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We’re being a little bit passive-aggressive about it, but Washington State is about to become roughly the 15th state to forego federal abstinence-only “sex-education” funding.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has the story.

OLYMPIA — The Bush administration is cutting off funding for abstinence-only sex education in Washington because this state now requires schools to provide additional, medically accurate information about preventing unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Up until this year, the state has received an annual $800,000 federal grant for abstinence-only sex education. The money was used to produce and air public service announcements as well as developing abstinence-only curriculums for schools.

The programs had been used in many cases alongside more comprehensive sex education programs taught at the discretion of individual school districts.

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This year, however, the Legislature passed a law that makes comprehensive sex education compulsory for all schools.

Read the rest of the article here.

Speaking of passive-aggressiveness, though, the Feds could be a little less squirrelly as well.

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell, sponsored the bill and was unapologetic about forgoing the money.

“I’m not chasing the dollar,” she said. “The state of Washington made its decision; we did as a Legislature, that we believe kids ought to be taught a comprehensive sex education with abstinence-only included in that program.

“If the federal government will not agree to that and will not fund it because we aren’t doing that, I guess that’s too bad. I wish they would look at a balance because that’s what kids need.”

Since comprehensive sex-education tends to teach young people to wait till they’re actually ready instead of when they’re just “too horny” and/or “too captured by the romance of the moment” to stop, my guess is that the loss of $800,000 for a failed curriculum funding could result in a marginal savings for overall State savings.