If you love cheesy moralizing comics, good old-fashioned Christian values, and gratuitous semi-coherent biblical quotes, then you'll love TheTruthForYouth.com, an uber-Christian website that uses comics to warn of the dangers of (to name a few) peer pressure, pornography, homosexuality, rock music, and evolution.

      In each lovingly-drawn full-color comic, there's a troubled youth with inadequate parenting and a preachy Christian asshole who shows the light by quoting scripture (as, I'm sure we all know, the devil can do quite admirably) and who passes out "Truth For Youth" pamphlets at the end. (I don't see where they get off arguing the dangers of peer pressure, when that's exactly what they use to get people to see things their way. You know? Basically, the troubled youths' Christian PEERS PRESSURE them into listening to select bible quotes and crap.)

      As a hormonal teenage rag doll, my keenest interest was in the comics about sex.

Pornography: In this comic, a blonde boy is staying with his Troubled Ethnic Friend overnight. Troubled Boy stumbles onto some Internet porn ("Look!" he says, "It's girls! With no clothes!") and is immediately enthralled. At one point, he states, "If enjoying porno is wrong, I don't wanna be right." What a cool guy! He also has a cool shadowy dad with a giant scar on his face who stays out all night on hot dates. Blondie is shocked that the computer doesn't have Holy Parental Controls to keep the him from looking at porn and refuses to admire the "Garden of Eden Girlies", instead equating the situation to when Eve tempted Adam with the apple. I have two problems with this:

(a) Once Adam was tempted he gained all this great knowledge. Seeing porn is the same as tasting from the Tree of Knowledge? I think this simile is putting porn up on a pedestal, don't you?

(b) Eve was naked in the Garden of Eden, and all she tempted Adam with was an APPLE. An APPLE is what God didn't want Adam to enjoy. He didn't mind that Adam looked at Eve's naked body all day, in fact he PREFERRED it that way--he wasn't mad till he saw them wearing clothes, if I remember correctly. Actually, God is just a voyeur. If enjoying the nakie people is wrong, God doesn't wanna be right.

Safe Sex: This one is hilarious. It's all about this slutty blonde cheerleader who wants to nail this football player. He makes a bunch of football-related sexual innuendoes (at least I ASSUME they're sexual; "I'm gonna huddle on your line of scrimmage and go for the extra point! Haw haw haw!"--what?), and she's excited. But another football player (a Christian dude), a HILARIOUSLY nerdy nerd called "Stats", and the cheerleader's sarcastic friend try to convince her not to. So far, it's all about not being promiscuous. There's nothing against safe sex until well into the comic.

      The basis of their actual argument against safe sex is not that it's wrong (as I've heard many Christians argue, ineffectively) but that it just doesn't work. Talking Bible says, "Condoms have a 20% failure rate," says Stats. Okay, I want to know where they got their information. Actually, I can figure it out. It was THEIR TWISTED IMAGINATIONS, wasn't it? According to a good friend of mine who worked in an HIV prevention agency for six years, it's 3%. Condoms have a THREE percent failure rate. Three is NOTHING like twenty. (She also says their other stat--13% of unmarried teens get pregnant in their first year of using condoms--is also definitely wrong.) They're just making stuff up. That's not cool.

      Also, they say, the HIV virus--uh--modules are so microscopically small that they get in through condoms. That's a known theory, but they argue it like it's a fact. IT'S NEVER BEEN PROVEN. In fact, we can see from ACTUAL statistics that condoms, used properly, pretty much protect you completely from AIDS, and even if they're not foolproof, they're pretty damn good.

      In the end, they say the obligatory "the only safe sex is no sex" argument, and that's that. God. It's so WRONG. Even if you're wary about condoms, you can still take a birth control pill TOO and be pretty much completely safe against pregnancy. Hello! What I'd like to see next is another football player come up to Stats and beat him up for giving the nice girls wrong information. Then he says "Let's go listen to rock music and have well-protected anal sex!"

Evolution: This comic, delightfully enough, is called "Monkey Business." This one is priceless. Every moment is sheer gold. As it opens, one student is bounding down the hall, screaming "Ook, ook, ook!" Later, in class, Professor Johnson (what is a professor doing teaching what appears to be a public high school, anyway?) opens the following dialogue:

PROFESSOR JOHNSON: Students, we have a brand new textbook for our biology class that is being used across America. It's called, "Science and You."

STUDENT 1: Professor, does it include information about the origin of humans?

STUDENT 2: Look, it has an extensive chapter on evolution theories! This is cool!

     I just wanted to bring that up to admire how well they captured how today's kids speak. Also, it's nice that the teacher mentioned during the biology class that the book was "for our biology class". Also, Professor, what's another word for pirate treasure?

      The two smartasses in the front row go on to ask to learn about "creation science". I think the professor speaks for us all when he says, "What's scientific about that ancient myth?" Instead of responding, the kids argue the faults in current evolutionary theories (i.e., that some of them contradict each other.) One kid argues that evolution must be wrong because fossils of the oldest clam look exactly like a modern clam. Clams? Just because CLAMS haven't evolved much, it means humans haven't evolved either? And even though some theories may have contradictory points (though they don't name any specifically), creation contradicts ALL of them and has less (that is, NO) evidence to back it up. Whereas evolution--more than a theory today, folks, I think it's actually pretty goddamn PROVEN--is supported by assloads of evidence and widely accepted by EVERYONE except gullible freaks who believe some book scribbled down written by some jackasses two thousand years ago. I think followers of the bible have no right using the argument "It can't be right because it's contradictory."

      They go on rambling like this with more made-up facts (I'm too lazy too find the real information to contradict all the crap THEY said) for a few more pages, then the Professor agrees to include creation science in the curriculum. Yeah, right. In real life, the teacher would ignore their forked-tongued lies as he called the principal's office to punish them for disrupting the class.

      It just goes to show you can clumsily support any bunk theory as long as people ask the right questions and YOU MAKE UP ALL YOUR FACTS.

Goodies! Laura drew a TIE-IN COMIC STRIP! Read "The REAL Truth for Youth".

TUnE iN NexT tIME.

      But what is the real truth youth should be learning? I think I'm going to start getting into education. It's time I, Rags, gave back to the community which my secluded life as a stuffed toy has never let me be a part of. Kids love toys, right? They're going to love my New Rags Curriculum, where I spout pro-abortion values and scientific fact in the form of a heavy metal song while wearing a halter top.