Amid all the impotent flailing on Conservapedia, I stumbled across this little gem of a wild assertion, in the stomach-turning essay Marry a Conservative:
"Marry a conservative. Benefits include:
* freedom from sexually transmitted diseases and their harm (including infertility)"
Really? Conservatives don't get STDs? Well if that's true, then we should see some really striking results if we, say, create a table of the states with the highest STD rates, and colour them according to whether they're Republican (red) or Democrat (blue)...
| Rank | Syphilis | Chlamydia | Gonorrhea |
| 1 | Louisiana (7.6) | Alaska (681.8) | Mississippi (257.1) |
| 2 | Alabama (7.0) | Mississippi (650.5) | South Carolina (242.5) |
| 3 | Georgia (6.4) | South Carolina (525.3) | Louisiana (240.6) |
| 4 | Nevada (5.7) | New Mexico (509.7) | Alabama (234.0) |
| 5 | Maryland (5.4) | Alabama (502.8) | Georgia (216.8) |
| 6 | California (5.1) | Hawaii (435.1) | North Carolina (199.4) |
| 7 | Texas (4.7) | Georgia (429.6) | Delaware (176.0) |
| 8 | Tennessee (4.2) | Delaware (428.6) | Missouri (175.9) |
| 9 | New Mexico (4.1) | Tennessee (424.6) | Ohio (167.4) |
| 10 | Florida (4.0) | Illinois (419.8) | Tennessee (162.6) |
(Cases per 100,000 population. Source: http://www.avert.org/stdstatisticusa.htm)
Edit: I don't claim this is a scientific analysis - if I was going to do it properly I'd correlate the percentage of Republican voters with the STD frequency, and investigate reporting bias. Nor is it even really a criticism of Republicanism. It's enough though to show that people like Schlafly are in a state of denial when it comes to making wild claims like the above.
http://layscience.net/trackback/159
These numbers are per 100,000 of the population as reported by state health departments. I don't know the ins and outs of health care in the US but couldn't there be some discrepancy on how often the state health departments report STDs?
I left that off by accident, thanks for spotting.
I don't claim this is a scientific analysis - if I was going to do it properly I'd correlate the percentage of Republican voters with the STD frequency, and investigate reporting bias. Nor is it even really a criticism of Republicanism. It's enough though to show that people like Schlafly are in a state of denial when it comes to making wild claims like the above.
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In accordance with observation, I feel that entry may be used to prove that editing Conservapedia is one of the symptoms of late-stage hereditary syphillis.
And I think the word before "flailing" should be spelt "impotent."
I think there is a correlation between the Republican-Right preference for abstitnence only education that either omits or lies about contraceptives. Then you have kids (and others, naturally) following their biological urges and having unprotected sex. If you add a disease or two to the mix, there you have it.
Republican or not, those are some scary high numbers.
4 to 6% of all people in some area have Chlamydia? That a pretty scary high number.
Of course, if people are going to shun you for having an STD, I guess it's explainable why it's twice as high as in the rest of the first world.
PS, it's spelled "Gonorrhea". 1 N, 2 Rs
Duplicate removed.
Funnily enough I just copied and pasted the titles from my source, which spelt it wrong too!
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I've heard a lot about the links between abstinence policies and STDs and pregnancy. I'm tempted to do a more formal comparison with the "religiousness" of states...
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I enjoyed the "case studies". Particularly the one where poor Ralph suffers because he wants to divorce a liberal but his church won't permit it.
Of course the only solution to this is sort of problem is to not marry liberals.
The rates fotr under age sexual *activity* (not just the obvious pregnancies) are also higher where abstinence are taught instead of sex-education... I can't find the figures now, but it is ironic.
Yes, I heard that too, I have the paper sitting around somewhere, and I may do an entry on it soon.
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