Ethical Teachings?

By: Audrey, Morgan, and Sam
In “Selling Safe Sex in Public Schools”, it talks about Shelby Knox, a student at The University of Texas at Austin, who has pledged abstinence until marriage. Being from Lubbock, she was shocked to find that Lubbock had some of the highest rates of STDs and teen pregnancy in the nation.  Knox decided that she wanted to help out her community not by just sharing her pledge of abstinence but by helping others who didn’t necessarily make that choice that she did. This article is very interesting in the fact that despite multiple people going against her, Knox decided to stick to what she wanted to accomplish. Knox felt like she was responsible to speak out to others, and got no help or attention from others. Knox began to head the youth commission, and overall with the program STD and pregnancy rates in Lubbock started to decrease. However, even with this decrease, she still faced criticism, and the mayor of Lubbock ultimately ended the funding for the program. As the program diminished, the STD and pregnancy rates once again started to increase. Even though she has resigned from the program, Knox still continued her work, and hoped to be able to further reach out to teens, even though what she was doing was still very controversial. 
 Our Group believes that what Knox was trying to do ethical in that even though she had pledged to be abstinent and she was in a subject where most people aren’t necessarily making the same decisions, she’s doing it for the good of others. She still has personal experiences to share with others, and she did in fact obviously make some sort of an impact on teens with the decrease of STDs and pregnancies. It seemed unfair for Knox to be getting criticism from her community, even though she was abstinent, because it was for the greater good. Since she did grow up a Southern Christian, it was brave of her to go against her beliefs and the views and feelings of others towards her work just to help out these teenagers. Overall, even though she faced criticism she did the right thing for the goodwill of her community, and hopefully will be able to continue to reach out to teenagers facing problems.