It sounds as silly as blaming cops for crime or saying marriage causes divorce. But it must be true. I read it in the paper.

        “Some teens mistake oral sex for safe sex,” a story published last Friday in the Enquirer Tempo section reported, citing a dramatic increase in oral sex among teens. One third of teen-age girls think oral sex is not sex, the story said.

        Then it quoted “observers” who blamed abstinence programs. I am not making this up.

Clinton? Nah

        The story did acknowledge that some people blame Bill Clinton. Whaddayaknow, that was my first guess, too. Wild Bill and his rabid defenders in the Democratic Party and the media devoted acres of newsprint and hours of TV face time to insist that oral sex is not really sex.

        Anyone who dared to disagree was attacked like Bambi in a kennel of starving Dobermans.

        Did all those alibis and excuses influence impressionable kids? Could this be another ugly brush stroke in the Dorian Gray “Clinton Legacy”?

        Nah. Not to liberals. In the story by Richard A. Marini of the San Antonio Express-News, Mr. Clinton was mentioned only so he could be pardoned. Blame was immediately shifted to abstinence programs.

        A carefully selected health “expert” was quoted, claiming that abstinence programs keep teens ignorant and “limit what they're taught.” Abstinence programs are also at fault for warning teens that condoms aren't foolproof, the expert said, “So they're more likely to have unprotected sex.”

Hide the truth

        I guess it would be much better to hide the truth and let kids find out the hard way that condoms may not protect them from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS.

        In fact, that's what is happening. A model sex-education plan pushed by the federal government urges schools to teach kids how to have oral and anal sex. It was hatched during the Clinton administration — surprise. Ohio rejected it, but schools in many states are teaching kids “that anything that doesn't make you pregnant is OK,” said Melanie Howell, president of the Abstinence Education Network Inc., a statewide agency in Mason.

        Some of the lessons target black kids in urban areas, where illegitimacy is already epidemic. Great.

        Ms. Howell says the agenda is to normalize perversity and defend the myth of “safe sex.”

        “We define the word abstinence as no sexual activity, including oral and anal,” she said.

        One side says some kinds of sex are OK, such as the kind in the Oval Office. The other side says no sex is safe for teens. So here's a quiz: Which one encourages teen sex?

        By no coincidence, federal funding for abstinence education is up for renewal soon, and opponents are trying to kill it.

        But teen pregnancy and abortion have declined dramatically, thanks to abstinence education. Blaming abstinence for teen sex is as ridiculous as saying no means yes.

        E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.

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