The fullness of football
Abstinence, anyone? Strange things do happen. Earlier this month Senator Jesse Helms (RN.C.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, relented after years of obstructionism and allowed the...
...Still, the BearmanBachrach study has not been greeted with enthusiasm by all...
...Taking a pledge delays intercourse for a long time," the study concludes...
...For religious conservatives, schools that provide information about contraception are seen to be enabling immoral behavior...
...That day has not yet arrived, however...
...chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, relented after years of obstructionism and allowed the United States to pay its back dues to the United Nations...
...The delay effect is substantial and almost impossible to erase...
...The pledge, an idea originating with the Southern Baptist church, has been taken by nearly 3 million American adolescents...
...The debate over the place of moral norms in sex education has long been contentious...
...The Ravens, as is well known, are a small heretical sect unable to embrace the full truth of football (especially on offense...
...The news that abstinence works—even so-called "abstinenceonly" programs—should be welcome...
...He noted that it was anger that finally brought the party control of the presidency and both houses of Congress...
...In addition, comprehensive sex education, with its "nonjudgmental" approach to sexual activity outside of marriage, is rejected as a form of indoctrination in pernicious liberal values...
...Go therefore unto all nations and make them disciples...
...After Bush became president-elect, Rush Limbaugh angrily dismissed suggestions that Republicans should turn away from an "orgy of hate" to seek conciliation and pursue moderation...
...The columns of several highly respected Republican pundits read like James Baker's press statements...
...In cultural warfare, the stakes seem that great and call for extraordinary exertion that sometimes crosses the bounds of civility and lawfulness...
...Objectively speaking, other professional football teams are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with the fullness of salvation offered to the Giants fan...
...has had devastating consequences, especially for young and poor women and their children...
...In a pluralistic age, many football denominations are free to flourish...
...Virginity Pledges by Teenagers Can Be Highly Effective, Federal Study Finds," read the surprising (for some) headline in the New York Times (January 4...
...The high rates of sexually transmitted disease, Hrv, abortion, and unwed motherhood among teenagers in the U.S...
...That is about to change...
...However social policy may balance the abstinence message with the provision of contraceptive information, surely abstinence is what most parents and increasingly many professionals think needs to be stressed...
...Some critics even contend that abstinence-only sex education represents an unconstitutional entanglement of church and state...
...Most alarming, their treatment of Jesse Jackson's orderly protests seemed to suggest that any time an African American speaks forcefully about civil rights concerns to other blacks a riot has taken place...
...But as Dominus Iesus reminds us, there is a difference between faith in the Giants and mere belief in other teams...
...The unicity and salvific universality of the Giants are self-evident...
...Of course, virginity pledges are not the sole answer to teenage irresponsibly in 5 The fullness Of football m Commonweal's coverage of the Super Bowl has been, er, spotty over the years...
...There was something frightening about the bullyboy tactics of the imported demonstrators and the consistent liberties that Baker and his surrogates took with the truth...
...This mindset seemed to legitimize in29 (Continued from page 29) timidating black voters, doctoring absentee ballot applications in Seneca and Martin Counties, the reckless purging of voter rolls to reduce the number of black voters, and the stonewalling of the Florida secretary of state's office...
...High school students, let alone younger children, should not be engaging in sexual intercourse...
...The politics of resentment created something almost akin to what Adorno called the authoritarian personality...
...The new study, conducted by Peter Bearman of Columbia University and Christine Bachrach of Yale, concluded that teenagers who took a pledge to abstain from intercourse until marriage "are much less likely" to have intercourse than adolescents who did not pledge...
...The Left is eager to paint abstinence programs as a scheme by the Religious Right to restore traditional gender roles and sexual morality...
...On the other hand, they uniformly defended the conduct of the congressional staffers and others sent to Florida to stop the recount...
...An earlier version of the paper presented at a Planned Parenthood of New York City workshop brought an extraordinary reaction, with the president of SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States) leading an "Abstinence programs do not work" chant...
...The GOP chairperson of one Florida county told the New York Times that "our lives" were at stake...
...Federal funding guidelines, stemming from the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, prohibit such programs from providing students with information about contraception...
...don swift Erie, Pa...
...These tactics are very effective, but they also damage the fabric of our system...
...Conversion to the Giants cause is what the true football faith requires...
...6 (Continued from page 4) passions to win political support...
...In other contexts, such a willful rejection of new knowledge is called obscurantism...
...If Helms can come to terms with the obvious good the UN represents, perhaps "progressive" educators and other advocates of what is called "comprehensive sex education" will one day come to see the virtue and effectiveness of stressing abstinence in public-school sex education...
...Virginity pledges and other "abstinenceonly" programs are particularly controversial when implemented in public schools...
...As a not-for-profit publication we cannot, of course, endorse either team...
...This year's game, to be played on January 28, will feature the Baltimore Ravens against the New York Giants...
Vol. 128 • January 2001 • No. 2
