Thank you and while I don't agree with all of your opinions I appreciate your willingness to debate them in a civil and courteous manner. I did want to respond to this point. The situation I see here is very analogous. Legally people aren't supposed to drink until 21 yet we have an epidemic of underage drinking along with lots of cases of underage drinking and driving. Teens also aren't allowed to drive until they've passed training courses, tests and even a probationary period yet young drivers are still the most accident prone drivers out there. So we have both legal sanctions along with mandating training and testing but we still have teens drinking and driving dangerously. The point is that prohibitions don't work when there is a great desire to obtain that what is prohibited. At the same time when it comes to teens education can only go so far and even when its mandated still fails in many incidences. When you talk about the root causes of teen sex the root cause is human biology. In every human society there has been teen sex and in many societies it has been encouraged. While there are societal pressures even in puritanical societies teen sex still occurs. In the case of probably the strongest of biological urge behind eating, drinking and excreting its not enough to expect that education or prohibition could do the job when in it isn't stopping even reckless behaviors that are merely pleasurable or convenient. I don't want to see children abused and damaged either which is why we need to take every precaution to protect them. Promoting condom use and teaching teens about sexuality isn't abusing or encouraging, which is a fallacy often directed at sex-ed programs, but is preparing for the fact that even with legal prohibitions and morals training many teens still continue to behave irresponsibly in all sorts of ways. The mistake is believing that teens will always take messages to heart. THose on your side of the debate presume that teens always listen so when you tell them to be responsible they listen and act that way and when you tell them they need to use a condom that means they hear that you're sanctioning sex. If it was that simple then there never would've have been a need for condom or birth control training in the first place since teen sex has been around far longer than condoms.
Sishir Chang- I think this is one place our experiences differ. I agree that condom use is promote (for reasons of safety) my experience in talking to teens is that the teaching assumed they would have sex. The message is 14 yr + sex= inevitable. Let's make an assumption and then think of two premises: The assumption is 14 yr old children are not ready for sex and should not have sex until they are older. (not everyone would agree but basically in America that would be the prevailing moral opinion) Premise 1- All 14 yr old kids are going to have sex. Premise 2- Some 14 yr old kids may have sex. If we assume premise 1 then we are morally obligated to provide education and condoms and everything else that goes with sex-ed. - That is how we are behaving today. If we assume premise 2 then we are morally obligated to find out why some kids do, determine the root cause and provide solutions to eliminate as much of the root cause as possible. (and still provide safety nets for those who might fall through the cracks) Somewhere along the way we just bought Premise 1. I firmly believe that if two 14 yr old kids are about to have sex they should be using condoms. - STD are enough reason for that. But I firmly believe that their are better answers for 14 yr old kids if Premise 2 became the prevailing motive. There has been and always will be teen sex. Before we started giving the subliminal message to students that it is a way of teenage life the number of teen pregnancies were miniscual compared to today - accounting for population and demographics. As a pastor I have seen non-religious study after study that all confirm that teen pregnancy in America has sky rocketed in numbers since the inception of the current sex-ed methods. If their design was to reduce teen pregnancy they have failed drastically. I am not saying at all that a teen should not know how to use a condom prior to a sexual act. I am saying that assuming premise 1 has had the opposite result as far as prevention of teen pregnancy and when one answer doesn't work it usually means other answers should be considered. Again, I am working with parents (both single parents and couples) to help them develop good relationships with their teenagers and good character so that their own teenagers are equipped to make mature decisions about these very vital issues. My idea of a healthy 14 yr old is not one who is sexually active, smoking crack and shop lifting at Wal Mart.- I am not for banning condoms or sex-ed, I am for backing up and getting some better solutions in place that present methods for introducing both sex-ed and condoms more effectively than we are doing now, because the way it is done today has resulted in an explosion of teen sexual activity.
Rhester, I am curious why you brought up the racism issue now at all. It is clear to me that you only used that as another justification for your belief that planned parenthood is "bad", regardless of the obvious caveat that most every group was racist in some way in the 1920s. Oh well - I'll jump back in again. For me, it is more along the lines of "All 14 yr old kids have the ability to think for themselves. I trust my parenting and my child enough to know that they understand what I have explained and taught. However, they are free to choose differently than I would, so I present them with said condom, not in the belief that this magical piece of latex will induce orgies on an Aldous Huxley scale, but that it will show them both that sex is a _serious_ thing, and that it therefore requires _serious_ responsibility." Could it be that the literature you read has a certain "slant"? I know I have seen plenty of proof to the contrary. I'd be happy to google it for you if you don't believe me. That's what should be done. Nice conjecture that being a sexually active teenager is linked with drug use and crime. You just lost your credibility, and my respect. I would venture to state the opposite. Teen sexual activity remains constant. Supplying prevention only brings it to light. Any increase would be better attributed to societal shifts rather than measures taken to deal with the issue. You are blaming a proposed solution for the problem. Logically, maybe your abstinence-only policy has the same effect ?
The problem with your argument here is. Premise 1: 100% possibility of occurrance = Need for preventive action (given her preventive measure is sex ed and providing condoms.) Premise 2: 100% > possibility of occurrance = No need for preventive action. Given that there is never a 100% likelyhood of any occurance its ridiculous to assume that you would need to have 100% to take preventive action. If it were so then why would we bother vaccinating people when no disease has 100% fatality. But here is where you counter your own argument because you agree that there there needs to be preventative measures given that there is a possibility. 100%>possibility of occurence (fall through cracks) = need for preventive measures. But the response to both premise 1 and two is the same by your own argument. both premises = need for preventive measures. There needs to be sex ed and availabilty of condoms because there are sexually active 14 year olds and we need to protect them. Here I would challenge your statistics because the concept of teen sex and pregnancy as a problem wasn't accepted before the middle of the 20th C. and even now in many societies is not considered a problem. It wasn't that long ago that we considered it the acceptable norm that women should be married and having children in their teens. Considering those attitudes teen sex and pregnancy are probably much lower now than they have been historically. Anyway just comparing us to European countries that teach sex-ed and condem availabiltiy I believe they have lower rates of teen pregnancy and abortion. There's another problem here with this argument is ahead of time how do you know when a teen is going to have sex? The message that sex is bad to teens means that most teens aren't going to tell their parents, teachers or pastors that they're going to have sex ahead of time. So in that case the 'abstinence' strategy actually encourages irresponsible sexual behavior since its less likely that a teen will discuss sex and safety precautions before hand. As opposed to a system that tells teens that they should avoid sex until they are older but if they can't to be responsible about using a condom and here's where you can get them. I would agree with that too but like I said before morals teaching and legal prohibitions aren't going to stop that some teens just behave irresponsibility and we have to prepare for the worst case scenario. If and when I have kids I'm going to firmly tell them not to have sex when they're 14, smoking crack or shop lifting but that doesn't mean I'm not going to teach them about condom use, drug rehab, or bail them out of jail if they're caught shoplifting. I think in general we're in agreement on this. The difference I see is where and how such teaching is done. I also think that its a questionable connection between an explosion of teen sexual activity and the current methods of teaching sex ed. For one I doubt this is historically the case, two that again presumes that teaching has that a great of a power on teens (if it did there wouldn't be any teen problems of any sorts) and ignores that there are tons of other factors involved with teen sexuality.
