Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks posted this over the weekend, a reminder of that which journalists should not have to be reminded:

The media isn't supposed to be neutral - it is supposed to be objective. There is an enormous difference between the two. And this is a difference that has been lost on the mainstream media for quite awhile now.

Conservatives have shouted from the rooftops that the media isn't being fair to them when they report news that shows conservatives in a bad light.

But it isn't the media's job to decide what is and is not fair to any political party. Their job is to report the news -- whatever it might be.

Republicans have pulled a very effective switcheroo on the press, substituting the concept of neutrality for objectivity. Whenever the press dares to report something that does not reflect well on the Republican Party, it gets accused of having a "bias." As Stephen Colbert would say, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

If the media reports on a story objectively and it does damage to the Republicans, that is not a bias. That is a sad day for the Republican Party. The truth hurts. Of course, the same is true of the Democratic Party.

So, on this same weekend, we're reminded again that abstinence-only sex education doesn't work, and neither do abstinence pledges:

BOSTON — Virginity pledges, in which young people vow to abstain from sex until marriage, have little staying power among those who take them, a Harvard study has found.

More than half of the adolescents who make the signed public promises give up on their pledges within a year, according to the study released last week.

The findings have raised the ire of Concerned Women for America, a prominent conservative organization that advocates adolescent sexual abstinence.

"The Harvard report is wrong," said Janice Crouse, a fellow at a Concerned Women for America think tank.

"This study is in direct contradiction with trends we have been seeing in recent years," Crouse said. "Those who make virginity pledges have shown greater resolve to save sex for marriage."

Ladies Against Women self-describes itself as "outraged," which is apt because they're outraged over everything that's happened since 1903, by the "misleading" Harvard study. Why is it misleading? Because the Ladies Against Women CWA knows it's wrong!

“This new ‘finding’ by Harvard is misleading and deceptive. Those who have committed to saving sex for marriage are to be congratulated and encouraged,” said Dr. Janice Crouse, CWA’s Senior Fellow of the Beverly LaHaye Institute. “This study is in direct contradiction with the trends we have been seeing in recent years –– both teen pregnancies and teen abortions are down, and evidence indicates these trends are related to increased abstinence among teens."

Well, no, the evidence does not suggest that. In fact, the CWA cannot produce any scientific evidence showing that these trends (if they exist) are tied to abstinence or to virginity pledges. So Harvard conducted an actual scientific study to find out the actual scientific facts. Guess what?

For the Harvard report, researcher Janet Rosenbaum analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a survey conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. It is the only government-sponsored study that asks about virginity pledges.

The 14,000 survey subjects were interviewed in 1995 and reinterviewed in 1996 and 2001. They ranged in age from 12 to 18 and came from across the country.

Rosenbaum found that 52% of those who said they had signed virginity pledges had had sex within a year. And of those who had sex after telling the first interviewers they had taken the pledge, 73% denied in the second interview having made the pledge.

"This may indicate that they are not that closely affiliated with the pledge," Rosenbaum said.

The adolescents also were unreliable in reporting their sexual experiences, Rosenbaum said. More than a quarter of nonvirgins in the first interview who later took a virginity pledge said in the next interview that they had never had sex.

"That puts a lot of error in these studies," Rosenbaum said. Virginity pledgers, she concluded, "are more likely to give bad information — unreliable data — about their sexual history."

Medical testing is a more reliable gauge of adolescent sexual activity than their own reporting, Rosenbaum said.

No matter how much the LAW want to keep Teh Sex from happening, it does - and that tremendous pressure they put on teenagers not to have sex until LAW-Approved Heterosexual Marriage only means that they have Teh Sex and lie about it. Read this again:

Rosenbaum found that 52% of those who said they had signed virginity pledges had had sex within a year. And of those who had sex after telling the first interviewers they had taken the pledge, 73% denied in the second interview having made the pledge.

Emphasis added, in case the LAW missed it. When the kids were interviewed and admitted they'd been sexually active, thinking that their responses wouldn't be tracked, they just said they'd never made the pledge in the first place.

Every scientific study conducted by actual scientists using actual data shows that abstinence-only sex education does not work. The CDC was preparing a panel to go over these facts and try to figure out what to do, especially when faced by shrieking conservatives demanding that they pretend Teh Sex simply does not exist.

However, scientific reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Researchers organizing a federal panel on sexually transmitted diseases say the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed a congressman to include two abstinence-only proponents, bypassing the scientific approval process.

Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., who chairs the House subcommittee on drug policy, questioned the balance of the original panel, which focused on the failure of abstinence-until-marriage programs. In e-mail to Health and Human Services officials, his office asked whether the CDC was "clear about the controversial nature of this session and its obvious anti-abstinence objective."

Last week the title of the panel was changed and two members were replaced. One of them was a Penn State student who was going to talk about how abstinence programs were tied to rising STD rates.

The panel is to be held Tuesday at the National STD Prevention Conference in Jacksonville, Fla.

"It was clear that there was not a scintilla of something positive about the abstinence education method," said Michelle Gress, counsel for Souder on the subcommittee.

Guess what, Ms. Gress? It's not the CDC's job to say "something positive" about the abstinence education method when science proves it does not work. It's the CDC's job to tell the truth, but it seems that you and your boss can't abide that.

Scientists have complained about increasing government interference. Last year, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration officials told coordinators of a conference on suicide prevention to remove the words gay, lesbian and bisexual from its program and add a session on faith-based suicide prevention.

This was the first time, conference organizers said, that a single politician had so clearly interfered and achieved such dramatic results. The concern, they said, was that studies on sexual behavior would not be made public if they jarred with the administration's views on abstinence and other public-health issues.

"At the CDC, they're beside themselves," said Jonathan Zenilman, president of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association and conference organizer. "These people aren't scientists; they haven't written anything. The only reason they're here is because of political pressure from the administration."

Neither of the new speakers -- Patricia Sulak, an ob/gyn and director of the Worth the Wait program, and Eric Walsh, a California physician -- went through the peer-review process required of other participants, although CDC officials did not explain why. Both panelists were funded by the HHS, although others said they were told they had to pay their own way.

John Douglas, director of the CDC's STD program, declined repeated requests for an interview.

A CDC spokeswoman said she did not know the details but summed up the situation:

"It's real simple," Karen Hunter said. "It was unbalanced before. And now it's not."

Guess what, Ms. Hunter? It's not the CDC's job to balance facts with fiction. It's the CDC's job to find and explain the facts. If you can't accept that, you and everyone you work for should get out of public service and into a seminary where you belong.

There's a place for faith in the world, but it's not in peer-reviewed scientific research. If reality is too much for your sensibilities, have the courtesy to withdraw from it and find a quiet retreat somewhere instead of risking the lives and health of others.