Hmmmm........I had premarital sex and am still very much alive. Last I checked I hadn't become a drug addicted gang whore either.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/chlamydia-sets-us-record-most-cases-reportable-disease

This is what they should be telling them, but I guess highly contagious VD that scars your Fallopian tubes, and may cause infertility, is no big deal. Not scary enough.

I know someone who died, and she had premarital sex. Coincidence? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But why take the chance?

Sarcastic:

"Ninety-two point four per cent of juvenile delinquents have eaten tomatoes."

Think a lot of girls don't think they have a choice and do not understand what they and their boyfriends are going through.

A 20 year old is probably ready for more 'adult' choices than a 13 - 18 year old. Depends upon their environment.

If you have to keep it simple for pre-adults what do you say?:

Go for it? The worst that can happen is you get totally screwed up and boyfriend doesn't, so why not.

How about: The best thing that can happen is you get to say "I fucked Johnny!"

Not sure there are any upsides to Jr. H.S. and H. S. kids screwing around.

Not sure there are any upsides to Jr. H.S. and H. S. kids screwing around. -- Bob in Texas at May 6, 2014 6:24 AM

There may not be any upsides. But exaggerating the bad to the point that it is not reality gets you back to the non-trust of adults as occurred in the 60's and 70's.

"But exaggerating the bad to the point that it is not reality gets you back to the non-trust of adults as occurred in the 60's and 70's."

Yeah, and that situation hasn't changed much. Kids get told, "Smoking pot will make you go blind!", and they try it once, and they don't go blind, and then they wonder what else adults are lying to them about. Back in the '70s, when such things were still possible, I took a class in high school in which an M.D. (an ER physician at that) came in and gave us the straight scoop on drug use and STD's. Nothing was sugar coated but nothing was exaggerated either; he was very straigtforward about the fact that some drugs are worse than others. To the extent that I've been able to keep track of my classmates, not one person who took that class has had a drug problem.

Jim P. - I don't think Bob in Texas was defending that program. I think he was in fact (sorry if I'm off here) saying it'd be better to be honest about the real consequences.

That's what I'm trying to do with mine. Sex happens. Sex in middle school is not about the two genders wanting the same thing. It's about boys driven by hormones chasing whatever skirt is slow enough to get caught, and girls starry-eyed about finding Prince Charming and/or a cute baby.

Bob in Texas nailed it (pun intended) for girls. What he left out is that boys for the most part get off (sorry, again) scott-free. BUT that sometimes they get charged with rape and labeled as sex offenders for life. It's a game of Russian Roulette for both, except nobody told them the gun had a loaded chamber...

Telling them they'll die is obviously stupid. But telling them about the risks, the REAL physical and emotional and legal risks, especially at young ages, is vital. Couching it in terms that snowflakes understand is really tough, though. In some ways, kids that have a rough life just know most of this - it just needs repeating. Kids that grow up with white picket fences - they have no clue whatsoever how bad things can get.

Not sure there are any upsides to Jr. H.S. and H. S. kids screwing around.

How about:
- Not being hung up about having sex later in life.
-- you don't need to go stalker crazy over it...
- Finding out a good screw does not mean you need to get married.
- Getting the curiosity over with.
- finding out that you like so you don't jump at the first chance at 18 only to be disappointed (this applies to adults as well)

I could go on but you get the idea.

May be a tangent but, one thing to note with what the cop said: rape, drugs, assault, gangs, prostitution are all illegal ( to some extent with the last 2) and a cops business.
STDs and pregnancy are much more likely consequences, but are not illegal, and not a cops business.

Not defending anything but these issues are difficult for adults of all ages to figure out so why gloss over the likelihood that kids are not going to handle the adult consequences.

For most sex is not just physical but includes known and unknown emotional needs and expectations. True, some girls just want to do the soccer team over the weekend just to see what all the fuss is about, but I believe the majority of girls (and probably young women) are on a different page than their sexual partner.

Doesn't look like telling Jr. High and H. S. kids about how their actions can kill them (smoking, drinking and driving, etc.) has traumatized most kids so I don't think they are going to get a hang-up about sex if you lay it on the line.

Side note: Got a kick out of my son saying how his first non-training jump out the plane at Army parachute school was scary. He noticed the guy in front of him had not put his chute on right and it occurred to him that the instructors were no longer "schooling" them. IT WAS FOR REAL AND ANY PROBLEMS WERE THEIRS TO DEAL WITH! ha ha ha

It's not premarital sex if you never get married.

The perfect movie for the "Purity" minded . . .

Teeth (Warning: content includes "Vagina Dentata")

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780622/

It's not premarital sex if you never get married.

Posted by: Steve Daniels at May 6, 2014 12:24 PM
______________________________

Bingo!

As Wendy Kaminer wrote in her great, sarcastically-titled essay, "True Love Waits": "Few will pledge to remain celibate until they marry or die, whichever comes first." (You can read it in the book of the same name - but not in Google Books, sadly.)

She also pointed out that the trouble with trying to sell abstinence is that it's all about prevention of disease and pregnancy - that is, there are no tangible REWARDS in it.

(Unless you, the teacher, lie and say that teens will find their dream spouses long before age 30 - or 40. There are more tangible rewards in flossing or losing weight - and neither of those is likely to incur the vicious teasing of your "friends." There lies another problem - abstinence can be very hard, lonely, constant work that takes far longer than losing weight.)

I think abstinence teachers should not get paid (there are millions of $ being wasted), because if PARENTS armed with an armload of books can't convince their teens to abstain, why would teachers do much better?

It's high time we acknowledged that it's one thing to encourage teens to wait until they're at least out of high school and under less peer pressure in general, but quite another to push teens to marry when they may not WANT to marry, ever!

BTW, Dr. John Rosemond, who, normally, has a good balance of the old and the new, really blew it in this 2011 column:

http://www.seniorcorrespondent.com/articles/2011/12/13/an-adult-decision.255347

Most of it is good - UNTIL you get to the end.

Apparently, he didn't get the memo saying that most fathers are no longer that religious - especially those born after 1970. Not to mention that girls don't always marry till 30 - if then!

I've got a question for Bob in Texas and flbeachmom o the whole guys chasing girls not emotionally ready.

Our feminist overloards are constantly telling us women are more evolved and mature faster than boys.

As girls are supposedly more emotionally stable and mature than boys, wouldnt that suggest they are more culpable when consenting to sex than boys 'driven by hormones'?

I've got a question for Bob in Texas and flbeachmom o the whole guys chasing girls not emotionally ready.

Our feminist overloards are constantly telling us women are more evolved and mature faster than boys.

As girls are supposedly more emotionally stable and mature than boys, wouldnt that suggest they are more culpable when consenting to sex than boys 'driven by hormones'?
Posted by: lujlp at May 6, 2014 4:24 PM

Girls maturing faster than boys, leads to 14 year old girls dating and having sex with 18 to 20 year old men.

This was accepted a hundred years ago. Now, it has been criminalized.

When you criminalize too many basic biological urges, you end up with a lot of criminals.

Wow. This is the government of Las Vegas!

The place that advertises "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas".

Do they think the secrets are about Bingo?

Girls maturing faster than boys, leads to 14 year old girls dating and having sex with 18 to 20 year old men.

This was accepted a hundred years ago. Now, it has been criminalized.

When you criminalize too many basic biological urges, you end up with a lot of criminals.

Posted by: Isab at May 6, 2014 5:09 PM
_______________________________

It also used to be considered the "will of God" when women died in childbirth (as well as the babies, maybe a few days later), and it probably wasn't until ALL doctors accepted the germ theory and started washing their hands regularly - that is, 1890 or later - that that attitude changed. Greater hygiene would likely have revealed that both mother and baby were far more likely to die when the mother was in her teens as opposed to her 20s. Before then, parents might not have seen any reason not to marry girls off as early as they pleased. (In one Laura Ingalls Wilder book - "By the Shores of Silver Lake" - a girl gets married off at 13 - and the girl's mother speaks of it proudly!)

So I'd say it's a good law that girls can't even MARRY before 16, IIRC - and then only with parental consent.

lujlp - please remember that with teen couples, typically the boy is at least two years older, so he's had a chance to "catch up" with her, psychologically.

Plus, if he can't control himself in the most serious areas of life, his parents need to have him supervised, somehow. (Or "protected," if you like.) As I mentioned before, anyone who's old enough to understand the words "long-term consequences" already has serious obligations, like it or not. We've all wanted to dump our responsibilities/blame on someone else at one point or another, but even a preschooler has the obligation to follow parental rules when the parent isn't looking for a few minutes, painful and boring though it may be.

To clarify, I meant: "Protected from his own behavior."

So I'd say it's a good law that girls can't even MARRY before 16, IIRC - and then only with parental consent.

Posted by: lenona at May 7, 2014 7:50 AM

I am fine with that as long as the law applies equally to both sexes.
However, as usual you missed my point, which was girls at 14, are more mature than boys at 14, but since sex takes two, the girl's age isn't the only one you have to be worried about.

By the way, the age of consent in oh so civilized Japan, is 13. They recognize the biological reality that sexual maturity is when sexual readiness occurs. This keeps them from having to enforce and administer a whole raft of unfair statutory rape laws.

Of course, Japanese parents, in general take much better care of their children, and supervise them more closely, so they have less expectation that the government should be enforcing sexual behavior through the legal system.

BTW, I should have said that kids in the U.S. cannot marry before 16 even WITH parental consent, IIRC. To marry without parental consent, one has to be 18.

It's odd - I seem to remember that in Japan, one growing phenomenon is teen girls prostituting themselves for money for things like pricey clothes that their parents won't give them. Doesn't sound like strong supervision to me.

And anyone who knows that forcing sexual attention on others is illegal should have the brains to suspect, at least, that the law is likely to frown on one's having consensual sex with a teen or pre-teen who is at least four years younger. (What's wrong with THAT guideline, at least?) There is such a thing as child molestation, after all, as well as deep emotional scarring. Not to mention multiple incurable diseases, some of which you don't even know you have until you infect someone else and that person sues.

If statutory rape laws help prevent all the above, not to mention teen pregnancy, I'm all for them. But yes, of course they should apply to both sexes. (MRAs complain a lot about the double standard - but all too often, they don't really want a single standard; they just want women to be punished more harshly than men.)

Combine rising antibiotic resistance, with the FDA all but strangling medical research to death on one hand and with brute protectionisms like the patent system holding back medical R&D on the other, we can expect the STD problem to get a lot worse in the coming decades. It's sad, as by now we probably should have been able to eradicate most STDs. Other factors that drive up STD rates unnecessarily include bizarre policing practices like confiscating condoms from prostitutes.

And anyone who knows that forcing sexual attention on others is illegal should have the brains to suspect, at least, that the law is likely to frown on one's having consensual sex with a teen or pre-teen who is at least four years younger. (What's wrong with THAT guideline, at least?) There is such a thing as child molestation, after all, as well as deep emotional scarring. Not to mention multiple incurable diseases, some of which you don't even know you have until you infect someone else and that person sues.

Problem is age of consent varies from state to state, and jurisdiction to jurisdiction within states. As does the 'range' in which teenagers can legally have sex.

Some areas have a 4yr zone, some have a hard cut off age with no exceptions. In some jurisdictions is legal for a 25yr old to have sex with a 16 yr old, but illegal for anyone to get or give oral unless everyone is over 18.