Posted on 02/24/2006 8:49:24 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
SOME YEARS AGO, Rolling Stone magazine published a survey on the attitudes of baby boomer parents. The gist of it was that the people who had gone through the sexual revolution did everything, regretted nothing, and wanted their children to do none of it.
This didn't surprise me. Nothing changes your perspective as much as becoming a parent, and the first order of child-raising is protection. I remember Hillary Clinton's wry sexual advice back when she was first lady and the mother of a teenager: ''My theory is don't do it before you're 21, and then don't tell me about it."
Today parents of teens, boomers, and Gen-Xers alike are often whiplashed by the culture. With one eye, they watch the media sexualizing younger and younger children. With the other, they read the blinking warning signals of danger, from pregnancy to disease to AIDS.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
You hear about people being put on Sex Offender Watch Lists for all kinds of reasons these days. It's wrong. Some people who should be in jail for the rest of their lives are free as a bird, and some people who don't belong on SOWLs are there.
It's the fault of cheezy, good-for-nuthin legislators who don't take the trouble to make the statutes specific enough to target only the intended and nobody else. Or else it's this "this is tantamount to that" thinking that permeates the left. As in George Bush attacking Iraq is tantamount to the Holocaust.
You make a great point. Yes, morally I want to do all I can to keep sex education from being taught in the schools, and yes I want my kid's school to teach abstinence only, but I do see your point:
Having the State label a 15 year old a criminal for a stupid mistake is over the top.
However, I kinda see this extreme right reaction as a response to the extreme left reaction of teaching children how to have sex.
Both are wrong.
I'd answer, but if you don't care about your question I sure don't see why I should!!
:p
"However, I kinda see this extreme right reaction as a response to the extreme left reaction of teaching children how to have sex."
I see your point. I guess I think conservatives have to think more before they react. For instance, liberals looked at the fifties-sixties welfare programs as "the right thing" out of "compassion" (misguided) for the poor, and created a couple helpless generations of permanent government dependents. The immediate reaction to do the right thing was not thoughtful and produced more problems than the problem they meant to alleviate.
Conservatives, if too willing to react before thoughtful consideration of the affects of their action, can, just as easily create unintended consequences which breed normal public backlash from failed policies. There is nothing worse politically than wrapping a bad policy around a good purpose.
That reminds me of a headline in the Detroit Free Press a few years ago: "Man Rapes Boy".
When you actually read the article, the "man" was 18 and the "boy" was 17. In fact there were only 4 months difference in their ages.
Here's a question. If the guy is 17 and the girl is 18--what then?
LOL! Ellen Goodman?!?! You gotta be kidding. Ellen Goodman leans so far to the left she's nearly horizontal.
A 15-year-old girl is not a "woman" any more than a 15-year-old boy is a "man". You're a woman or a man when you can raise and support a child, as well as conceive one.
Yeah!
And what about all those good looking teachers having sex with their teen age students?
And WHERE were all these teachers at when I was in high school?
JUST KIDDING!
Tis true, but this is an Ellen Goodman column.
Isn't she a Globe employee? Her e-mail is listed @globe.com, at the end of the article.
I stand corrected. I must have mis-read her.
The majority of my high school sex ed curriculum here in Kansas was abstinence, though not all of it. I do not have much of a problem with that since some just won't get the message...hopefully they will at least be safe.
As for myself, my girlfriend and I have made a commitment to not do anything but simple kisses until marriage. Thank God she is not of the mindset that she should not kiss at all until marriage like some girls at my conservative Presbyterian college. But, I am finding out how incredibly hard holding to this agreement is going to be, for both of us.
With kids not being told to be responsible and restrain the desires of the flesh anymore, is it any wonder kids are having sex so much? They don't know HOW to restrain themselves.
It is NOT easy work, but it is the right thing to do until marriage.
Ellen is right about half the time.
IMO, the right way to do sex ed is do both abstinence and "be safe" talk.
Unfortunately, so few even do abstinence anymore.
I agree with you fwiw.
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