Who's in Bed with the OU?

Abstinence: For all the wrong reasonsYesterday, Jewschool's Mobius drafted an Open Letter to the OU on their New Pro-Abstinence Campaign:

If you don’t want Jewish kids to shtup before they’re married, don’t lie and tell them that the reason they shouldn’t is because condoms are ineffective. You’re spreading dangerously false information that can actually increase the likelihood of Jewish kids contracting sexually transmitted diseases, which can pose a serious risk to their lives.

If they’re going to have sex — and trust me, they’re going to, whether you like it or not (whereas abstinence education is a proven failure) — you should encourage them to do it safely, otherwise you won’t only be dealing with a problem of promiscuity, but with an even bigger STD problem in the Jewish community than that which already exists.

Furthermore, if you’re serious about fighting intermarriage and promoting Jew-on-Jew coupling, you’re going to have a really hard time doing so when you’re scaring Jewish kids off from being intimate with one another. The Jewish establishment is spending millions annually to encourage Jewish kids to sleep with each other. Michael Steinhardt alone has spent a fortune trying to encourage Jewish kids to jump in the sack.

And he makes some good points... focusing on the insanity of arguing against the use of condoms...

But in a more general sense, I'm just amazed by the stupidity of this "campaign".  Not only are they spreading misinformation about condoms, scaring hell out of kids... but they're also leaning on lame arguments like, "Joseph resisted Mrs. Potiphar, so you can resist the attractions of cooch too". 

Genius!  When I was sixteen, and an insecure bundle of hormones, that would TOTALLY have worked.

I think what bothers me most about this issue is how much it smacks of the evangelical Christian model.  Using bible stories and scare tactics to keep people from having sex, rather than explaining in honest, intelligent, Jewish ways... why it might be better to wait awhile?

Do we want our kids to start wearing teen purity rings too? 

This site also responds to the new freako-teen-website, and does a good job, offering some particularly inane quotes from the OU:

"Sexually active girls are three times more likely to attempt suicede" 

"Over 25% of sexually active teenage girls report they are depressed..."

Yeah, okay.  Okay.  The more I learn about the OU, the more okay I am with my secular Jewish upbringing...