Quote:
Originally Posted by Trumanator
@JimMorrison- While I agree with you in essence regarding priests and such, I maintain that it is quite possible for parents to prevent their kids from having sex when they (the kids) aren't ready. I've managed to control myself, so has my bro, so have plenty of other kids. I'm mainly talking about high school here. Teaching contraceptives might be useful, but as the article I linked to explains, that doesn't work if the kids aren't being taught about how/when to be a parent. I will agree though that some of the insanely restrictive parents/organizations/whatevers only drive kids away.
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Oh it's true. It always pleases me, with my designated leftist views, when I can find some sort of middle ground with someone much further towards the right.
And I completely agree with your point - I feel that young people should be taught in great detail about the world, and their choices. I see no reason whatsoever not to try to
stress the idea of abstinence, but I simply find it foolish not to cover all of the bases. Education is not a concept to be approached lightly - not in any way, especially when it involves people's livelihood, and lifestyle choices. To be perfectly clear, I do also believe that if sex (and post sex) education were thorough enough, more people would wait a bit longer before diving into the pool. When I was poking around, the thing that stood out was the very sharp division in pregnancy rates between teens who became sexually active before the age of 15, and those who did so at 15 or older. So in essence, delaying what is often "the inevitable" is certainly a step in the right direction. Beyond that..... well, I've said for many years that our current systems of corporate servitude and nuclear families are contributing greatly to the decline in sensibility in Americans.
Imagine when you have extended families and more communal living situations, that only a few people in the collected group need to be outstandingly sensible and wise. The point is to rely on those few to impress enough of their understanding on the others, that they become stable, well adjusted individuals. When you remove that influence by compartmentalizing all nucleic familial units (I may have just invented that term), you remove that influence from the vast majority of the population. Thus, you wind up with the same rate of extremely calm and wise people - but the average level of those same attributes declines in the population at large. Children are very fast, and very keen to pick and choose what they can from those around them - I very much feel that we need to find ways to allow more children to be influenced by more varied figures in their lives, and the benefit will compound over time.
So that said, I don't believe the Republican party knows, or does the slightest bit of good for family values. They figure if they brand "anti gay marriage", and "anti choice" as "family values", that it will win them votes. Obviously the sad comment there, is that it does.