Sex ed and abstinence

The Star Tribune has an interesting article today in which four teens are interviewed about the comprehensive sex ed versus abstinence debate. Two teens are all for comprehensive sex ed, the other two are for "Just say No!" messages in school. Predictably, at least in my eyes, the abstinence-only people come off as having the weaker of the two messages, instead using humor to try and get other teens to agree.

Abstinence is great, but abstinence-only education is, in my opinion, evil. I am sick and tired of hearing opponents to sex ed say that it "encourages the very behaviours it seeks to diminish" because it is just untrue. No sex ed class I have ever seen is structured in that way. Second, there is a very big flaw in the "wait until marriage" message that nobody I have ever talked to has been able to answer: what happens when you do get married? Where is the information about having a safe, controlled sexual lifestyle with your spouse going to come from? Of course, for some people who believe in abstinence only, at that point you are still to remain ignorant about sex and pump out babies until you die in childbirth or reach old age. Then there is the issue that one of the other teens in the article touches upon, the fact that there are many people who won't or can't get married. What about them?

One of the scariest things in that article to me was reading that one of the abstinence teens went to a "Together Encountering Christ" (TEC) retreat. I was educated in Catholic schools, and many of my classmates went on TEC retreats, where they did certain things that I was not privy to. The fact that these retreats still exist, and are still apparently sharing messages of ignorance, is pretty frightening to me.

Hopefully, schools teach nutrition to students, and nobody argues that learning about fat encourages people to go out and eat lots of Big Macs. So why don't we teach sexual health too? The other abstinence teen in the article says that sex ed doesn't give teens enough credit. Hmm. Giving teens the facts on sex ed and birth control, and pointing out that abstinence is the only 100% effective method, seems to give teens credit. The education that I had in my Catholic schools, where a teacher told us that "Abstinence is an adventure!", seems to be just a wee bit more insulting to the intellects of 16-year olds.