Texas Governor Rick Perry is toying with a run for president. Perry is a skilled politician and has never lost an election, but he has taken an increasingly antiscience turn in his approach to governing. On global warming he now says that the leading source of "supposedly deadly carbon dioxide" is the mouth of Al Gore. On education he has appointed creationists to lead the Texas State Board of Education. And on the issue of sex ed in Texas, Perry has taken governing positions that affect millions of children based on his own personal opinions, even when those opinions are overwhelmingly contradicted by the evidence.
Texas lawmakers cut sex ed from two six-month courses to a single unit of "abstinence only" education. But early indications showed that the program wasn't working. In fact, teens in almost all high school grades were having more sex after undergoing the abstinence only program. By 2007, Texas had the highest teen birth rate in the nation.
Nevertheless, the program continued. By 2009, 94 percent of Texas schools, which at the time were educating more than 3.7 million students, were giving no sex ed whatsoever beyond "abstinence only," a curriculum that includes emphasizing that birth control doesn't work.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shawn-lawrence-otto/rick-perry-abstinence_b_904115.html
