The New Dare to Discipline (20 page)

The task force that prepared these guidelines clearly has an agenda, including the promotion of homosexuality, abortion on demand, sexual relations among unmarried people, unrestricted access to pornography by the young, etc. How about it, parents? Is this what you want taught to
your
teenagers? I don’t believe the majority of today’s mothers and fathers agree with these objectives, but most don’t care enough to oppose it, apparently.

Well, the organization I represent
is
concerned enough to speak out. We will do everything we can to save this generation of kids, who now face the threat of death from the dreaded HIV. We are passive no longer.

In 1992, Focus on the Family placed a full-page ad in
USA
Today
to explain the
health
risks associated with the myth of safe sex. Its contents are so vital that I am including the entire statement, along with appropriate references, on the pages that follow. Please note as you read that even if morality were of no consequence, the sex liberators are creating enormous medical problems for us. Sooner or later, the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases will expose the lies our kids have been told.

In Defense of a Little Virginity

A message from Focus on the Family

The federal government has spent almost $3 billion of our taxes since 1970 to promote contraceptives and safe sex among our teenagers. Isn’t it time we asked, What have we gotten for our money? These are the facts:

The federal Centers for Disease Control estimate that there are now one million cases of HIV infection nationwide.
⁹

1 in 100 students coming to the University of Texas health center now carries the deadly virus.
¹⁰

The rate of heterosexual HIV transmission has increased 44 percent since September 1989.
¹¹

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) infect 3 million teenagers annually.
¹²

63 percent of all STD cases occur among persons less than twenty-five years of age.
¹³

1 million new cases of pelvic inflammatory disease occur annually.
¹⁴

1.3 million new cases of gonorrhea occur annually;
¹⁵
strains of gonorrhea have developed that are resistant to penicillin.

Syphilis is at a forty-year high, with 134,000 new infections per year.
¹⁶

500,000 new cases of herpes occur annually;
¹⁷
it is estimated that 16.4 percent of the U.S. population ages fifteen to seventy-four is infected, totaling more than 25 million Americans—among certain groups, the infection rate is as high as 60 percent.
¹⁸

4 million cases of chlamydia occur annually;
¹⁹
10 to 30 percent of fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds are infected.
²⁰

There are now 24 million cases of human papilloma virus (HPV), with a higher prevalence among teens.
²¹