Sex. . . just saying the word brings sidewise glances, giggles and, by my twenty-something children, insistence that they were brought into this world by the stork.
Honestly, most people are sexually active at some point in their lives. The Barton County Teen Pregnancy Prevention Task Force just wants teens to wait until they are physically, financially and emotionally ready to bring a child into this world or use protection. Teens are unprepared at all levels.
Interestingly, the response to the task force has been mostly in quiet voices behind hands, voices that say, "Thank you for doing this."
The good news is that teen pregnancy has decreased across the nation, and in Barton County. Opinions vary, but I have heard some people say that the stark reality of the lives of the girls on MTV’s Sixteen and Pregnant has shown what it is truly like to be a parent. At the same time, others decry the riches and attention these girls get for getting pregnant as a teenager.
Sometimes older people will say to me, if you teach them right, they won’t have teen sex. Probably that was true years ago in many cases; at a time when Jim Morrison was banned for life from the Ed Sulliavan Show for saying the word "higher" and that square screen was showing images unknown before in black and white.
Not true today when Lady Gaga paints her eyes black and prances around in her underwear covered only in fish net stockings in primetime or a rated R movie, "Sex and the City" is shown at 7 p.m. on NBC.
According to the www.thenationalcampaign.org strongly religious teens are having premarital sex at close to the same rates as non-religious teens.
One man, one woman, is a relatively new idea presented by Jesus Christ. For those who are Bible readers, check out your Old Testament. Polygamy was the standard, and King Solomon was, well, you decide. I Kings 11: But King Solomon loved many strange women. . . 700 wives, princesses, 300 concubines . . . He wrote a whole book about sex in the Bible. I bet you never studied Song of Solomon in Sunday School. Abraham had two wives, one he tried to pass off as his sister. King David had his mistresse’s husband murdered. On King David’s death bed, a virgin was brought to him to perk him up.
Even Adam and Eve had a son, Cain, who killed his brother Abel. The Old Testament is full of stories about murder, adultery and disobeying the ten commandments.
Just sayin’ there’s nothing new. Teens have premarital sex whether their parents want them to or not.
Did you? Your child will most likely behave as you did when you were a teen. Behaviors are learned and passed down in indescribable ways. Except, that is, they will start earlier, and have more, most likely.
If your response to the above question is "that’s what I am afraid of?" don’t delay that sex talk. Have it today.
This quote from C.S. Lewis’ "Mere Christianity" says: "Finally, though I have had to speak at some length about sex, I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that the centre of Christian morality is
not here. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither."
