Teenage Sexuality

One of the irritating things about the internet is how often a reasonable topic delivers all sorts of undesirable people to your website. For instance, I’ve written about circumcision before, a ridiculous practice. I end up getting visitors from Google who were clearly looking for child pornography. Not cool. This thread probably won’t help things.

The Apostle got in touch the other day to point me toward this article in the Wall Street Journal which allegedly undid some of the claims made by, amongst others, me. At issue are “virginity pledges,” which (Some) Christians insist is a good way to encourage their children, and really, all children, to remain virginal until the night of their marriage, at which point, an awkward, painful, and probably fast interlude can occur and God can smile again.

I haven’t read the study in question, so I can’t speak for it. What the WSJ is alleging is that the study actually shows no difference between Christian kids who and who do not take virginity pledges. I had alleged they were worthless, and I’m not entirely sure how this disproves my point. There did seem to be findings about the relative conservatism of (Some) Christians in regard to sexual experimentation - they appear to be more stoic in the bedroom than non-Christians - but that isn’t the stated goal of the virginity pledge, so I’m not sure how they can be fairly connected.

Anyway, a couple of thoughts:

1. The WSJ’s author oozes condescension for those people who believing teaching a kid to use a condom is the only practical thing to do in regard to sexual education, which is a fine opinion to have, except that there’s nobody in the world who teaches a sexual education class revolving around condom usage. Generally, it is included as part of the curriculum, because using a condom is a pretty damned good idea, but it isn’t the whole shebang. (Get it? She and Bang? Sigh.) Any practical sex education class would involve multiple messages, including condom use, but also, monogamy and abstinence.

2. But of course, the WSJ, and others, aren’t interested in sexual education in the first place - they’re interested in abstinence only education, which is fine if you don’t mind damning the kids who are going to have sex. Because there are always going to be kids who sex.

When I was in junior high school (a nightmarish experience that nobody sensible would ever revisit), I remember being in eighth grade science class. Our teacher was also a football coach, and his priorities clearly weren’t on making sure that the “A” students were the only ones learning. He spent a lot of time with the people who weren’t very good with science, including people like me, which I appreciated. Of course, the “A” students bitched and moaned, but sometimes (and this was a lesson that has taken many of them into their adult lives to learn), they weren’t the most important people in the room.

Good sexual education ought to be focused on teaching the kids who are going to have sex safer ways to do it. Not all kids are going to have sex - either by choice or otherwise - and there’s nothing wrong with that. Those kids ought to be encouraged to remain abstinent. But the kids who will have sex - and they are out there whether or not virginity pledges or abstinence education exists - shouldn’t be damned for walking a different road.

They’re the ones that sex education classes are for, because even if they’re going to make the bad decision to start having sex when they’re fifteen, they can mitigate some of the problems that might happen by successfully using a condom (for example) or getting birth control from the health department or recognizing that their partner has herpes or whatever else. I understand that many Christians want people to suffer for the alleged sin of having sex before getting married, but that’s just another reason that Christians shouldn’t be having their own beliefs reflected in policy decisions.

3. To put that another way, what is it that us godless secular humanists recommend that leads Christians closer to damnation? The WSJ article hints that our media is responsible for the corruption of Christians, but they’re welcome to turn off the television, turn off the radio, turn off the internet, just as they’re welcome to pull their own children out of classrooms that they don’t approve of. What galls is that (Some) Christians are never just happy with doing what they consider to be right by their own family; it’s always got to be my family too, and the families of everyone up and down the street.

“But, you’re forcing my kid to learn about sex!” is the response, which is demonstrably untrue. Yank your kid out of class if you’re so offended (although God only knows why it is offensive to learn about sex). But if we arm kids likely to have sex with the sort of information that might keep them from getting pregnant, or getting sex, isn’t that a good thing?

4. Especially when you start seeing nightmares like this. I suppose there are plenty of explanations available for this, but I won’t lie in thinking that the states where the birthrate seems to have significantly upticked are states likely to have endorsed the sort of madness that is abstinence education, virginity pledges, and any other sort of information that isn’t practical for all kids. (Again, some kids benefit, except they weren’t going to be having sex in the first place.)

Ideally, we’ll eventually move into a world in which (Some) Christians are perfectly capable of handling messages that they’re uncomfortable with (just as the rest of us routinely deal with Christian messages without our heads exploding). Ideally.

Technorati Tags: Birth Rate, Sex, Teenage Sexuality, Virginity Pledges

Women! Have Sex With Your Husbands Whenever They Want!

(Update: Prager’s been divorced twice. Keep that in mind.)

(I like to read Sadly, No! I thought when I read this, they were kidding. They weren’t.)

I’ve written about Dennis Prager before. But never did I expect this bit of brilliance: When A Woman Isn’t In The Mood: Part II.

But before we get to that, here’s Part I, in which Prager makes clear that he isn’t concerned with men who don’t want to have sex with their wives; it only becomes problematic enough for Prager to write about when wives are refusing husbands. Got that? Keep that subtlety in mind as we delve into Prager’s…umm…advice.

1. If most women wait until they are in the mood before making love with their husband, many women will be waiting a month or more until they next have sex. When most women are young, and for some older women, spontaneously getting in the mood to have sex with the man they love can easily occur. But for most women, for myriad reasons — female nature, childhood trauma, not feeling sexy, being preoccupied with some problem, fatigue after a day with the children and/or other work, just not being interested — there is little comparable to a man’s “out of nowhere,” and seemingly constant, desire for sex.

Why is Dennis Prager writing this? Is this even a reason? He promised us reasons for wives to constantly have sex with their husbands, regardless of what was going on - this doesn’t make any sense.

2. Why would a loving, wise woman allow mood to determine whether or not she will give her husband one of the most important expressions of love she can show him? What else in life, of such significance, do we allow to be governed by mood?

Let’s ignore that the term “loving, wise woman” is now defined as a woman who has sex with her husband whenever he wants it; instead, note that Prager believes sex to be “one of the most important expressions of love.” Is that true? Perhaps in Prager’s world; the rest of us have figured out that it’s a fun way to spend some together.

3. The baby boom generation elevated feelings to a status higher than codes of behavior. In determining how one ought to act, feelings, not some code higher than one’s feelings, became decisive: “No shoulds, no oughts.” In the case of sex, therefore, the only right time for a wife to have sex with her husband is when she feels like having it. She never “should” have it. But marriage and life are filled with “shoulds.”

I’m flabberghasted. Occasionally you see organized religion pull the blinds back on the subjugation of women. Here’s Prager demanding that women ignore themselves and spread ‘em with all speed whenever their husband wants; how much less could he care about women or wives?

4. Thus, in the past generation we have witnessed the demise of the concept of obligation in personal relations. We have been nurtured in a culture of rights, not a culture of obligations. To many women, especially among the best educated, the notion that a woman owes her husband sex seems absurd, if not actually immoral. They have been taught that such a sense of obligation renders her “property.” Of course, the very fact that she can always say “no” — and that this “no” must be honored — renders the “property” argument absurd. A woman is not “property” when she feels she owes her husband conjugal relations. She is simply wise enough to recognize that marriages based on mutual obligations — as opposed to rights alone and certainly as opposed to moods — are likely to be the best marriages.

Sorry Prager, I’m seeing a lot here about the woman’s responsibilities here, which primarily amount to getting their husbands off when told to. Prager’s claims that women can always say ‘no’ seem to be undermined somewhat by his insistence that women rarely if ever say ‘no.’ What gives?

5. Partially in response to the historical denigration of women’s worth, since the 1960s, there has been an idealization of women and their feelings. So, if a husband is in the mood for sex and the wife is not, her feelings are deemed of greater significance — because women’s feelings are of more importance than men’s. One proof is that even if the roles are reversed — she is in the mood for sex and he is not — our sympathies again go to the woman and her feelings.

Yes…women’s worth has been denigrated since the 1960’s; before that, women were placed on pedestals and given all the respect they deserved. Is Prager insane? And note, again, that Prager doesn’t consider his own insistence that wives live merely to please their husbands in any way denigrating. I guess having sex with Prager must be an honor for his wife?

6. Yet another outgrowth of ’60s thinking is the notion that it is “hypocritical” or wrong in some other way to act contrary to one’s feelings. One should always act, post-’60s theory teaches, consistent with one’s feelings. Therefore, many women believe that it would simply be wrong to have sex with their husband when they are not in the mood to. Of course, most women never regard it as hypocritical and rightly regard it as admirable when they meet their child’s or parent’s or friend’s needs when they are not in the mood to do so. They do what is right in those cases, rather than what their mood dictates. Why not apply this attitude to sex with one’s husband? Given how important it is to most husbands, isn’t the payoff — a happier, more communicative, and loving husband and a happier home — worth it?

As long as you have more sex with your husband, your home will be happier, more communicative, and your husband will love you more. That’s all a good relationship is: providing sex to your husband. (I can only assume that Prager is eventually going to offer some physiological explanations of what a women is supposed to do when she’s having the audacity not to be in the mood. Lube recommendations, for example.)

7. Many contemporary women have an almost exclusively romantic notion of sex: It should always be mutually desired and equally satisfying or one should not engage in it. Therefore, if a couple engages in sexual relations when he wants it and she does not, the act is “dehumanizing” and “mechanical.” Now, ideally, every time a husband and wife have sex, they would equally desire it and equally enjoy it. But, given the different sexual natures of men and women, this cannot always be the case. If it is romance a woman seeks — and she has every reason to seek it — it would help her to realize how much more romantic her husband and her marriage are likely to be if he is not regularly denied sex, even of the non-romantic variety.

That’s blackmail, right? “You’re only going to get your romantic sex if you give me mechanical sex during the rest of the week Wife!” I mean, classic blackmail. Incidentally, most “contemporary women” likely don’t associated with Prager, so god only knows where he has come up with this conclusion about them.

8. In the rest of life, not just in marital sex, it is almost always a poor idea to allow feelings or mood to determine one’s behavior. Far wiser is to use behavior to shape one’s feelings. Act happy no matter what your mood and you will feel happier. Act loving and you will feel more loving. Act religious, no matter how deep your religious doubts, and you will feel more religious. Act generous even if you have a selfish nature, and you will end with a more a generous nature. With regard to virtually anything in life that is good for us, if we wait until we are in the mood to do it, we will wait too long.

Fantastic. Just magically make things happen, ignore the realities of your life, and everything will be better. Do other social conservatives agree with this nonsense? Considering the degree to which social conservatives wail about meaningless sex, how can Prager simultaneously endorse meaningless, unwanted sex between a willing and unwilling partner?

Technorati Tags: Dennis Prager, Sex Advice

I Can’t Believe This Plan Didn’t Work

Vegan Stewart alerted me to the fact that virginity pledges don’t work. I’m just as shocked as you are. Here’s the important paragraph:

Rosenbaum matched students who had taken a virginity pledge with those who hadn’t. After five years of follow-up, those who had taken a pledge did not differ from teens who hadn’t taken a pledge in rates of premarital sex, oral or anal sex, or sexually transmitted diseases.

So, there you have it.

Who, exactly, imagined that something like this would work?

Incidentally, some more good news from the article: those virginity pledgers that did give into to sex’s siren call were ten percent less likely to use condoms or other birth control.

There isn’t much commentary needed here, except to note that virginity pledges are fine as long as they’re paired with information for those kids that will end up having sex. Assuming that just because you encourage a kid to remain a virgin is all that’s necessary is short-sighted and stupid; damning those children by withholding information seems particularly unnecessary.

Technorati Tags: Virginity Pledgesd

Douthat on Obama’s Science Advisor

In the end, Douthat’s argument is, in its entirety, that Democrats do it too. He’s specifically referencing the appointment of Eric Holdren, a man whose science Douthat objects to. He’s practically snarling when he writes:

We all know that only Republican Administrations have a problem with politicized science, and since both Obama and his science adviser are Democrats there’s really nothing to worry about here.

Does Douthat really not understand the difference? Holdren’s science leads him to various conclusions which appear to have been wrong; likewise, Holdren’s policy proposals as a result of his conclusions might have been troubling. (Although the man is merely advising the president.)

The Republican approach to science, particularly under President Bush, is exactly backwards - it takes policy positions, and then demands that the science prove the rightness of the decision. That’s how you end up with hacks in positions of leadership over scientific institutions. They’re not there to promote scientific discovery; they’re there to promote the president and strong-arm any findings into reports that are sympathetic to Bush’s wishes.

Identifying this strategy for what it is shouldn’t even be controversial. Bush wasn’t exactly hiding the fact that his scientists were told to arrive at particular conclusions. Presumably, Holdren, if the science started pointing in a different direction, wouldn’t ignore it. Bush made it policy to ignore all science except that which favored him. That we even have to have this debate is silly - Douthat surely knows better, and is just frustrated with the setbacks his political goals have suffered.

Technorati Tags: Douthat, Holdren, Science

Dallas Thinks About Giving Away Free Condoms

In 1995, county commissioners in Dallas, Texas, voted to ban the free dissemination of needle sterilization kits and condoms because to do otherwise would promote “immoral behavior.” The commissioners also found the time to require public health workers to advocate abstinence. 13 years later, Dallas’s HIV/AIDS rate is the highest statewide. Connected?

Well, I wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions, but this is the sort of thing that you’d expect to happen when your public officials are basing their policies on religious scripture and not good common sense. The way to fight to public health crises isn’t to look toward the Bible and assume that by magic and a good stern lecture, the problem will go away. People armed with defensive techniques - including both abstinence and, in lieu of that, condoms - are less likely to contract or spread HIV/AIDS. How can anybody not know that at this point?

The degree to which (Some) Christians will happily damn their fellow man, simply for making decisions that they themselves would not, is appalling. That these people worm their way into our government and force everybody to live by their own religious edicts is even more infuriating.

Technorati Tags: Condoms, Dallas, HIV/AIDS

Forcing Divorce

Nothing says preserving the institution of marriage like arguing that 18,000 legally married couples should be forcibly divorced. God forbid they make the same argument about straights married multiple times, straights who abuse their children, straights who cheat on their spouses…

For anybody that says this is anything more than gay hatred, imagine what these people are happily advocating doing to these couples. Have you ever thought of even your worst enemies and not only hoped for them to be divorced, but figured you’d try to use the state apparatus to accomplish your goal? Of course not. But these people do so without pause.

(Many thanks to The Apostle for the story.)

Technorati Tags: California, Divorce, Homosexuality

Duggar’s Inexplicably Welcome 18th Child

So the crazy Duggars of Arkansas have welcomed their 18th child into the world. Good for them. It really is an accomplishment to knock somebody up 18 times. I’ve done it twice and I pat myself on the back.

Now that I’ve offered a compliment, perhaps a criticism? Something along the lines of, “Will you please stop having children? Now? Sooner than now, if possible? And will you please stop not because your ovaries are out of eggs (a distinct possibility), but because there are literally thousands of deserving foster children throughout America who needs homes now?”

And belonging to a movement that celebrates this intense level of selfishness? Seriously? It’s one thing if you’re going to do this alone, but the Duggar clan encourages others to do so. “Don’t give back to society in any meaningful way by adopting kids who need homes…that’s for suckers! Keep having your own kids, endlessly, forever.”

Also, these are some lucky kids, especially the middle ones whose names Mom and Dad can’t remember. What fun it must be to see your father for five minutes a day. Oh, the joy and pleasure of your monthly half-hour with Mom.

This sort of behavior, regardless of who is engaging in it, is stupid.

Technorati Tags: Duggar Family, Quiverfull, Selfishness

Obama Gets Warren, With Accompanying Hailstorm

When a regular reader and commenter here, who happens to be one of my best friends and closets confidants, wrote me this morning to suggest that I write about the dustup surrounding Barack Obama and his selection of Pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation during his inaugural address, I figured it was a one-off message. Two hours later, he started texting me:

Do you support Obama’s homophobia?

Well, no. I’m not sure that’s what this is.

If you can justify it then good for you but I find it indefensible.

I can justify the decision politically, but…

He’s a bigot and I’m surprised Obama chose him.

Well, yes, but…

I just don’t get why there isn’t more outrage?

There is outrage. I told him though that I couldn’t believe he was so angry.

Why? I’d like to think there are more people in this country who aren’t willing to give instant credibility to a bigot who can quote some Bible verses.

To describe my friend’s response (I’m not sure I can quote him by name, as he is a high-ranking official at a major world bank) as unexpected doesn’t really do it justice. Except for declaring how stupid everybody and everything associated with politics is from time to time - and celebrating Bill O’Reilly’s greatest moment - he never struck me as particularly politically motivated. If Warren’s selection has infuriated him this much, perhaps I need to re-examine my own reaction…

…my gut instinct was to describe this as other’s have: as an overblown incident. Shouldn’t those people who are furious be happy that we have a president willing to have a press conference in which he declares his allegiance to gay and lesbian causes? Shouldn’t he at least get, prior to having the ability to actually do anything legally, the benefit of the doubt?

In a word: No. (Here’s a transcript of the most important comment.)

For the president to tacitly reach out to social conservatives using Warren, who sees homosexuality as the moral equivalent of both incest and child rape is outrageous. Surely, there are other members of the socially conservative community who are capable of differing with gay marriage without insinuating that gays are rapists…aren’t there?

Maybe I don’t want an answer to that question.

The other question worth asking is what exactly this reach out might accomplish? Social conservatives are amongst the least likely Americans to warm up to an Obama presidency. Why reach out to them? Reach out to more moderate, more reasonable Christians, the ones capable of disagreeing with homosexuality while not simultaneously slurring homosexuals. They are out there. They do exist.

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When All You’ve Got Is A Hammer…

…then every problem looks like a nail. How friggin stupid can a single individual look, and how desperate of a movement is the conservative one when every single problem is nothing more than an opportunity to take a swipe at gays? Pathetic.

Technorati Tags: Lunacy, Social Conservatism, The Dumbest Thing I Have Ever Read

Just Stop: It Isn’t About Protecting Marriage

Obviously, I hammer on the issue relentlessly. (If it makes you feel any better, this weekend I’ll be posting a comprehensive review of some flavored salt I was sent. This site offers you a little bit of everything…)

Earlier, I harkened back to Mike Huckabee’s poor performance from The Daily Show, in which he spluttered about marriage being about the production of children. (Videos here and here.) That, he argued, was why we absolutely couldn’t let gay people get married. As the father of two children out wedlock, his claim was news to me. Snark aside, it is remarkable that somebody who believes so deeply in gay marriage can’t be troubled to actually do anything to protect the instution other than exclude homosexuals.

I can concede that marriage is a damaged brand these days, but if anybody actually thinks that its dings and scrapes are the result of gays wanting the same rights as straights, they’re deluding themselves. Everybody could probably agree that divorce has done more to damage marriage than gays ever could; similar common ground could be found concerning child abuse and piss-poor parenting.

But what’s incredible is that marriage’s self-appointed defenders simply cannot be troubled to propose any measures to deal with the activities that are doing the critical damage. Rather, all of these people who are so deeply troubled by the possibility that gay citizens would be treated as the equal of straight couples can’t muster the energy to propose a single marriage-protecting piece of legislation that hurts straight people.

1. These people advocate Constitutional Amendments against the gays marrying, but can’t argue for amendments that ban divorce?

2. Or, if that’s too punitive against straight people, how about an amendment that bans remarrying?

3. Or, if that’s too punitive against straight people, how about an amendment that bans multiple marriages within a year?

4. Or, if that’s too punitive against straight people, how about an amendment forcibly divorcing couples that cannot produce children? (This one would be particularly harsh, but if Huckabee is right, and the only reason for marriage is to produce children, there is no reason to let the disinterested or physically incapable of getting married, right? They’d be denigrating the insitution with their lack-of-children, according to Huckabee’s logic.)

5. Or, if that’s too punitive against straight people, how about an amendment that strips wife-beaters and child-abusers of their right to get married?

6. Or, if that’s too punitive against straight people, how about an amendment that in any way focuses even remotely on straight people, the only people who are currently allowed to get married nationwide?

For all of the breathless desperation to save the institution of marriage, precious little is being done to actually police the activities of those who can actually get married. For example, Christians themselves, desperate to prevent gays from getting anywhere near the same legal rights that they enjoy, still manage to divorce each other at incredibly high rates. You’d think if you’re going to have the gall to tell another group of people that they’re not welcome at the table because of how seriously they’d devalue marriage that you wouldn’t busy yourself regularly devaluing the insitutition yourself. You’d think.

All of this is, of course, yet more evidence that the real issue here isn’t marriage. It can’t be. If it was, then people like Mike Huckabee would spend as much time working to eliminate the freedoms enjoyed by straights - freedoms which right now allow for infinite marriages, infinite divorces, and allow for these infinites regardless of what you do while married, no matter how irresponsible, no matter how dangerous, no matter how harmful - as he does focused on the nonfreedoms not enjoyed by homosexuals in any state other than Massachusetts and Connecticut.

When Christians who divorce each other regularly decide that its the gays who shouldn’t be married, and then claim that they’re taking that stand to protect the insitution, why should anybody believe that they’re being serious? And doesn’t the logical difficult of their position suggest that something else altogether is going on?

For instance, if you took that evidence that I’ve given you about Christian divorce in the link above (and here’s some more, which clearly suggests that the highest divorce rates occur in the most religious areas, and tend to involve the people that we most intuitively believe would be the least likely to divorce), would it be consistent to believe that these people cared about the institution of marriage? Or is it more reasonable to believe that they’re, at best, not fond of the gays and thus propose to exclude them on that basis?

I’m happy to hear any argument that concisely explains why protecting marriage should involve only those people who cannot legally get married, but I have serious doubts that such an argument exists. If it did, it would have been made by now, and it would include an explanation for why the freedom of straights should not be affected in any way.

(For the record, I don’t actually believe that straights should be punished at all for being irresponsible with their marriages. I have to make this point because I have occasionally had this argument with people who had said that I am not allowed to advocate for that which I wouldn’t actually support myself. That’s a convenient, but stupid, claim.)

Technorati Tags: Gay Marriage, George Barna, Mike Huckabee