"Why Monogamy Matters"

Yes, teaching abstinence while refusing to allow for proper sex education will absolutely lead to an uptick in oral and anal sex. But religion continues to inspire some people to stick their heads in the sand, or to blame television and movies rather than acknowledge our natural sex drive.

Kids are going to fuck. Deal with it and help them do it safely.

 

Yet the birth rate in America, rather than soaring, is holding constant or dipping downward slightly while the population in Indonesia, India and China continues to grow. Is it because those people are not monogamous? Are they more promiscuous? Are they draining the financial resources of their governments?

 

You know why monogamy matters? Because my wife says it does.

 

Prove it. And here's the key: You have create a corollary between telling kids <i>not</i> to have sex, that the emphasis is solely on preventing pregnancy and so, as a result, kids don't have the kind of sex that would lead to pregnancy, but do have the kind of sex that leads to STDs.

And then you'll have to show me the sex education program in high schools that address the appropriate way to have oral and anal sex.

Beyond that, do you realize how astonishing your position is? Imagine being in a court of law, and a father being on trial for accessory to murder.

The lawyer asks him: "So what did you tell your son when he relayed how angry he was at his friend."

The father says: "I told him to set his emotions aside and not give in to his impulses."

The lawyer responds: "So you actually told him to kill his friend?"

Father: "No. I told him not to do anything violent."

Lawyer: "But didn't you understand that by telling him not to do something, you were actually pushing him to do it?"

It's utter nonsense.

If I told you not to touch a pot because it was hot, and you touched it anyway, would you honestly say "it's your fault for not telling to use a potholder. Bah!" Would you? Do you think a 15-year-old boy doesn't know what a condom is? He has to be told to put it on? One of the reasons schools began giving them out is because they knew kids were too embarrassed to buy them; I'm sorry, but handing out condoms in junior high and high school is essentially arguing for kids to circumnavigate an honest dialogue about sex with their parents or, well, anyone. I don't think handing out the cheapest possible condoms on the market to kids so they don't have to manage the stigma of buying the damn things says or does anything useful for the conversation.

Beyond that...my goodness, we sit here and rail on schools to no end, and we actually think some 45-year-old sex ed teacher is going to reach these kids on this matter with a mid-line argument of "indulge your uncontrollable desires, but, please do it within reason?" I don't think schools should be involved at all, but the smartest play is an abstinence-only position; it's the most efficient, the least confusing and the least vulnerable to liability. We ask schools to do so much as it is; now we're asking them (again) to begin divining, often independently of parents the best way to hypothetically keep kids safe in a manner that measures up to your "the hidden pratfalls of reverse psychology" argument.

 

Although teenagers who take "virginity pledges" begin engaging in vaginal intercourse later than teens who have not committed to remain abstinent until marriage, they also are more likely to engage in oral or anal sex than nonpledging virgin teens and less likely to use condoms once they become sexually active, according to a study published in the April issue of the... Journal of Adolescent Health, the Washington Post reports.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/21606.php

STD Findings

Bearman and Bruckner in March 2004 at the 2004 National STD Prevention Conference in Philadelphia presented their findings that teens who make abstinence pledges have similar rates of STDs as teens who have not made pledges. The study -- also based on data from the NLSAH -- found that, although teens who made the pledges had sexual intercourse an average of 18 months later than teens who did not take a pledge and averaged fewer sexual partners overall, they had similar rates of STDs.

 

I hit post before I posted the whole thing...which I believe posted the same question to you.

The study is, well...I'll get into it, if anybody chooses to. Bruckner's conclusion - that abstinence-only education is at fault - doesn't match up with what the study initially examined: Whether kids with virginity pledges were sexually active in other ways. That presumes virginity pledges - usually done through churches - are in any way corollary with what kids are taught in school. Abstinence-only education is not, in any way, pregnancy prevention. It's a much broader and simpler conversation. To equate it to the rise in any sexual activity defies everyday logic. The actors outside the classroom - i.e. culture - are the agents increasing the behavior. Period. If you taught a bratty kid that 3+3 = 6, and he decided 3+3 = 7, you'd examine the forces working inside and outside the kid to arrive at such a conclusion. You wouldn't say fault the teaching.

What makes this issue different is that people just feel differently about sex. They want to draw their own lines. Somehow, we think there's a systemic solution to a personal desire. It's educationally schizo: On the one hand, we're grant the desire is too overwhelming to control; on the other, we'll design a curriculum to control it right at the moment when the desire in the strongest, during foreplay. It points to a larger matter: We think we can reason our way our of moral conundrums. And that road eventually heads to a bad place.

 

The world began with the onset of modern liberalism. We went from cavemen to enlightened beings some time around the mid-1960s.

This thread makes me wonder one thing: For those of you who are so offended that religion could be the motivation to do (or not do) something that, most would agree, is the right thing to do, if you had a child who came to you and said they were abstaining from sex because of religion, would you be upset? Would you sit them down and explain to them that such a reason is not sufficient for doing good? How would you explain what the acceptable reasons are for doing a good or right thing?

 

If I were a religious person, and my child actually abstained from sex as a function of religious conviction, I'd be tickled. If I were not a religious person, and - having made their own choice about religion - my child abstained from sex as a matter of religious conviction, I'd still be tickled.

If however, in either case he or she vowed abstinence, then turned up with the clap or chlamydia, I'd be pretty disappointed.

 

OK, but does that mean you'd be less disappointed if your child got an STD and religion (or the talk of it) wasn't involved in any way?

 

All things being equal, I would be no more or less disappointed in either case.

Unless the religious instruction had intentionally kept my child ignorant of the possible consequences of their action.

 

Yes, yes - what horrible thing it is to teach your kids to wait to fuck until they are emotionally and phyiscally mature enough to handle having sex and to be responsible enough to have it with someone they are in a committed relationship with.

How dare us teach our kids things like that.....