Cenk, ethnicity, income etc would play a much larger role than just a few crppy high school health classes.


It would be better to see birthrates before and after abstinence only education in just Mississippi. It would still be a correlation, but at least you're comparing two similar populations.

Dan Savage posted this vid with this commentary:

I was at the 2008 Republican National Convention and on the convention floor when Sarah Palin give her GOP-VP-nomination-acceptance speech. It was kinda scary. So this video is pretty satisfying.

My favorite moment at the 2008 convention: asking the GOP's youngest delegate, who was thrust before me and the "Real Time" camera crew by her media rep, if she was a virgin. When she refused to answer the question I said, "We'll have to take that as a 'no,'" and she got upset. Then I explained to her that the GOP backs abstinence-only for kids her age and so the question was legit. She conceded the point and gave me a hug.

I was, she said, the first gay man she had ever touched. She was, I told her, the first straight teenage Republican whose boobs had ever been pressed against mine. In Minneapolis.

Memories!

>> ^shinyblurry:
Teen pregnancy and STD rates are out of control.


Yes, in states where they preach abstinence-only sex-ed. Bit ironic, that.