(no subject)
When teen sex education goes too far
By Ellen Goodman | February 24, 2006
SOME YEARS AGO, Rolling Stone magazine published a survey on the attitudes of baby boomer parents. The gist of it was that the people who had gone through the sexual revolution did everything, regretted nothing, and wanted their children to do none of it.
...
Today parents of teens, boomers, and Gen-Xers alike are often whiplashed by the culture. With one eye, they watch the media sexualizing younger and younger children. With the other, they read the blinking warning signals of danger, from pregnancy to disease to AIDS.
In the midst of this, the loudest promises of protection have come from those pushing an abstinence-only education for schoolchildren that, in effect, is fear-of-sex education. And now we have another product from the protection racketeers: the notion that any and all sexual activity by teenagers should be treated as sexual abuse.
Welcome, Auntie Em, to Kansas.
As I write this, the citizens of the prototypically red state are awaiting a judge's verdict on one of the more bizarre cases to make its R-rated way into the public eye. Kansas is one of 12 states in which underage sex -- under 16 in this case -- is a crime even when it involves teenage peers. In 2003, state Attorney General Phill Kline, a bandstanding prolifer, interpreted that law to require doctors, educators, counselors, and healthcare workers to report virtually all sexual activity by those under 16 to the state.
Full story here
No comment. Christ.
By Ellen Goodman | February 24, 2006
SOME YEARS AGO, Rolling Stone magazine published a survey on the attitudes of baby boomer parents. The gist of it was that the people who had gone through the sexual revolution did everything, regretted nothing, and wanted their children to do none of it.
...
Today parents of teens, boomers, and Gen-Xers alike are often whiplashed by the culture. With one eye, they watch the media sexualizing younger and younger children. With the other, they read the blinking warning signals of danger, from pregnancy to disease to AIDS.
In the midst of this, the loudest promises of protection have come from those pushing an abstinence-only education for schoolchildren that, in effect, is fear-of-sex education. And now we have another product from the protection racketeers: the notion that any and all sexual activity by teenagers should be treated as sexual abuse.
Welcome, Auntie Em, to Kansas.
As I write this, the citizens of the prototypically red state are awaiting a judge's verdict on one of the more bizarre cases to make its R-rated way into the public eye. Kansas is one of 12 states in which underage sex -- under 16 in this case -- is a crime even when it involves teenage peers. In 2003, state Attorney General Phill Kline, a bandstanding prolifer, interpreted that law to require doctors, educators, counselors, and healthcare workers to report virtually all sexual activity by those under 16 to the state.
Full story here
No comment. Christ.