Proper Sex Education

We're on Squidoo! If you haven't discovered Squidoo yet, check it out! Squidoo is a social networking system (like MySpace, FaceBook, and Flicker) that is content based. It encourages people to write "lenses" (pages) about areas of special interest. These "lenses" can then be grouped together by topic, searched and rated by viewers. Each page also offers opportunities for interaction - polls, votes, guestbooks, online debates, etc.

As with any tool, Squidoo can be used for good and evil. There are topics on Squidoo, just as there are topics on the worldwide web, that are not wholesome. However, you can set your "ratings" and easily avoid these topics. Setting your ratings to "G" will give you wide access to great content. Some lenses that would be appropriate for adults but not for children will be filtered out unless you set your ratings to "R." However, the worst stuff only shows up if you allow "X" rated content.

Visit our main content Squidoo lens from which you can link to all of our content lenses. Also be sure to visit our bookstore lens from which you can link out to Catholic book reviews.

________________

And now for today's post:

I have been doing a lot of work with our diocese on chastity education. I have become convinced that abstinence education can work only if the message comes from parents. That is exactly what our diocesan program is doing - training parents to create a complete ethos (way of living) around chastity (well, actually around love and virtue, of which chastity is part and parcel). It's going to take a lot of time to convince people that this is the way to go.

The work before us was illustrated in a letter to Dear Abby:
Dear Abby: Parents, tell teens about sex www.azstarnet.com ®

Dear Abby:

Here's one for the books on parental stupidity. When my
daughter, "Marissa," began to reach her teen years, her father — in an attempt
to be funny — advised her that she could keep from becoming pregnant by putting an aspirin between her knees and keeping it there.

This is obviously not true abstinence education. Abstinence education is not the same as evasion. My own father's "sex talk" was quite similar.

Dad: "You know about this sex stuff, right?"

Me: "Yeah. We learned about it in school."

Dad: "You know you need to save it for marriage?"

Me: "Yeah"

Dad: "All right. Good."

My Dad did so many things right, but abstinence education just wasn't in his parental toolbelt.

The letter continues

My stupidity was assuming that sex education and pregnancy prevention were taught in her school. I never broached the subject with her. Marissa became pregnant at 15. The young man she was seeing told her she couldn't get pregnant in a swimming pool because the chlorine would kill the sperm.

It's exactly these kinds of myths that are brought up by people who oppose abstinence education. Proper abstinence education teaches all about fertility appreciation, expelling the myths while instilling deep respect for sexuality.

I love my grandson dearly. God didn't make a mistake, even though we adults were all dummies in the advice department. Please tell parents, children and adults to educate themselves and learn all the facts and fiction about teen pregnancy and prevention. — Stupid Mom With No Excuse in New Jersey

Bravo, "Stupid Mom"! Abby seems to get it as well:

DEAR MOM: Your letter underscores the importance of parents taking the initiative and discussing sex and values with their children before hormones kick in and peers fill their heads with misinformation about birth control.

Then she falls off the deep end.

It's vitally important that parents talk to their children about sex, because many schools offer only abstinence-based sex education — which has not slowed the spread of venereal diseases. According to the April 2005 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are more likely to take chances with other kinds of sex that increase the risk of VD.

OK, where's the disconnect? Schools offer only abstinence-based sex education, so myths abound? Then they aren't getting true abstinence education.

Unfortunately, Abby is correct that many young people think that only "going all the way" constitutes actual sex. This is first of all not truly abstinence education either. Where is the respect for human dignity and for fertility in sterile acts of gratification?

Yet, we don't have abstinence education to blame for either the myths or the sexual activity of young people. It was, in fact, the sexual revolution that caused both of these problems. When the assumption is that sex is a beautiful act of love to be expressed exclusively between spouses, myths about avoiding pregnancy aren't necessary. These myths spring up when (usually) boys are trying to convince (usually) girls that the ideals of the sexual revolution (we can have pleasure by conquesting each other and not have to worry about the consequences) are true. Sex without consequences is the real myth. This is the myth that true abstinence education is trying to combat.

We can also thank the sexual revolution for teaching our children to "experiment" with "other forms of pleasure." This is actually part of the sex education program created by Planned Parenthood.

Don't tell me abstinence education doesn't work when the problems you identify are actually products of the sex education born out of the sexual revolution.

Powered by ScribeFire.