The entire country has been practicing abstinence for a month. We’ve been abstaining from physical contact, leaving our homes, dining out, and attending school because these activities have been deemed risky in the COVID-19 era. Government is so serious about enforcing abstinence they’ve deployed drones to monitor compliance and established tattle-tale policies that empower citizens to police one another’s social abstinence.
Our entire population has unwittingly participated in the greatest abstinence object lesson of all time. The media narrative is that social distancing has “flattened the curve,” even though social distancing was baked into the models that are now revised drastically downward. And COVID-19 is not the only pandemic we’re facing. There is another, and it’s not spread by sharing an elevator, but by sharing a bed.
It’s a “hidden, silent, dangerous global epidemic” of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which is racking up 1 million new daily infections of gonorrhea, chlamydia, trichomoniasis and syphilis worldwide.
In 2016 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported the “highest number ever” of STIs in the United States, partially fueled by apps that facilitate high-risk behaviors, the so-called Tinder effect. Health experts believe the Human Papilloma Virus, responsible for 9 out of 10 cases of cervical cancer, to be a hidden epidemic, which has the potential to infect up to 75 percent of the population. Like COVID19, it’s no exaggeration to call the mass increase in STIs a global public health crisis.
COVID-19 spreads by social contact, so the government has mandated social distancing—a.k.a social abstinence, because pandemics require us to change our behavior. Since STIs are spread by sexual contact, why is the government silent about sexual distancing?
The COVID-19 pandemic has caught our government with its pants down. The same officials who support federally funded sex-ed that eschews sexual distancing by encouraging risky, early sexual behavior have cracked down on the socially illicit purchase of garden seeds.
The scare-mongering against visiting just one friend during the COVID-crisis might be legit but, if it is, how can the same government square comprehensive sex ed materials that teach kids sex with just one partner is a “green light” activity? Even the World Health Organization is talking out of both sides of its mouth, recommending abstinence for COVID-19 by remaining physically separate while disregarding abstinence for STIs by instructing 12-15 year olds on oral intercourse and penetration.
All available evidence shows teens are a low-risk population for COVID-19, but our government has no problem forcing extreme social abstinence on them to the point of removing a little girl’s basketball hoop. While California officials fill skate parks with dirt to keep teens from the dangerous business of close-contact Ollies, when they return to public school the same teens will be taught anal sex, one of the riskiest sexual behaviors, is a form of pregnancy prevention.
Despite knowing abstinence safeguards their mental and academic health and that an immature cervix puts young women at high risk of contracting STIs, we still lack the collective will to encourage teen girls to practice sexual distancing.
A look at the public school’s emotions-obsessed sex ed curriculum will show you the concept of abstinence is an afterthought. Mainstream media will tell you abstinence education is ineffective and unethical and completely unrealistic. If Planned Parenthood were responsible for the daily White House press briefings, they’d tell us an abstinence-only approach to high risk behaviors “violates a basic human right of young people.”
Yet as a nation we’ve just collectively debunked their claims, by abstaining from face-to-face relationships, a more critical component to human wellness than sexual pleasure. So which is it? Either abstinence is effective and necessary or unethical and unrealistic.
The widespread use and availability of condoms, the face masks of the STI world, have not stopped the numbers of STIs from skyrocketing. If our authorities believe so strongly in the effectiveness of covering offending parts during high-risk interactions, every Planned Parenthood would be converted into a face-mask distribution center and we’d immediately reopen every sector of the economy.
But what we’ve learned in the last few weeks is when government is serious about preventing the spread of a virus, “using protection” isn’t enough. Abstinence is the only 100 percent reliable course of action. In the words of Dr. Anthony Fauci, abstinence is “our best and only great public health tool.”
It’s clear people have the capacity to change their behavior in the face of dangerous viruses when the risks are clearly communicated. We’ve just proven that an entire nation practicing abstinence can stop the widespread transmission of a virus, be it sexual or respiratory.
As the nation-wide stay-at-home orders demonstrate, government is willing to bring the full force of the state down on their citizens to mandate wide-spread abstinence, even if it means sacrificing our children’s education, ravaging the global economy, and infringing on our fundamental civil liberties.
So the question is, why does government recommend abstinence during certain pandemics, but not others?
