Everywhere you turn, there’s study after study done on abstinence-only programs, and they always yield the same results: the programs are ineffective and a waste of taxpayer dollars—a waste of over $1.5 billion dollars, actually.

They don’t stop the spread of STDs. They don’t help prevent pregnancy. In fact, the U.S. teen pregnancy rate is even on the rise again—with about 745,000 pregnancies in young women under the age of 20 in 2004 alone.

Perhaps even more disturbing than having absolutely no bearing on whether or not teens will have sex, these programs also teach misleading, and even outright false, information. Some of the really scary things that teens are being taught include that abortion causes you to become sterile or to commit suicide, that half of the gay male teen population has AIDS, and even that touching one’s genitals alone can create a pregnancy. It’s really enough to make you sick to your stomach.

Yes, our schools teach a whole lot of gibberish and crap to indoctrinate us with a false sense of patriotism and who knows what else—just look up the details of Christopher Columbus, the first Thanksgiving, Paul Revere, and hundreds of other little national myths in any high school history textbook. But these facts—facts that can result in life-or-death situations for teens, now or even well into adulthood, are pretty damn important.

And yes, I concur with many people and agree that sex ed should be taught at home. My mother taught me, and in turn had me teach my sisters (the lesson that included putting a condom on a hairbrush is one that neither is likely to forget!). But the fact is, many parents don’t know that much about sex themselves; a lot of STDs that we encounter today are unfamiliar to them, and they also may not know the most recent data, birth control devices available, or other important information that teachers can distribute more widely within the classroom.

If you, too, are tired of these useless measures and false—even discriminatory—facts being taught, you can write your representative here (be sure to add your own comments if you like) to ask that these funds stop going toward these bogus programs. The House may be voting on a bill to end this funding as early as this week; it’s important that we get our comments to them as soon as possible and ask that they invest our tax dollars into better prevention programs instead.