The Arizona Daily Star has it:

PHOENIX - State health officials are sending a new message to Arizona teens: Abstain from sex - or at least use a condom.

The commercials, purchased with state lottery and tobacco tax dollars, are a significant departure from prior efforts of the Arizona Department of Health Services. Until now, each of those strategies, including extensive TV ads, had a single focus: Just say no.

...

A 2003 study done for the state Department of Education found that 29 percent of ninth-graders said they have had sex. That figure rose to more than 61 percent for seniors.

Yet two-thirds of freshmen said they used a condom the last time they had sex; that figure was less than 53 percent for seniors.

Until this year Arizona had only state and federal dollars for pregnancy-prevention programs, which, by law, could be used only to promote abstinence. But the new lottery and tobacco proceeds, which have no such strings, provided $437,745 to produce and air the new commercials briefly this spring and again now as students go back to school.

There also are billboards in neighborhoods the health department identified as having high rates of teen pregnancy.

This is absolutely the right thing to do. Unfortunately, it may be too little too late for many Arizona teens.

The right wing sexphobes who have a stranglehold on our legislature have forced their sex-negative views on the state for years, insisting that young people will just not have sex if we sufficiently scare them enough. Wishing something almost never makes it so.

Comprehensive sexuality education has consistently been proven far more effective than abstinence-only education in reducing teen birth and STI rates. The only thing keeping these life-saving messages from reaching the ears of Arizona's young people is a small group of misguided idealogues who would rather live in a fantasy world where nobody has sex before marriage because it's sick or bad or unholy.

Sex can be very healthy and positive and safe and fulfilling, whether before, during or after marriage.

The sexphobes' arguments hold no water:

The new campaign displeases Rep. Laura Knaperek, R-Tempe, one of the legislators involved in the 1999 launch of the Sex Can Wait campaign. She said if the state wants to keep teens from getting pregnant, "then the message should be: Stop, don't do it," even for those who already are sexually active.

Yes, because you can really tell a horny teenager not to do something and expect him to listen. Sometimes I wonder how old these people were before they first got laid.

And this gem from stuffed shirt Mark Anderson (R-Mesa):

"It's better to send a clear message and not a mixed message," he said. Anderson said the same people who get the abstinence-only program in school are also viewing the new commercials.

"Now the message they get is, well, we don't really expect you to be abstinent," he said.

No, the message is clearly that abstinence is the first choice, but we're not stupid and we know that teenagers and sex have gone together like peanut butter and jelly since time immemorial. This is their fallback talking point whenever anyone challenges the scientific credibility of abstinence-only education. The even clearer message here is that Republicans don't think people can follow a logical progression.

A woman who actually knows what she's talking about, Patricia Jo Angelini, director of the Arizona Coalition on Adolescent Pregnancy and Planning, can and does follow the logical progression:

"Youth need to hear that it is good to wait as long as possible" because of pregnancy and disease. "They also need to understand that when the time comes in their life they're going to have sex, they need to be responsible."

I thought Republicans were the party of "personal responsibility." Their rhetoric clearly puts the lie to that assumption.

We should all contact the Arizona Department of Health Services and thank them for doing the right thing.