Let's talk about sex

Got a couple of notes yesterday about the Oregon school that handed out a detention to a 14 year old girl who hugged her boyfriend in a school corridor. Even Abby, the rock hard Christian conservative, condemned it. So who is it that supports this kind of thing? As was pointed out by another noter, the Christian right has power in the US now. Is that what is driving this? It was even suggested by the same noter that sex education in US at the moment can't be taught in government schools unless it conforms to certain standards which are homophobic. This all strikes me as insidious and manipulative.

I say scrap sex education from schools everywhere. It's impossible to agree on what to teach, and the result is so bland as to be almost useless. Teach the biological side of things in the biology classes. Leave the sexual politics element to parents. It might even teach them some responsibility (the parents I mean).

Coincidentally, today I am reading in the news that the US government is to face a law suit, initiated by the American Civil Liberties Union, over the "silver ring thing" programme. The ACLU claims that the programme, which promotes abstinence, and which is a spin off from a Christian ministry, violates the principle that public state money can't be used to promote Christianity. I'd say that was not a very strong case since they are promoting abstinence and not Christianity, but that's just my view. When I read about the Silly Ring Thing, I can't help but think of the 80's anti drug programme in UK, "Just Say No!". We British look back at that campaign now and laugh nervously because it was so awful. Kids knew that drug taking was a complex issue with pros and cons, and they just laughed when they saw people dancing and singing "Just say no".

We should have learnt by now that telling people not to do something because it's "wrong" isn't enough. You have to give them a reason, and the funny thing is, there really aren't many good reasons for not having sex, over and above the very obvious ones like disease and unwanted pregnacy. It's not even any good telling young people not to do it because they'll catch diseases and become pregnant if they have sex, because they're smart enough to work out that married people (who don't get preached to and have sex freely) are not all dropping dead from AIDS and having unwanted children. But here's the real problem for the absstinence nazis; sex is good. Even the poeple who've never done it realise this, and that my friends is why teaching abstinence won't work.