What we're afraid to say about sex

So there's the hpv vaccine.
There's emergency contraception.
There's abstinence only sex education.
And there are teenagers.

The HPV vaccine has been shown to be effective against Human Papilloma Virus (Genital Warts). HPV has been shown to be a cause of cervical cancers in young women. And yet there's a push-back against it. It is believed that parents wouldn't want their daughters vaccinated, for fear of giving them the "green light" to have sex.

Emergency contraception has been shown to prevent pregnancy up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. (Or, after contraceptive failure- makes it seem more responsible to say it that way)Emergency contraception has further been shown to be extraordinarily safe. (Let's remember, kids, tylenol can kill you when used improperly, as can coffee, and, if you're unlucky, peanut butter). But there's a reluctance to allow it to be sold over the counter. It is believed that if it were available over the counter, more teenagers (and women) might engage in unprotected sex.

The only sex education programs allowed to benefit from federal health education funding are abstinence only programs- programs that teach nothing about contraception or barrier methods of disease prevention, and emphasize the risks (mental AND physical) of premarital sex. The rationale behind this is that if you tell teenagers that they can have sex in a safer manner, they will perceive that as permission or even encouragement to have sex.

I'm going to say something groundbreaking here.

Get ready.

So what?

So what if teenagers are encouraged, by availability of contraceptives and tools of disease prevention to have sex? If these teenagers are making the decision that with the HPV vaccine banishing the risk of cervical cancer, condoms prevent aids and pregnancy, and the morning after pill, when used correctly, can prevent a broken condom from becoming a pregnancy- more power to them. How adult. How correct.

Basically, the prevailing argument about teens and sex from the right (and, by extension, everyone else and sex- there is a certain population that WOULD deny adult women access to these items in order to deny teenagers access to these items- they're called social conservatives), is that sex is too dangerous for teenagers, thus, we must make sure to let them know how dangerous it is so that fear will override libido. If we do anything to create the impression that sex can be at all safe, kids will start fucking immediately. So the best thing to do is make sure that sex has plenty of consequences, if they do have it. The left's weak, whinging counter-argument in recent years is that sex is dangerous, but if we give teenagers all the information and resources available, they still won't have sex any earlier than if we hadn't, and maybe when they do, it won't be so bad.

The left fails because their message isn't consistant. They weaken their own argument by conceding too much to the other side. And that's how the right is able to appear to beat them. The left says, and rightly, and logically, and bestly- that teenagers should be able to have safe sex, but that they really won't have any sex at all. That's silly. That's a contradiction. The right has easily been able to make that message look stupid. Of course, the right has only been able to do that because somehow, Americans have forgotten that teenagers become adults, and quickly. And the only way that screwing up sexually (discounting any religious beliefs) as a teen is going to seriously affect your adult life is by getting serious AIDs, HPV, or pregnant (or impregnating someone else). * Yes, your feelings might get hurt. You might find yourself emotionally scarred. But nearly everything you do as an adolescent might leave you emotionally hurt or scarred. People used to call that building character.

The right fails because their message only works on a moral playing field. Plus, they're the homogay. The reason their message works is what goes without saying after it, and what the left is too fucking pussy to contradict. The conservative message about sex is that we should keep it dangerous, and make the dangers clear, because teenagers (unmarried adults, gay people, etc) should not be having it. That implies that there is a reason, beyond the explicit dangers of sex, that teenagers should not have sex. And that reason, always unspoken, is that it is morally wrong.

And the left won't come out and say "We don't care if teenagers have sex or not". Or even "It's not wrong for teenagers to have sex" or even "It should not be public policy to prevent teenagers from having sex". That last one is my favorite. Pretend I put that last one first.

And why SHOULD it be public policy to prevent teenagers from having sex? Especially if the tools to make it at least as safe as adult sex exist and are widely available and instruction in their proper use is easily available?

There are reasons for teenagers not to have sex, but those have to do with the teenagers themselves, their culture, their beliefs, and most fundamentally, their family. It is the family's place to say "I know, it seems like you can have sex safely, but your dad and I believe that if you or anyone else touches your clitoris for fun, you'll burn in hell forever and ever". Or in another situation, "You know, knowing you, Suzy, and having been your mother for 16 years, I really wish you'd put off sexual intercourse and serious sexual contact for another few years. That's why your curfew is 8pm and you're not allowed to have boys in rooms with closed doors".

These conversations are similar to other conversations families have to pass on their values to young people who are gaining their independence. Imagine a young man entering high school. His family are observant jews or muslims or hindus. One of his parents might have a heartfelt talk with him (or fire-and-brimstone) about how he's gaining more independance now, but, as he's able to make more choices outside of the house, it's very important to them that he continue observing their dietary traditions (kosher or halal or other). Or even imagine a child raised by strict vegan parents-
their personal morals would dictate that the cheese sandwich in the lunch line was wrong. The child would know their parents beliefs, and the rationale behind those beliefs, even as her parents taught her and gave her the tools to act on those beliefs independently. (For example, learning to read labels and scan for casein and lecithin). Just the same, a christian family must be comfortable telling their child that even though sex might be safe, it is their belief, and very important to them, that they not indulge.

The only difference is that the vegan parents don't campaign for looser milk pasteurization standards, so that omnivorous children come down with a nice case of food poisoning every now and again, so their child can learn the dangers of eating animal products. The Hindu parent does not write to the television station demanding that they run more stories on bovine spongiform encephelopathy so that their children know that it's not just wrong, but dangerous to eat meat.

So why sex? Why do we, as a country, believe that the moral persuasive power of parents is so weak that we need to rely on scare tactics to force this one issue? It is just as morally subjective as whether or not to eat animal products, but we pretend that it is not. No one wants to say that it's ok for teenagers to have sex, because it is perceived as so potentially destructive to them. No one wants to say that we could make it less destructive for teenagers to have sex, because no one wants to be heard to say that it's ok.

And that, my friend is circular logic.

So I'm fucking breaking that circle.

INSOFAR AS IT IS SAFE, IT IS OK FOR TEENAGERS TO HAVE SEX.

Whether their families choose to encourage them not to, forbid them to, or punish them for- is none of my or anyone elses business.

*Why am I discounting other STD's here? Well, because proper access to healthcare will counterract the most serious effects of most other STD's. If girls have a good, open relationship with a physician, Gonorrhea and Chlamydia will be detected before reproductive damage would occur, just as in an adult woman. Same with boys. Same with syphillis. And herpes, while an effective scare tactic, just doesn't ruin your life the way people would like you to believe. The other varietal diseases- shigella, crabs, etc...same as one or the other.