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Monday, January 30, 2006

No Sex, No Problems

Posted by on January 30 at 15:58 PM

That’s the line of reasoning put forth by a new ad campaign concocted by the Washington State Department of Health, designed to promote abstinence among Washington’s horny, horny kids.

To its credit, the ad campaign claims to be aiming its message on the value of delaying sex at “youth between 10 and 14”—who, call me old fashioned, really shouldn’t be having sex yet.

But with icky-poo commercials such as this, the end result looks like more fear-based, hyper-simplistic bullshit.

Sure, there’s an argument to be made that, during the tumultuous years of puberty, super-simplistic reasons for postponing sex are exactly what kids need. But our well-funded government groups have to be able to do better than this…


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My 11 year old saw this commercial and said, "I hope the teacher doesn't read that note in front of the whole class!" Followed by, "What are Herpes anyway?"
I think it came on while she was watching cartoons. She falls in their age target, and I think the commercial went right over her head. She thought it was about not passing notes in class.
I guess it did force me to explain to her what Herpes are. hmmmm...

Herpes are what bad little children who don't eat their vegetables and do what they're told get. ;}

Hey, where'd this site go? When I clicked the link nosexnoproblems.com, it said it's "coming soon", no pun intended I'm sure.

Well, whaddya know? The site, the videos, it's all VANISHED.

overloaded by hits? a computer glitch? civic embarrassment?

when i find out, i'll let you know...

I wanna see! I wanna see!

Google's cache indicates that the site was successfully crawled as recently as yesterday morning.

I found a DOH press release (number 05-037) that referenced the site and e-mailed the contacts (Parijat Nandi and Deanna Whitman) about its disappearance. If I receive a response I'll followup here.

Alright, I just talked to DOH's Paj Nandi on the phone, and he told me that most likely that the site's being updated--new commercials being added, etc--suggesting the timing of Slog post-to-site-vanishing is just a coincidence. (Which seems perfectly reasonable, as I doubt media attention is the kind of thing that drives public outreach programs to shut down.)


I saw it. Something that I found disturbing is that this girl is basically gossiping about some poor guy's supposed sexual/medical history. So let's say he does or doesn't have herpes, does he now have to stand up in front of the whole school to clear his name? How horrible.

In 1994, when I was the editor of my high school paper in Portland, I faced off with the (conservative, Catholic) principal over a paid ad submitted to the paper. The message was something like "Be safe. Be smart. Use birth control." He said it contradicted the district's "abstinence message. He won.

The ad campaign was created and paid for by the Oregon State Department of Health.

No response from DOH, but the site is back up.

Wow. Is this Washington's first Bush-funded abstinence campaign? Scary.

I am here to say hello and you have a great site!

Very interesting and professional site! Good luck!

It looks like you really had a nice time.

Very interesting and professional site! Good luck!

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