Saying 'no' in U.S. has political price

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Now that we've plunged into a candidate's premartial sexual activity with his wife as a legitimate presidential campaign issue, is there anything left that doesn't require disclosure?

How many times does the candidate and his spouse or "partner" do "it"? Mike Wallace (him again) has brought us to this idiotic state by casually asking Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney whether he and his wife, Ann, engaged in premarital sex. Romney, presented with this question on CBS' "60 Minutes," may have been the first person in the world to provide this bit of information to 14 million people. His answer was no.

Romney was asked this caught-ya-with-your pants-down question because he is a Mormon, a religion that has strictures against sex out of wedlock. As PublicEye, CBS News' watchdog, put it, Romney's answer goes to how serious a Mormon he really is and Mormonism "is an issue for many voters."

Oh, you mean as in: Lots of people have an "issue" with Mormonism because it -- as do many religions, millions of Americans and social commentators -- opposes pre- and extramarital sex.

This is a fight that a conservative candidate can't win. If he says he had premarital sex, he'll be nailed as a hypocrite because he has violated the precepts of his church. (If that reasoning is valid, then only atheists need run for president.) If he says he didn't have premarital sex, he's a hopeless, ancient moralist and, by extension, someone who would impose his religious views on the nation. (His denial also would unleash a pack of reporters trying to prove he did have premarital sex.)

In today's climate, it took guts for Romney to (admit to) (confess to) (make a clean breast of) being chaste. Like in a boys high school locker room, virginity is not a virtue to be disclosed. In fact, the words virginity and virtue are barely mentioned in the same sentence anymore.

As if to prove that virginity and abstinence are on the run, the new Democrat-controlled Congress is expected to kill a $50 million abstinence education program designed to delay sexual initiation, hopefully until marriage.

The programs include instruction on human anatomy, sexually transmitted diseases, building self-esteem and other techniques that will help combat the powerful peer pressure and cultural messages that encourage early sexual activity. This Title V abstinence program shouldn't be confused with "abstinence-plus" programs, whose basic message is, "Yes, well, abstinence is a fine idea in theory, but if you can't control yourself -- and you won't be able to -- here is how to sexually gratify yourself."

You can be sure that under the Democrats, such how-to programs will continue to be funded, but not the abstinence-only programs. Republicans, when they controlled Congress, at least let the two types of programs exist side-by-side. Democrats apparently can't tolerate kids being told both sides.

Rep. John Dingell, Democratic chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Title V funding, said it should be eliminated because it is a "colossal failure." He pointed to a recent congressional study that said so.

But it's not necessarily so. Ten scientific studies, according to the Heritage Foundation, have shown that "real abstinence programs can be highly effective in reducing early sexual activity." You can find studies that support both sides of the issue; but that doesn't mean Dingell should get away with pretending that all the science is on his side.

No, the problem isn't that the abstinence programs have been a colossal failure. If they have managed to hold back even a small part of the tide of the sexualization of children, they would be a colossal success. The colossal failure has come on the part of a culture that has no problem with the sexualization of children, by, for example, flooding entertainment media with messages that not just endorse sexuality but deride abstinence.

No government program by itself can hold back the tide; the reduction in single motherhood, increases in sexually transmitted disease and all the other disastrous effects of today's sexually obsessed society can only be stemmed by a change in culture. It takes, as it were, a village.