So Much for the Bible (Chastity) Belt

The pot-stirring USA Today had an article yesterday about how Texas is leading the nation in the number of teens who are having multiple children. Texas overall has come to seem like a pretty dysfunctional place (islands of beauty and creativity and enlightenment as revealed by Flow Blue Bud notwithstanding), and it tops the list for many of society's blemishes.

But it's not just Texas, of course. Sam Harris, among others, has hit on this same subject: the places most strongly under the control of the religious right are those furthest from the markers of civilization (and that often applies to countries as well). The numbers for illiteracy, murder, assault, robbery, teen pregnancy, and even abortion seem directly linked to the redness of the state.

Sam Harris talks in his book Letter to a Christian Nation about the church's teaching in sexual matters (and, more specifically, about the policies of an administration bent on mandating the church's views in our schools), and the effect this thinking has on the country as a whole:

American teenagers engage in about as much sex as teenagers in the rest of the developed world, but American girls are four to five times more likely to become pregnant, have a baby, or to get an abortion. Young Americans are also far more likely to be infected by HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rate of gonorrhea among American teens is seventy times higher than it is among their peers in the Netherlands and France. The fact that 30% of our sex-education programs teach abstinence only (at a cost of more than $200 million a year) surely has something to do with this.

The USA Today article offers the following statistics from 2004:

• 22-24% of teen births were not the mother's first in the following states: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia.
• The next tier was for the 20-21% range: Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, the Carolinas.
• The rate was 17-19% for Western states (minus Wyoming), the Midwest, and the Rust Belt.
• The lowest rate, 12-16%, was reserved for North Dakota, Wyoming, and that hopeless bastion of liberalism and moral decay, New England.

The whole issue seems reflective of our schizophrenic interface with sexuality. On the one hand commercial interests are maniacally eager to exploit sexual themes and imagery for monetary gain, while on the other hand society at large remains very squeamish about simply educating kids about the thing that occupies--by design!--a huge part of the teen-age brain. It just all seems an indictment of our educational system, and the state-by-state color map is almost a temperature indicator for how well the nation's schools are working.

This Red State / Blue State stuff was covered brilliantly by James Wolcott a year ago in Vanity Fair. I'll leave off with some statistics culled from the article:

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, of the 10 states with the highest number of total inmates per 100,000 residents in 2003, 9 were red. Of the 10 states with the most female inmates per 100,000 residents that same year, all were red. (Conversely, of the 10 states with the lowest incarceration rates of female prisoners, 9 were blue.)...

Red states have a near monopoly on capital punishment. Since 1976, the highest number of executions have been carried out in red states, with Texas—no surprise—ranking No. 1 on the hit parade...

Red States dominate the rankings of violent crimes despite their emphasis on judgment and incarceration.

Red states...account for all of the top 15 states in rates of death by firearms (2003).

Of the 15 states with the highest adjusted rates of suicide (2003), 14 are red.

The 10 states in the union with the highest divorce rates in 2004 (among the 45 states for which figures are available) were all red.

Illegitimacy rates? According to the National Center for Health Statistics, of states with the highest percentages of births in 2003 to unwed mothers, 9 of the top 10 were red.

According to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, supported by the C.D.C., in 2004 14 of the 15 states with the highest percentage of obesity were red. Moreover, there is a correlation between corpulence and economic deprivation. Based on a three-year average of obesity rates, "the five states with the highest obesity rates—Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana and Kentucky—exhibit much higher rates of poverty than the national norm," the Associated Press reported in August. All five states are red states.

It's an open question as to which is the chicken and which the egg: are the states less educated / more religious because they're poorer, or are they poor because they lack good education? One thing seems certain: we will not be lead toward the light by a particular former Governor of Texas.