Pam Stenzel: Summary

In the video “Sex Still Has a Price Tag,” Pam Stenzel, a self-described “world renown” abstinence educator, delivers two 40-plus-minute monologues to a studio audience of high school students.  Walking an empty stage, Stenzel, who attended Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, comes across as somewhere between a stand-up comic and a televangelist.  She uses a preacher’s cadence and often yells at her audience in attempts to emphasize her points.  Throughout her presentation, Stenzel lowers her voice to a meek whine in a series of unflattering parodies of former clients and students whom she refers to as “little girls.”  

To ensure that her audience is sufficiently aware of the consequences of sex, Stenzel focuses on unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other negative outcomes of sex such as emotional pain and the inability to bond.  Her presentation relies on fear, promotes shame, and mandates decisions for young people. 

Relying On Negative Messages

Messages of Fear—Portraying Premarital Sex as Harmful

• “If you forget everything else I told you today, and you can only remember one thing, this is what I want to hear. If you have sex outside of one permanent monogamous—and monogamy does not mean one at a time—that means one partner who has only been with you—if you have sex outside of that context, you will pay.”
• “I have had to tell a lot of young girls that their [pregnancy] test was positive. Immediately they want an easy painless way out of this pregnancy they didn’t plan, and I have to look at this little girl and say guess what sweetheart, your choices at this point are bad, terrible, and even worse. You had a good choice, that was before you had sex, now all the choices you have are going to carry life-long consequences.”
• “Who’s to say the next time you decide to put this gun to your head [have sex] it doesn’t go off.”
• “No one has ever had sex with more than one partner and not paid.

The presentation hammers home the concept that “you will pay” for having sex by telling young people exactly what form this payment may take from unintended pregnancy, to STDs, to emotional heartbreak, to death.  Ms. Stenzel’s tone throughout her presentation can best be described as punitive, as though she knows that some of the teens in this world (and some members of her audience) have had or will have sex outside of her parameters, and she wants them to know that they will be punished. In reality, however, the rules she presents are based not on laws but on a set of conservative social values that are not universally held and her “punishments” are exaggerations designed to scare young people rather than help them think critically about their actions. 

Messages of Shame—Creating a Dichotomy between “Good” and “Bad” People

• “Why would a virgin want you? You think you can be a player then someday you can marry someone who respects themselves and respect you, you’re insane, crazy.”
• “Opposites never attract when it comes to character—you will get exactly what you are.”
• “…if you have stepped over this line [genital contact], you’ve risked disease, you’ve risked disease and you need to get tested and don’t you DARE tell anyone you’re a virgin. Don’t you dare.” 
• “I said young man, the next time your friends start to tease you because you’re saving yourself for your wife I want you to look at your friends and I want you to say this ‘Any day, tonight, I could choose to be like you but you will NEVER again be like me.’” 

Stenzel presents sex with more than one partner as the ultimate litmus test of a person’s moral character and not-so-subtly suggests that young people who have had sex have failed this test.  It is important to remember that 47% of high school students (and 63% of high school seniors) have had sexual intercourse.[1] It is irresponsible and potentially harmful to suggest that these young people lack character and integrity and are no longer “marriage” material.   

Distorting Information

Sexually Transmitted Diseases—Misleading Students

• “Ladies, you contract Chlamydia one time in your life, cure it or not, and there is about a 25 percent chance that you will be sterile for the rest of your life.”  (In fact, according to the CDC, only 40% of untreated cases of chlamydia lead to Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, and only 10% of acute cases of PID lead to infertility.[2]
• “Girls please hear this, this is primarily going to affect the girls, infertility, the ability to have children, has risen over 500 percent in 10 years… [many of the] girls who graduated from your high school in 1996 are just now finding out that they will never have children because of choices they made when they were sitting where you are.”(In fact, according to CDC data, infertility rates have remained unchanged.[3]
• “…you say marry me, by the way I’ve got genital warts, you’ll get it too, and we’ll both be treated for the rest of our lives in fact you’ll probably end up with a radical hysterectomy, cervical cancer, and possibly death but marry me.” (In fact, the majority of cases of HPV resolve spontaneously without causing genital warts or cervical cancer or requiring medical treatment.[4]
• “Who’s to say that the strain of HPV you get today won’t kill you but the one you get next week will.”
• “Students, STD testing cannot tell you what you don’t have. We can’t tell you what you don’t have.”

Rather than focusing on how STDs are transmitted, how young people can avoid these diseases, or what they should do should they suspect they have one, Stenzel chooses to focus her presentation on the inevitable life-altering consequences of contracting an STD.   And, rather than present testing as a responsible way to protect one’s future health, Stenzel discourages young people from being tested by treating it as a punishment and, worse, useless.  STDs are a serious public health problem and young people, whether they chose to be sexually active or not, need unbiased information that this presentation refuses to provide.  

Condoms and Contraception—Discouraging Use

• “Students, condoms aren’t safe. Never have been, never will be.”
• “That drug, that hormone, that pill, that shot, that this girl is taking has just made her 10 times more likely to contract a disease than if she were not taking that drug.  This girl could end up sterile or dead….Thanks mom.”
• “There is not a condom in the world that can protect your heart, your reputation, your character and your values.” 

Condoms were never intended to protect young people’s reputation or character, they were intended to prevent pregnancy and STDs and years of scientific research shows that they do this quite effectively.  Stenzel’s offhanded comments about condoms are neither educational nor helpful as they provide no information but may very well discourage young people from using condoms when they do become sexually active.  And, her suggestion that hormonal contraception increases risk for STDs has no basis in science and is clearly designed to scare young people rather than educate them. 

Mandating Decisions

Specific Advice—Discouraging Critical Thinking

• “I want you to understand that I did not come to your school, to your town, to decide for you what you’re going to do about sex. That’s not why I’m here.  I can’t make this choice for you. And I don’t intend to.”
• [No one] “under 16 should be dating ever ever ever for any reason. You’re brain damaged, it gets better.”

Throughout her highly biased presentation it becomes clear that Stenzel is merely paying lip service to teens as independent decision makers, and does not, in fact, view them as a capable of making their own choices.  Stenzel begins her presentation by suggesting that she is not here to make decisions for the young people in the audience but wants them to be informed in order to make their own decisions.  Young people would be better served by an educator who followed through on this idea and truly helped them think critically about sexuality. 

Pregnancy Options—Mandating Choices

• “I happen to think [adoption] is the most positive option a girl has.”
• “My biological father is a rapist. But my life isn’t worth any less than any of yours just because of the way I was conceived. And I did not deserve the death penalty because of the crime of my father.”
• “Alpha Women’s Center was founded for the purpose of assisting women who are experiencing unplanned pregnancies, saving the lives of the unborn, and ministering healing and hope to women exploited by abortion… We seek to lift up the name of Jesus Christ over everything we do.” (Stenzel is the former director of this crisis pregnancy center and directs young women who experience an unintended pregnancy to her website where they can find an organization like it in their area.)

While Stenzel is well within her rights to share her own background with young people, the way in which she reveals it is nothing short of manipulative.  By comparing herself to each audience member and referring to abortion as a personal “death penalty,” Stenzel practically dares her students to think otherwise.  Her past may be painful and it is understandable that pregnancy options are a very personal topic for her, nonetheless this does not give her license to mandate choices for others.  All women need to know that if they face an unintended pregnancy as a young person or an adult, they have options that are equally valid and available.  It is not the place of an educational program to choose for them.