Abstinence advocate calls on CBS to apologize

Kathryn Morris stars as Lilly Rush in the CBS crime drama 'Cold Case' (Courtesy CBS)

The leader of an organization that advocates abstinence is demanding CBS apologize for portraying Christian members of an abstinence club as sexually active hypocrites who stone another member to death.

"CBS should apologize to America for its reckless episode," said Leslee Unruh, president of National Abstinence Clearinghouse.

"With visibility comes responsibility, and CBS didn't take that into account when airing this tainted show. Abstinence education works."

The episode at issue is of the CBS crime show "Cold Case," which depicts presumably devout Christian teens in an abstinence club as sexually active hypocrites who literally stone a member to keep their sins secret. It aired last weekend.

The Culture and Media Institute, a defender of traditional values, said the episode was "a ham-handed attempt to influence this fall's congressional debate on abstinence education programs. The show also depicts abstinence-only education as useless, if not actively harmful." The Culture and Media Institute is a division of the Media Research Center.

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"Hollywood likes to claim their programming simply reflects reality, but the latest episode of 'Cold Case' was an exercise in bigoted, Christophobic fantasy," wrote the institute's Colleen Raezler.

"One of the largest and most comprehensive studies of teen sex education, conducted by Dr. Stan Weed of the Institute for Research and Evaluation, shows why abstinence is the most successful method of preventing physical and emotional complications resulting from pre-marital sexual activity," said Unruh. "The study followed the education and behavior of over 400,000 adolescents in 30 different states for 15 years. If CBS broadcasted an episode in which a comprehensive sex education club advisor took advantage of a minor, this country/the media would be in an uproar."

The episode focused on the unsolved murder of a promiscuous 15-year-old and also has a youth pastor encouraging a girl to "confess" her impure dreams to him as he masturbates.

In the episode, a Philadelphia homicide unit, with new clues, reopens the 1998 murder of Carrie Swett, who had joined the abstinence club, Hearts Wait, just before her death.

Carrie eventually learns the club members aren't who they claim to be. Tina, the outspoken president, apparently is carrying on a sexual relationship with the youth pastor, Nathan, who oversees the club.

In a flashback scene, Carrie confronts Tina and encourages her to stop meeting alone with the youth pastor.

Tina replies, "You're just some slut with a whore for a mother."

Carrie also tells a young man who fears he's homosexual and two teens who are sleeping together that there is nothing wrong with their feelings or actions.

In the program's opening scene, a high school health teacher tells her class, "Now if school policy allowed me to do so, I would tell you how these methods of birth control can be used and what they do. But I cannot. I would be fired."

Another scene has Laurie, a product of abstinence education, asking Carrie how to determine whether she is pregnant, implying abstinence programs leave teens ignorant.

Unruh, whose Abstinence Clearinghouse is a non-profit educational organization that promotes the appreciation for and practice of sexual abstinence through distribution of age-appropriate, factual and medically-accurate materials, said it couldn't have been a coincidence that Congress is preparing to review funding for abstinence programs across the nation.

"I am deeply saddened by CBS' actions. Abstinence education works. This classless episode was obviously not researched or well thought-out. I wish CBS could see how it hurts America's youth when it broadcast such lies," Unruh said.

"Despite the propaganda that CBS attempts to disseminate, I believe that Congress will make the right decisions – ones that support abstinence education. No classless television script can change the facts. Abstinence education protects America's youth," she said.

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