Abstinence only, rebranded: Failed right-wing sex-ed policy returns as “sexual risk avoidance”

By Amanda Marcotte

Thrice-married libertine Donald Trump got himself elected president by rallying the religious right vote behind him. The devil’s bargain that Christian conservatives made with Trump is easy enough to understand: They ignore his history of sexual incontinence, including rumors of a literal “pee tape,” and he gives them more power over the sex lives of private individuals, especially young people and women. In office, President Trump has done just that, launching a multitude of attacks on legal abortion and contraception access.

Now it seems as if a third front is opening in the Trumpian war on other people’s sex lives: The return of abstinence-only education, which many Americans believe had died off after President George W. Bush left office. Well, abstinence-only ed is coming back, but this time around, its proponents hope that voters, especially parents, don’t notice the return to the classroom of religious anti-sex propaganda.

The first sign that the Trump administration hoped to ease into the classroom more just-say-no-to-sex messages came in late May, when the White House proposed a budget that would slash nearly every government expenditure but would increase by $277 million spending on abstinence-until-marriage programs. Last week news surfaced that Valerie Huber, the head of a pro-abstinence organization called Ascend, will join the Department of Health and Human Services as chief of staff to the assistant secretary for adolescent health; the position will allow her to push for more support for abstinence-until-marriage programs in schools.

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