The PC(USA) has a sexuality curriculum that takes Planned Parenthood’s approach of comprehensive sex education. The curriculum gives a nod to marriage as the best context for sexual expression, but assumes that youth will be sexually active and need to be encouraged to use contraception. The curriculum also encourages acceptance of homosexual relationships and wants youth to know that the church endorses the choice of abortion.

Stretching back into the 1990s, several G.A.s have instructed the offices of the General Assembly Council to rewrite the sexuality curriculum to conform to biblical and constitutional teaching on sexuality. The rewrite has not happened and the unchanged curriculum continues to be available to churches.

Baltimore’s overture would be consistent with the teaching of the curriculum as it now stands, but not with the instruction of the several G.A.s.

The numbers associated with teen sexuality are surprising, but even more surprising is the effect that families and churches appear to have on the reversal among teens in decisions regarding their sexuality.

The consequences were reflected in pregnancies, births and abortions. There were 59,000 births to unmarried teens in 1950 and 522,000 in 1990. Abortions in teens in 1970 were virtually non-existent. There were 364,000 abortions to teenagers in 1990.

Using federal funding and Planned Parenthood’s comprehensive sex education approach, schools opened birth control clinics and later dispensed condoms freely.

In the mid-1990s there was a push to encourage youth to save sex for marriage. Programs emphasizing sexual purity, like True Love Waits and PPL’s Pure Hearts! Pure Lives! became popular. Various versions of abstinence programs are now taught in schools and churches. The impact of the abstinence message appears to have reversed the course of teen sexuality, out-of-wedlock-babies and abortion.

The Centers for Disease Control reports that since 1990 the percentage of sexually-active teenagers has fallen from 54% to 46% with the greatest drop among males. There was a 28% decline in teen pregnancies. Teen birth rates and abortions also declined during this period. The shift is dramatic. Adolescent and Family Health, a scientific, peer-reviewed journal, reported in 2003 that the majority of the decline in the teen pregnancy rate is due to abstinence.

Parents favor abstinence programs. Sixty-eight percent favor teaching teens that those who remain abstinent until mar-riage have the best chances of marital stability and happiness. Ninety-one per-cent want their children to be taught that sex should be linked to the type of love and commitment found in marriage. The prefer-ences are consistent with the Scripture’s teaching on abstinence until marriage. It promotes not only healthy youth, but also relationships that please God.