[Hajman]

Society is faced with a problem: A substantial number of young girls - many teen-agers - are having sex, getting pregnant and then finding themselves unwilling or unable to bear and raise a child.

Three approaches suggest themselves:

1) try to cut down on the number of such sexual encounters
2) try to cut down on the number of pregnancies which result from such encounters
3) try to make child-bearing and raising more attractive to such women

Your position makes 2) unattractive if not absolutely immoral. I can understand your opposition to abortion but, in truth, you also oppose contraception. You favor 1)

My position leads to to seek the most practical, least damaging (there are other values to consider) approach - which I find to be 2).

Abstinence and personal responsability are practical, especially if taught from a young age (without the public hammering sex into their heads everywhere they look). This would solve all three of your points, without having to resort to any one specially.

You believe that we have fallen from a state of grace - a state where goodness was the rule and the rules were known and clear. I believe we are coming up from the darkness, learning as we go - and each stage of understanding is provisional, subject to revision as we learn more.

History shows otherwise. Man tends toward corruption, not good. I can't think of a single society that tended toward good (even those with such as Christanity still have problems, though on the whole less problems then others). I chose to listen and learn from history, and to recognize nothing is truely new under the sun with man's behavior. Also, there's nothing to suggest that intellegence brings good. It's at best independent.

-The Hajman-

[liberallarry]

Again I apologize for not being able to reply in detail at this time.

I have no objection to the teaching of abstinance. To the contrary. But I do not want to have it forced on me.

I do not wish to alienate people who I judge to be decent and civilized by forcing them to tolerate actions which they deem immoral.

The last above two paragraphs are somewhat contradictory - unless some common ground can be found. That's one of the reasons I post to a conservative site with a screenname "liberallarry".