In Wednesday's New York Times a front-page story on abstinence-only "education," its failures, fans, and motives, the movement's leaders have perfect names: Mr. Rector, Mr. Love and Jamie Waite, the group's poster child. Mr. Love travels around East Texas in a Virginity Van (if this vans a rockin, someone is definitely trapped inside so please call for help). He also comes up with relationship advice that would turn anyone off sex (people who have sex before marrying are doomed to divorce, says Love, "Because they gave the stickiness away.") Blech.

Mr. Rector, on the other hand, reveals that protecting teens from pregnancy or disease is not the point; it's delivering them to early marriage (then Mr. Love will gross them out). "Once you understand [marriage] is the principal issue," Rector proclaims, "You understand that handing out condoms to a 17-year-old is utterly irrelevant."

Much ink has been spent documenting how over a billion dollars spent on abstinence-until-marriage programs has failed to affect sexual initiation for teens. In fact, just the opposite is true. Teens aren't waiting to have sex, they're waiting to marry. What we have is a no-marriage-until-sex protocol in practice. 95% of people have sex before marriage (it's just those few trapped inside the Virginity Van who don't.) And not only is it reality, it's good news too. Delaying sex until marriage results in early marriage (and that's for the lucky ones) and early marriage results in divorce; at least that's what the figures show. Christian values have nothing to do with a successful marriage either--when last checked the highest rate of divorce in the US was in the The Bible Belt. So, to those who have used our public schools and our public money, to mislead teens about protection, to scare them away from the condom, and to wax on about the Creator, all in the service of promoting a "healthy" marriages---a wiser investment would have been to find ways to delay the age of betrothal and steer people clear of Christian fundamentalism. That's what you'd do if you're eager to see marriages last.

But at least they have one convert in Jamie Waite. She's heading off to college now to become a nurse, and if the right wing that has invested over a billion dollars of our money to convince, what appears to be, her alone gets lucky, she'll soon be denying a rape victim emergency contraception.