Jude sends me this stuffjust to make my blood boil:
The bill is a response to recent controversies over sex-ed lessons in some Tennessee school districts that mentioned alternatives to sexual intercourse, according to The Tennessean. A 2009 Youth Risk Behavior study found that 61 percent of Memphis City high schooland 27 percent of middle school students have had sex — higher than the national average, according to WMC-TV.
“‘Abstinence’ means from all of these activities, and we want to promote that, ” Republican state Sen. Jack Johnson, the bill’s sponsor, toldThe Tennessean. “What we do want to communicate to the kids is that the best choice is abstinence.”
The bill would require a “family life education curriculum” that prohibits the promotion of contraception and “any gateway sexual activity or health message that encourages students to experiment with non-coital sexual activity.”
Much likea bill that passed through the Utah state legislature last month, the Tennessee proposal notes that schools should “exclusively and emphatically promote sexual risk avoidance through abstinence, regardless of a student’s current or prior sexual experience.” It also requires that students are taught the “physical, social, emotional, psychological, economic and educational consequences of non-marital sexual activity.”
Let’s go over this again because it seems some people missed it the first time: The kids be fuckin’. The best you can hope for is to raise them to be decent human beings about it, treat one another with respect and affection, and not give crabs to the whole cheerleading squad because rude. Beyond that, it’s just crazy moral panic about rainbow parties and teen pregnancy rings and other stuff you see on CSI but shouldn’t actually believe goes on in your daughter’s school.
Is it me, or are we just trying to delay people’s sexual freakouts here? Sooner or later Wally and the Beav are gonna figure out that holding a girl’s hand is amazing and kissing her is mind-blowing andactually touching one of her boobs really for reals is like seeing the face of Jesus, and so what we’re doing in an ideal world for these wadded-panty scolds is making sure that revelation happens when those crazy kids are 40 and have somehow walked down the aisle with somebody they have no idea if they can stand the taste of. Does that sound like a good idea to anybody?
I’m not saying sexual incompatibility is impossible to overcome, by the way; I’m not crazy about the test-drive analogy because people aren’t cars and can change, but I am saying if you leave out even “gateway” sexual activity until you’re within the bonds of matrimony that is a VAST amount of territory left unexplored, and marriage can be difficult enough as it is.
(I’m also not wild about the idea that all sex once you’re married is safe, as if there is no rape that occurs between spouses, as if one spouse can’t transmit an STD acquired by being a cheating asshole to another spouse, as if preventing pregnancy couldn’t be important if you were married for any number of reasons. Marriage does not automatically equal anything goes, not for everybody.)
In the ideal world of the virtuous and morally pure lawmakers from Tennessee, we would have inexperienced pairs of terrified virgins trying to figure everything out after an entire day spent in formal wear pretending to be nice to each other’s parents’ friends, dancing awkwardly to Kool and the Gang, eating cake that almost never tastes good, drinking watered-down house wine and driving around in a limo their wedding party has festooned with whipped cream and streamers.
Yeah. That’s the time to try something new.
A.