By Laura Sessions Stepp
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 14, 2007; Page A02
"A long-awaited national study has concluded that abstinence-only sex education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration's social agenda, does not keep teenagers from having sex. Neither does it increase or decrease the likelihood that if they do have sex, they will use a condom".
In related studies, it has been found that depriving yourself of oxygen, water, and food will kill you.
Ummmmmm, DUH!?
Teaching abstinence is like asking Uwe Boll to tone down the suck in his movies. Even if he takes your advice, you've still got a whole lotta suck on your hands. This type of right wing short mindedness is what you would expect from a band aid administration. Abstinence is unequivocally the wrong solution to teen pregnancy. Take it from someone who was a teen when he became a dad. I wish I had one tenth the education on sex and pregnancy that is out there now. I can tell you that if I had gotten stuck in a class preaching (and no, I don't mean teaching. This is a Christian agenda if ever there was one) abstinence, all I would have learned is which chick in class I wanted to bone. There is no real "solution" to this because liking sex is not a disease or some kind of psychological aberration. Teaching our youth how to protect themselves from disease, and unwanted pregnancy is going to be the only way to stem the tide of underage parents.
Those that refuse to accept the fact that teenagers are going to have sex, and lots of it, are naive and just plain foolish. You can't ask a boiling pot of hormones and half formed neural pathways to abstain from dipping their wick's because "God wants you to". Short of lobotomizing every kid once they hit puberty, education about sex and pregnancy, not the omission of it, is the only ammunition we/they have. Our media deifies celebrities with "sex-tapes". Our politicians go on book tours after getting BJ's from interns. Even priests get a pass for fondling little boys.
The point is that our society has become so focused on sex and sexuality that asking kids to flat out ignore sex IS the 600lb Gorilla in the room. Teach them about sex. Educate them on how to use a condom, and why. Show them what life is like as a teen parent, but do NOT criminalize sex itself. That's what the Catholic Church is for, afterall.
But I do not recommend having sex with a 600lb Gorilla, because it would probably rip off both your arms and sodomize you with them. Simultaneously.
Let's discuss. (Abstinence I mean, not sex with a Gorilla....pervs)
