In “Critics of abstinence-until-marriage program off base,” Errico misrepresents the argument about why Volusia public schools should eliminate the Pure Energy program. I clearly don’t advocate casual sex with multiple partners – or that teenagers have sex at all.  Instead, I oppose that students receive politico-religious propaganda from a church-based organization that uses its abstinence-only federal funding to subsidize its ministry. Errico provides no evidence to validate the effectiveness a program that affects thousands of children and has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or any evidence to demonstrate that Pure Energy has helped anyone but the “pro-life” pregnancy center that surreptitiously received much of its federal funds.

Errico comically claims that the program doesn’t use a fear-based approach and “takes an upbeat tone” and then encourages readers to pick-up the book Epidemic: How Teen Sex is Killing Our Kids. Errico asserts that she could cite studies in favor of abstinence-only but fails to do so, referring instead to a 2007 Orlando Sentinel article, which upon scrutiny does not support her own point.

Like Pure Energy itself, Errico uses platitudes and hollow generalizations to make an argument that is unsustainable on its merits. She does confirm that the program teaches marriage as a benefit that only heterosexuals can enjoy. We are under no obligation in Volusia County to teach students this kind of narrow-mindedness and intolerance, particularly from an organization that appears to be totally ineffective in doing anything but devaluing a large segment of the unmarried population, undermining individual parent’s beliefs about sex and marriage, and insulting our children’s intelligence, all while it squanders our taxpayer dollars.