Remember Derek The Abstinence Clown?

Derek Dye is a trained clown who is paid by taxpayer-funded

abstinence-only groups to go into middle school classrooms and juggle,

telling kids that having sex with condoms is like juggling machetes and

pre-marital sex will destroy all of your life’s dreams.

Well, meet Keith Deltano: America’s new Abstinence Clown.

Deltano is a “comedian” who is paid by abstinence-only programs to

perform for students all over the country. And what does this

“performance” consist of? Take a look:

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That’s right, as you can see at 1:00 into the video above, he tells

(and shows) kids that if you use a condom, there is a 30% chance that

your genitals will virtually be smashed by a cinder block wielding

lunatic.

This is sex education? Further, this is sex education that our tax dollars should go to?

As SEICUS

has documented, Deltano’s performances are full of messages of fear and

shame, misleading statistics, and biased views of gender stereotypes

that aren’t doing students any good at all.

One of the most common themes among his performances is that students

are stupid fools who aren’t responsible enough to make their own

decisions. He commonly states “Talking about safe sex is like telling a

5-year-old not to eat any cookies”, adding “here’s a jar, have a

napkin”. In other words, young people are too stupid to learn about

safe sex without immediately thinking that they should have sex in

response to this.

Deltano also insults the intelligence of young women by discouraging

the use of birth control pills. He refers to oral contraception as “the

wheely thingy” and suggests that they are too complicated for young

women too use properly.

And then there is the distortion of facts about condoms that he uses to

discourage their use among students. He commonly says that condoms have

a 10-30% failure rate. What he fails to mention is that the CDC says

that when condoms are used correctly they are highly effective at

preventing HIV. The FDA also says that when condoms are used correctly,

they are 97% effective at preventing pregnancies. But Deltano has no

problem intentionally deceiving students on this matter.

Deltano also encourages the gender stereotypes of young women as

disinterested in sex and only caring about being married, and young men

as crazy, uncontrollable sex addicts. Women are always the passive

agents when it comes to sex. They are all characterized as

disinterested in sex, only wanting love and marriage. As Deltano says

after describing boys as dumb, uncontrollable sex addicts, “Girls, you

want a ring on your finger.” Men, on the other hand, must prove their

manhood by “protecting girls from their (the men’s) sexual desires” and

not “meeting any of your own needs until you meet your family’s needs.”

In other words, decisions on whether or not to have sex are exclusively

in the hands of men, who are then solely responsible for their family’s

needs. Young women are merely asexual passive beings who are supposed

to stay pure, with the help of “real men” who control their dirty

lustful thoughts.

These fear and shame tactics, misleading statistics, and biased gender

roles are par for the course when it comes to

abstinence-only-until-marriage programs all over the country. These

programs have milked the federal government out of $1.5 billion

dollars, with no positive results to show for it.

President Obama is currently finalizing the details of his 2010 fiscal

budget, and he has a golden opportunity to strike a blow against these

harmful, ineffective programs by zeroing out their finding.

Please send him this letter urging him to zero out abstinence-only programs.

And let your Congressperson know that whatever Obama ultimately decides on, we can’t afford to continue to fund these programs.

We are at a critical juncture in our goal of ending abstinence-only

funding. Please let Obama and Congress know that we can’t afford to

leave the sex education of young people in the hands of abstinence

clowns like Derek Dye and Keith Deltano. America’s youth need and deserve much better.