Today we start a two episode series that Annika has been wanting to cover since the podcast began! We're journeying today down the rabbit hole inside the purity culture social phenomenon of the 1990s and early 2000s, situated within evangelical Christianity. While today we are mostly covering exactly what this movement was, the larger arc this lives inside is the way that this impacts not only the impact to the wellness world but also to the larger culture, especially within the US where this originated. Join us for part 2 next time!
Joshua Harris in USA today
The Kevin James Thornton clip we watch on Instagram
Those poor Disney Channel kids
**** As promised, the boring laws and funding amounts that Annika summarized
In 1981 the US government passed the Adolescent Family Life Act, or AFLA, a US federal law that provided federal funding to both public and non-profit private religious organizations to counsel adolescents to abstain from sex until marriage.
Under AFLA, from 1981 to 1988, the government gave more than $100 million US taxpayer dollars to religious organizations, that used the funding to teach abstinence-only education classes and in total, we’ve seen over $210 million tax dollars under this program specifically to abstinence-only teachings.
1996 brought the additional funding from Title V of the Welfare Reform Act, in which the abstinence-only-until-marriage program was authorized for five years and then continually re-upped each year until 2009.
So from 1998-2009 it paid out $50 million in tax dollars a year – so $550 million – to abstinence only programs.
In addition, we get the yet another funding stream to support abstinence-only until-marriage programs starting in 2001, which were rewarded directly to community organizations and churches.
$20 million a year from 2001-2006 ($100M)
$113 million a year from 2006-2008 (226)
$99 million in 2009
For a total of $425 million.
In 2010, the Obama administration cut all finding to these community organization grants.
They also passed the affordable care act, which people now call Obamacare, and the Senate added on Title V at the final passing of the bill and this extension totaled $250 million for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for a five-year period (2010–2014).
Then there was another $50 million in 2015, and $75 million per year in 2016 and 2017. We also get the introduction in 2012 of a new discretionary fund, that specifically supports grants in 15 states, which was an additional $185 million from 2012-2022.
Human Rights Watch
Impacts of State Level Funding
Guttmatcher Fact Sheet
Siecus Funding Analysis
Abstinence and the Politics of Sex Ed
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