Republicans Have It Backwards When It Comes to Science [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/belief/republicans-have-it-backwards-when-it-comes-science



Unfortunately, “Thou shall understand scientific facts” is found nowhere in the Bible. More troubling still is that the Christian Right provides the foot soldiers for the Republican Party, which has profound implications for not only the GOP’s ideological agenda, but also the nation’s efforts to deal intelligently with complex economic, social, and environmental problems.

While many of us may be a little foggy on the details, most are aware that when it comes to science and modernity, things are pretty bad in the Republican controlled states of the Bible belt. If you’re looking for laugh-out-loud-cry-on-the-inside specifics, consider that in the state of Mississippi, more than 60 percent of school districts have adopted a “sex-ed” curriculum that instructs teachers to conduct purity preservation exercises, like one that asks students to unwrap a piece of chocolate, pass it around class and observe how dirty it becomes.

Marie Barnard, a Mississippi public health worker and parent, told the Los Angeles Times: “They're using the Peppermint Pattie to show that a girl is no longer clean or valuable after she's had sex—that she's been used. That shouldn't be the lesson we send kids about sex.” In Mississippi, abstinence-only is taught instead of contraception use. Unsurprisingly, Mississippi has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the nation, followed by a swathe of red states that include New Mexico, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

California’s teen birth rate has dropped nearly 60 percent since the expansion of sex education programs, but blue states tend turn towards science rather than Leviticus when it comes dealing intelligently with their problems. In fact, the states with the lowest rates of teen pregnancy include liberal bastions New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts.