San Francisco Chronicle - Friday, June 27, 2003
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer

Thus began the seventh annual convention of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a nationwide network of educators who preach against sex before marriage and oppose the promotion of condoms to teenagers.

Clearinghouse founder Leslee Unruh, a radiant mother of five grown children from Sioux Falls, S.D., and a rising star in the abstinence-only movement, knew full well the irony of the moment.

"Abstinence comes to Sin City!" she chortled.

At her side was former Nebraska congressman Jon Christensen, a fervent right-to-life Republican, and his wife, former Miss America of 1997 Tara Dawn Christensen, who made headlines when she declared she was a 26-year-old virgin on her wedding day.

Among conservative social movements, this one is different.

"I just got to tell the national press, 'We love sex . . . .' " said Unruh, with the practiced pause of a Las Vegas comedian. "The best sex is in a marriage."

There are twice as many participants at this Las Vegas convention than at the Clearinghouse's first annual get-together, held in Minneapolis, and one reason is that the abstinence-only movement now has a friend in the White House.

President Bush is seeking a record $135 million for abstinence sex- education programs as part of next year's federal budget. But the big prize is a potential $1 billion windfall in his five-year, $15 billion program to bring AIDS relief to 12 African and two Caribbean nations.

Against the wishes of Democrats who otherwise supported the Bush AIDS initiative, Republicans insisted that the bill contain a provision that one- third of the money alloted to HIV-prevention be spent on "abstinence-until- marriage programs."

Part of the purpose of the annual meeting in Las Vegas was to conduct workshops on how to win federal and state grants for abstinence-only programs.

Unruh said she sees no contradiction in social conservatives seeking federal tax dollars for such activities.

"This conservative pays taxes," she said. "I should have a right to that money, because it is my money, too."

But critics of abstinence-only programs abound. In a July 2002 editorial, the editors of the British medical journal The Lancet pronounced the Bush administration's push for the abstinence-based programs as "one of the best examples of ideology impeding sound public-health policy."

While acknowledging the health benefits of sexual abstinence, the editors noted that "there is little evidence that the abstinence-only approach is effective."

The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a New York sex education advocacy group, is sharply critical of programs like those promoted by the Abstinence Clearinghouse. The problem with abstinence-only programs, the council says, is their intolerance for other approaches, particularly the use of condoms.

"They misrepresent medical accuracy around contraception and contraception failure," said Adrienne Verrilli, spokeswoman for the group.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has concluded that condoms, when used "consistently and correctly," are highly effective in preventing transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It also concedes that that measures of condom effectiveness may be inaccurate because of the difficulty of conducting studies on private behavior.

Abstinence-only advocates do not equivocate. "Would you fly in a plane with a 20 percent chance of crashing? That's how safe you are with a condom!" declares a brochure, "What Guys Want," from the East Texas Abstinence Coalition.

Kristy Johnston, from Longview, Texas, said the group has secured a $250, 000 federal grant to run its abstinence-only program in six counties. The program works with teens to develop materials promoting abstinence until marriage.

"Our campaign is: 'Virginity Rules,"' said Johnston. It includes a Web site (www.virginityrules.com) and a variety of pamphlets and bumper stickers. Since the in-school education program began, she said, her county's teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease ranking has dropped to 47th from 22nd in the state.

E-mail Sabin Russell at srussell@sfchronicle.com.

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