Speaker Says Abstinence-Ed Long Overdue for Funding
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
February 19, 2004
(AgapePress) - A Christian youth expert says many people nationwide are finally realizing abstinence is effective.Christian youth speaker and author Doug Herman says he has seen too many young lives damaged and sometimes destroyed by bad sexual decisions. Throughout the year he travels all over the United States, speaking to more than 250,000 teenagers and adults about character development, spiritual passion, and sexual abstinence.
Herman lost a wife and infant daughter some years ago to AIDS, contracted through a blood transfusion. His personal sense of loss has added to the urgency of his message and his desire to save young people from similar tragedy. He is encouraged to see the government proposing more funding for abstinence education, and says the move is long overdue.
"I'm tired of seeing the broken hearts and lives," Herman says, "and I think God is as well. So I'm thrilled we have a president who says ... abstinence is worth it. It's the truth."
Herman feels that abstinence-based education programs should not only receive more funding, but that they should be prioritized by the federal government over those programs that promote the "safe sex" myth. The abstinence advocate points out that, sadly, at this time the opposite is true.
"For every one dollar that the government spends on abstinence education, the government spends $12 on comprehensive sex education, which talks about condoms and other contraceptives as a means to prevent infections. And that just doesn't make any sense to me," Herman says.
Parental Connection is Key
What does make sense to Herman is teaching young people that they have a choice, and that they have it in themselves to make the right choice, based on God's loving guidelines. In his book Time for a Pure Revolution (Tyndale, 2004), the author tells parents they can empower their children to fight the sexual battle and protect their future.
Herman cites a government study in which researchers looked at five different risk behaviors among teens: drug and alcohol use, sexual behavior, teen violence, juvenile delinquency, and tobacco use. And what the study revealed, he notes, is that parents make a huge difference.
According to the popular speaker, the researchers conducting the study discovered that "the number-one thing to prevent your teenager from being involved in these risk behaviors is what they called parent-teen connectedness."
Herman explains that this means more than being present. Connectedness is "not just that you're home all the time; that doesn't matter," he says. "It's concrete actions that show [your children] that you care, that they matter to you."
Doug Herman travels widely and addresses these and other pro-family issues with adults and youth at churches, religious events, and marriage and family conferences. And since 1991 Herman has been speaking internationally to public high school students about sexual postponement until marriage, conducting more than 1,500 assemblies and reaching well over a million teenagers.
