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Abstinence Supporters Launch National Campaign

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The Washington Post

Published: June 1, 2008

WASHINGTON - Proponents of sex education programs that focus on encouraging abstinence are launching a nationwide campaign aimed at enlisting 1 million parents to support the controversial approach.

The National Abstinence Education Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said it sent e-mail messages last week to about 30,000 supporters, practitioners and parents to try to recruit participants and plans to e-mail 100,000 this week as part of the first phase of the $1 million campaign.

The e-mail is promoting the Parents for Truth campaign, which the group hopes will eventually involve 1 million parents nationwide to lobby local schools to adopt sex education programs focusing on abstinence and to work to elect local, state and national officials who support the approach.

"There are powerful special-interest groups who can far outspend what parents can in terms of promoting their agenda. But we recognize that parents more than make up for that by their determination and motivation to protect their own children," said Valerie Huber, the group's executive director.

The campaign comes as Congress is debating whether to authorize about $190 million in federal funding for such programs, which have come under increasing criticism because of a series of reports that concluded they are ineffective. Such criticism has prompted at least 17 states to refuse federal funding for such programs.

The group hopes to counter that trend, in part with a provocative video that asserts that comprehensive sex education encourages sexual activity by teenagers and a Web site that offers advice to parents about sex education.

Proponents of comprehensive sex ed condemned the campaign as misleading, noting that the "Be Proud! Be Responsible!" curriculum cited in the video was developed to reduce the spread of the AIDS virus among black males ages 13 to 19.

"It's a classic fear and smear campaign," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a private, nonprofit Washington advocacy group. "It's absolutely misleading."

The campaign hopes to recruit 100,000 parents nationwide in the first year and 1 million within three years, generating millions of dollars to continue and expand the campaign through a $30-per-participant registration fee.

The projections are based on a 1993-94 campaign in Georgia that recruited 60,000 members.

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