h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'd love to respond to the latest missives from planet Della, but I see most of the points I'd have made have already been covered.

Just one thing: Della, you promised a link to information proving your case, but pleaded the lateness of the hour. That was two days ago. Are you having trouble?

Also: "If parents are doing their job, they'll teach their children what they need to know about contraception"

Are you talking about the kind of parents that allow their teenage sons to use their accounts on public message boards to issue "serious" death threats to other users? If parents are as irresponsible and immature as that, how likely are they to be responsible, or even qualified, enough to teach the *facts* about sex.

You've demonstrated in your posts just to this thread that you have a blinkered, ignorant and bitter view of the relationship between the sexes, and given what I know about your history from postings you've made on other threads here that is hardly surprising. So what makes you think that your children are best served by having the majority of their knowledge of sex come from someone with your biased view? As usual, these are serious questions.



"Perhaps the Texan government has some weird obscure reason for WANTING all its teenagers to be syphillis-raddled crab-infested multiple parents by the age of 18..."

Of course it does, because it's a matter of recorded fact that ignorant morons vote Republican. Please note, I am not implying that all Republican voters are ignorant morons (shame I have to supply this explanation, but you can't rely on people being able to spot a logical disconnect, particularly not these people...). Merely that without the hordes of poverty stricken undereducated idiots in states like Texas, the GOP wouldn't have the power it does today.

H.

In a perfect world, all parents would know and teach their children everthing they need to know. However, we don't live in that world.

I can't even say that I know everything there is to know on the subjec of birth control, as there are new methods and products (such as Depo-provera, and "the Patch") and new information about previously "safe" methods.

When someone I know, who is a very "up-to-date" mother with an excellent rapport with her daughter asked if she wanted to discuss birth control and sexual matters with her, her daughter was horrified. However, she said that, if she were taking the class, in school, with her friends, she would be more comfortable.

Teaching anything to the exclusion of everything else is folly. No one is suggeasting that abstinence should not be taught, but that it ahould be included in a comprehensive educational program which teaches children what they need to know to be healthy adults.

"If the kids in a Texas town start getting pregnant the people won't blame themselves, they'll blame the kids and their sinful ways."

Actually, they'll be far more likely to blame the Devil, since the Devil "makes" people do things they'd rather not take the responsibility for having done, themselves.

I get sick and tired of people saying that Satan is causing everything from earthquakes to kids murdering their parents to wars. If people would take responsibility for their actions, the world would be a far, far better place.

By the same token, I get tired of people thanking "God" for everything from winning the lottery to getting an Academy Award to finding their lost toothbrush. As if God (if there was a God) was sitting around waiting to find people's toothbrushes and giving them the winning lottery numbers. Why he'd be doing this instead of stopping famines and wars, I cannot fathom.

For some reason, whilst reading your latest post Hoo, I find myself hearing a German accented voice in my head saying something about rescuing people from the idiocy of peasant life?

H.

<>

Um, because it's easier to find a lost toothbrush?


az

You've obviously not lost your toothbrush.....

There's nothing wrong per se with teaching abstinence, teaching it to the exclusion of everything else is a recipe for disaster. It's just a shame the damage done by such a blinkered approach to sex education (which basically says: "DON'T DO IT!") doesn't manifest itself immediately, so these people can see the cause and effect. I can't stand this application of fundamentalist thinking to government policy. The people in charge of the US government have no connection to reality, as demonstrated in other notable areas.

My wife is a teacher in a middle school in California. Tucked into the No Child Left Behind Act is a part that prevents teachers from discussing contraception. *Prevents*. When I heard about this I don't think I have ever been more angry at a government in my life (Iraq war nothwithstanding). Teachers are now risking their jobs to give the children the information they need to be healthy adults, sex education has now gone underground! Bless the teachers who are willing to do this.

Could I quickly recommend the movie "Saved"? It's a great comedy about a Baptist high school, and it has Mandy Moore assaulting people with bibles whilst proclaiming Jesus' love. Excellent. A small part of thefilm has the school forced to teach sex education and it's down to the coach to do it. With ensuing shouting and misinformation.

I am always steamed when a tv show has a plotline that involves a girl being pressured into sex by a boy. Invariably, she goes through all the pros and cons and, ultimately decides not to have sex.

Far more effective is the way that programs such as Coronation Street have handled the topics of teen sexuality.

On Coronation Street, when Sarah Louise, then aged 14 turns up prgnant, they don't have her whisked off to have an abortion, chastned and newly chaste. She not only has, but keeps her child, lives in a dive of a flat, has to juggle first school and then a job with her responnsibilities towards her infant daughter, we see her having to forego going out with her friends, and being unable to make ends meet in an effort to keep her head, and the head of her baby above water (quite literally, in another storyline, but that is another story).

How much more instructive if the writers don't take the easy way out and have the character go out and have sex, and pick up a disease of get pregnant.....

Anyone familiar with Degrassi Junior High will recall the difficulties experienced by Spike when she got pregnant and had to raise her daughter while going to school.

Not only do these two shows show kids a realistic view of teenage motherhood, but they also show them the maturity and responsibility needed to make a good teenaged Mom.

I remember once, many years ago, being on a bus in the hinterlands of Toronto, jam packed with people returning from the CNE. There was a baby in a stroller screaming its head off... too tired and overwrought. This girl in the seat behind me said to her friend "When I have a baby it will NEVER cry like that." Her friend wisely said "Oh yeah.... What are you goung to do, duct tape its mouth?"

The first girl seemed to be under the impression that her baby would magically never cry because she "would love it every moment so it would never cry".

She waxed on about what a wonderful thing it would be to have a baby. Her friend was far wiser and pointed out that 1) babies cry 2) babies cry a lot, and 3) it isn't all a big bowl of cherries raising a baby when you are an adult, let alone a teenager.

Speaking of which... last weekend when I was off in Brockville, we went in to use a bank machine and these two teens, aged about 16, came out of the bank. She was pushing a stroller and he was holding the baby. The baby started crying as I watched them go out onto the street. It wasn't until he was dandling the baby to quiet it, that I realized that it wasn't a real baby, but one of the dolls they use to teach parenting in school.

As well as the God/Devil's fault logic, I find the common natural disaster/miracle logic exretemely puzzling.
An earthquake kills thousands of people, and a couple of people are hauled from the wreckage alive a few days later, and people say it's a miracle and evidence of God's love. Who's supposed to have caused the bleeding earthquake in the first place?

If I ploughed my car into a bus queue but didn't quite manage to kill everyone, would *I* get praised for the one that got away?

That is a warped and wonderful analogy, Potholer. I'll remember it!

Potholer.


az

This post has been removed.

Hello Inquisitor
Had I not read your introduction I might have thought you were serious, but I see now that you're mostly harmless. Welcome to h2g2

Some children really do need this information (I might go a bit farther than that but I'll stay within the scope of your argument). Not because it will encourage them to go out and experiment with the practical side of the education, but to protect those who inevitably will regardless of how forcefully abstinence is drilled into them.

In theory, it would be great if all teens retained virginity until marriage just because their teachers told them to. In reality, that isn't going to happen, and they deserve all the protection their education can afford them.

Hey, what of those of us who don't believe in marriage? "What? I need a piece of paper to say I love someone?"

I'm not sure I unbderstand why "Inquisitor's" incredible response to my, frankly quite rational opinion regarding sex education for children and young people would 1) be amusing or 2) appropriate.

I was going to craft a response, but I don't think such purile "humor" (if that's what it was supposed to be) should be dignified by spending much time responding, nor, if "Inquisitor" was being serious, their lack of any shred of decency, doesn't warrant my spending time responding.

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Why?

What if they don't get married until they're 30 or 40? What if, like Bouncy, they never want to get married?

What is so great about entering into a marriage without any previous sexual experience? Without knowing if you and your partner are sexually compatible?

Just wondering . . .


az

Hang On!

Even if they don't believe in sex before marriage they'll need this information when they get married.

I think anyone who promotes celibacy as a way of life needs their head examined. Sex is fantastic! Why would you want to deny yourself or someone else is beyond me.

These b@st@rds just want to control how people live. F**k 'em all, that's what I say.