Levi Johnston, ex-fiance of Bristol Palin, says he and Bristol needed time to grow up before getting married.
Excuse me? You’re mature enough to have sex with her, father a child by her, but you’re not mature enough to marry her?
And this is why abstinence only education is the only sex education that makes sense. We’ve turned sex into something as casual as a handshake and ignore the consequences of sex. There’s a reason God gave sex to married couples as a gift – the couple would be able to raise any offspring the act might create.
When you remove sex as an exclusive benefit of marriage you turn the family model upside down. Suddenly, the so-called innocent act of sex takes on all kinds of weight you weren’t thinking about when things got hot and heavy. You weren’t thinking about commitment to your partner or the child you might create. You were only thinking about the 10 seconds of hormonal release coming your way.
Sex within marriage takes care of all this. The commitment is taken care of so the arrival of a child won’t be a problem. Two people committed to one another engaged in the act of sex and two people committed to one another can now share in the act of child rearing.
I find it disgusting that we live in a culture that encourages adolescent sex (yes, anything other than abstinence only education encourages sex) and creates no pressure for the couple to stay together should a child be born.
I’m not mature enough for marriage? Then you’re not mature enough for sex. End of discussion.
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Here’t the thing about abstinence only education – it doesn’t work. Research supports this. The fact of the matter is that teenagers aren’t going to stop being teenagers. That is to say that most of them are going to continue being ignorant morons who think they’re invincible, and as such they will give in to their passions thinking they won’t have to suffer the consequences they were warned about. Case and point, Bristol Palin’s mother is an advocate of abstinence only education. I’m sure Bristol has received at least one lecture on the subject, but it didn’t keep her from spreading her legs and getting knocked up, now did it?
Furthermore, just because two people are married does not mean they are suited to raise a child together. We have numerous examples of this in history and in the present day. There are couples who abuse their children, who spoil their children rotten, and who fight with eachother because they don’t get along but can’t seperate because they have a perceived obligation not to so the child has to suffer through the fighting. I wish the best for the child in this case, and in this case it might be best if Levi and Bristol don’t marry – better they stay seperated than get into a dysfunctional, loveless marriage. So long as both of them love the child and stay involved in their son’s life, I think things will be fine, marriage or not.
If abstinence-only sex education isn’t working, that just means you need to do it harder, faster, and longer!
“And this is why abstinence only education is the only sex education that makes sense. ”
You’re in luck, I’m building a time machine in my den. When it’s complete, I’ll drop you back in 1950, when abstinence was in and pregnancies (and abortions) were kept on the DL. Even if one grants that teenage pregnancy was less common, it’s not like there weren’t (aren’t) trade-offs for either approach, and it’s not as if abstinence-only would even make a similar impact, in the sexualized culture we live in today.
“I’m not mature enough for marriage? Then you’re not mature enough for sex.”
I had lots of sex when I wasn’t mature enough for marriage. Fortunately, I was mature enough to use protection.
“End of discussion”
Er, ok.
Wow, I’ve met a lot of miserably divorced people who thought knocking someone up, or being knocked up, was a reason to get married. It isn’t.
Yeah, I didn’t expect this post to be popular.
Like I said, it’s disgusting that we live in a culture that treats sex like a handshake.
But, hey, as long as you get to do what you want, when you want, well, we’ll figure the kid thing out later…
And perhaps, just perhaps, abstinence only educations doesn’t work (and I don’t buy the statistics – you can make them say anything) because it has to fight against an entire culture that says commitment-less sex is okay.
And maybe Bill is right – but not in the way he thinks he is. I have no problem with the general idea of shame associated with out of wedlock pregnancies. Shame, actually giving a frak about what those around you think, was one way a group of people could police their own. You didn’t do a thing maybe not because of what your parents thought, because frak them, right?, but because of what everyone one else around you would think.
I also think we’ve bred a generation or two of our children to believe acting irrationally for 20 years is okay. And we’ve given parents a pass, an easy excuse, to not come down hard on the “teenagers being teenagers” shtick. I think if we give history a long hard look we’ll see that the children of the past, by and large, conducted themselves more maturely, and had more expected of them, then the lot we’ve bred in the last 50 years or so.
But who cares, right? Those darned teenage hormones! Nothing a parent or a society can do about it!
Please. Try another pathetic excuse.
I’m inclined to agree with the premise that few if any high school students are mature enough to deal with the consequences of sex, even with condoms mitigating the risks of pregnancy and STDs. Those risks may be reduced, but they’re not eliminated, and condoms do nothing to protect against the emotional complications that go along with sex.
But I do not agree with throwing unmarried adults into the same basket. Unlike teenagers, adults can reasonably be expected to deal with the consequences of their actions — that’s why we differentiate between children and adults. Demanding celebacy of unmarried adults strikes me as excessively puritanical in a society that has widely available birth control and is rich enough that most adults are capable of providing a loving, nurturing home to unplanned children.
I’m sympathetic to the idea of teaching children and teenagers to defer sex until later in life when they’re better prepared to deal with the consequences, but if we only teach them that, many of them still have sex anyway. According to some studies I’ve seen, as many or more as who have sex if they’re given comprehensive sex education. Abstinence education needs to be coupled with information on safer sex, including the message that only abstinence is 100% effective.
I have no serious objection to anything you’ve said, Eric. I think your approach is reasoned and balanced. I can work with it.
jrogge,
No it isn’t. But to Kevin’s point, if you had a good reason to get married first, then that wouldn’t have been a problem would it?
Kevin,
Abstinence only teaching no more works for pregnancy than it does for guns. A lot more problems are caused by ignorance and “it just ‘went off’ ” than for careless violations of The Four Rules.
Abstinence Preferred is a different matter. Yes, Abstinence is the only 100% certain way not to get pregnant, and in no case should anyone ever hear differently. But, one does not endorse just by providing information. One can (and that’s where I take issue), but one does not have to.
My children will hear from me in no uncertain terms that they are never to handle a gun without my immediate and direct supervision. But they will also learn The Four Rules. In no way is conveying the information about gun safety an endorsement of unsupervised gun handling. They can and will be taught as two seperate issues.
The belief that what you don’t know can’t hurt you is foolish. What you don’t know can kill you (or your unborn child).
End of Discussion.
As someone who works with statistics in multiple capacities, I’d like to point out that dismissing statistics because some people have been proven to manipulate statistics does not disprove the statistics with which you disagree. Statistics don’t lie, though liars do use statistics.
You want to disprove statistics, then please note the fault in the operationalization of the variables, in sampling of the population, or in the validity and reliability of the variables. It can be done, if there is actually a problem.
Abstinence only education, as currently and generally practiced, doesn’t work. You can’t inoculate for abstinence. It’s a discipline.
But I do not agree with throwing unmarried adults into the same basket.
As someone who’s been living in sin for – um, 22 years now – I’m breathing a big sigh of relief over that.
If you go back several hundred years, I believe the average age of first marriage was about 14 or 15. Today in many states it is illegal for 14 or 15 year olds to marry, even with their parents permission. Because of better nutrition or some other reason, young people are actually entering puberty slightly earlier. Is it any wonder that teens have out of wedlock sex? Society has pushed the average age of first marriage well into the 20s. What exactly do they expect?
But we like sex!
I probably disagree with you, Kevin D, but I give you props for your position.
There is no doubt that sex — detached from love – has become the norm over the past 3 decades — and the norm has gotten much worse.
Yes, the era of free love has been fun. But the price has been high. Millions of abortions, millions of STD’s, millions of divorces, millions of latch-key kids, lotta domestic strife, a whole lotta Paxil and Viagra sold……
It’s a worthy discussion to put on the table, hopefully without the expected polarization of the right and left. Maybe, we should get some poets to help us too — the ultimate question is, How do we learn to give and receive love in this cruel, rough world? .
The problem, though, KevinD, seems to me more of a practical, macro one. You (and, to some extent, I) are facing a huge tidal wave of history. Buckley tells us to “Stand athwart history, yelling “Stop”, but most of us mere mortals get washed away by the current.
HB
When I began having sex, in college, I wasn’t mature enough to raise a child in my opinion. What I *was* mature enough to do was use birth control consistently and in accordance with the operating instructions. I didn’t conceive a child until over fifteen years later, intentionally and with the man to whom I’m married (and it turns out that without birth control I’m comically fertile, so I can credit the methods used with my failure to produce babies when I was too immature to care for them). As far as I’m concerned, this approach worked just fine, and I can’t imagine why you think you can declare ‘end of discussion’ and have it carry any weight for anyone except your own children when you have some to lecture.
“Like I said, it’s disgusting that we live in a culture that treats sex like a handshake.”
Except we don’t. That’s a gross exaggeration, otherwise I would’ve gotten laid by now. :P
“I also think we’ve bred a generation or two of our children to believe acting irrationally for 20 years is okay. And we’ve given parents a pass, an easy excuse, to not come down hard on the “teenagers being teenagers” shtick.”
I disagree. When teenagers are stupid, their parents still punish them, lecture them, etc. At least the good ones do. That’s how these kids learn to grow up, how they get out of the teenage mentality. If I had a teenage son who knocked up his teenage girlfriend, you can damn well be assured that I would have him take responsibility for it. However, that doesn’t mean I’d insist he marry the girl. My primary concern would be what’s best for my grandchild, which means I’d want to thoroughly evaluate whether or not marriage would be appropriate. Ideally it would, because ideally the two could have a healthy, loving relationship in which the child could grow up healthy and happy. But if I felt the two would have a dysfunctional relationship which could potentially harm the child, I’d discourage it. He’d still have to be involved in raising the child, of course. Things like this should be dealt with situationally, not with a one size fits all approach.
Dean,
Did you really, truly write this?
“There’s a reason God gave sex to married couples as a gift – the couple would be able to raise any offspring the act might create.”
I do not even know what to say about that!
JTD
Elizabeth,
To play Devil’s Advocate a second: What if the BC had failed? That is always a possibility. Even when taken perfectly it’s still only 99.8% effective. Someone’s got to be those 2 in 1000?
And that doesn’t even count the vast multitude of women (and men) who aren’t aware that antibiotics can render The Pill useless.
That is why I disagree with the endorsement of BC as “just as good or better” than abstinence. The real world failure rates of BC are not insignificant risks. And so, even with BC, to me at least, that does not absolve you from needing the maturity commensurate with raising a child before having sex.
Thus with my analogy to guns, you shouldn’t be handling an unloaded gun (no matter how sure you are it’s unloaded) in a manner inconsistent with it being loaded. If you wouldn’t do it with a loaded gun, don’t do it with an unloaded gun. “I didn’t think it was loaded” is not an excuse. It’s a gun, of course it’s loaded.
Yu-Ain Gonnano,
You’re absolutely right that BC has failure rates, and those should be taken into account. My biggest argument to counter yours is that abstinence also seems to have a signficant failure rate in the real world. Abstinence works to prevent pregnancy only as long as it’s strictly complied with, and so far the evidence is that abstinence-only education doesn’t increase compliance. If it worked, that’d be one thing, but it doesn’t seem to.
It strikes me now, putting it in these terms, that there’s an unfortunate catch-22 here; the teenagers who are the most immature are probably both the least equipped to handle marriage and parenting and also the least likely to manage either effective birth control or abstinence. To be honest, my earlier words to Kevin aside, I probably could have handled parenthood at eighteen if I’d really had to, although it wasn’t what I wanted. The self-control and ability to plan ahead and use contraception every. single. time. (including backups when on antibiotics!) that I had then probably meant that I could have handled motherhood if necessary. I’m not claiming I wasn’t a teenage idiot, but I wasn’t an idiot about *that*.
I just don’t see how you can look at Bristol and Levi and argue that the fact that they managed to get Tab A into Slot B means they must be mature enough to be married parents. The Palins might have been able to drag Levi to the altar, but they can’t make him a mature man and a committed father by just insisting he be one. If they were truly mature, they would have either used reliable birth control or been abstinent in the first place, but that barn door is open and that horse is gone, baby, gone.
You’re right that abstinence has a failure rate as well, which is why I don’t advocate for ignorance in it’s absence. Only that it not be taught as “It’s OK so long as…”
But I don’t think Kevin is arguing that because “they managed to get Tab A into Slot B means they must be mature enough to be married parents.” But rather that if they aren’t mature enough to be married parents, then they shouldn’t have put Tab A into Slot B.
This would differentiate between those that felt mature enough to get married, but have choosen not to for other reasons (such as opposition to state recognition of a religious institution) having children out of wedlock.
Yes, but that’s where the catch-22 comes in. Arguing that immature teenagers should carefully consider the consequences of sex, decide to abstain, and then maintain that decision through self-control even when presented with temptation seems – problematic. The very people you’re arguing shouldn’t have sex are the least likely to get why they shouldn’t and/or care.
Heh… Tab A, Slot B…
Yeah, that’s about right, Yu-Ain. I’m comfortable with the summarization of my position as, “If they’re not mature enough to be married parents, they’re not mature enough for sex.”
As for Elizabeth’s Catch-22, I go back to my earlier comment that I think we’re keeping our children mentally and emotionally immature for far longer than they need to be or should be. I think we’re making excuses for them that both hurt their development but has the added benefit of letting us off the hook for their mistakes.
This is something Dr. Laura herself has spoken on.
My mind keeps coming back to journal John Quincy Adams wrote when he was a boy. The crap he dealt with, the maturity he displayed at the age of just 8, is astounding – it makes the excuses of being a teenager seem petty at best.
Bottom line: We’re raising weak and immature children. We’re giving them all the excuses to do whatever they want well past their 20′s. And we, as a society, shrug our shoulders and say, “Teens will be teens.”
Abstinence seems problematic because we’ve created and encouraged a world that says you don’t have to worry about the risks. Birth control doesn’t even enter into the equation. That’s like saying it’s okay to point a loaded gun at your head and pull the trigger if the safety is on. Are you REALLY going to pass that lesson on to your kids?
If not, then why do you treat the method by which we procreate as a species with less respect?
Oh, that’s right. It feels good.
So, yeah, end of discussion.
“Sex within marriage takes care of all this.”
. . .so long as the marriage persists, at least.
Unfortunately, the State is now encouraging the breakups of families by rewarding child support collections with partial matching funds.
“The commitment is taken care of so the arrival of a child won’t be a problem.”
Right up until the point where the mother decides she doesn’t want to be tied to That. . .Man. . .anymore, and the State’s agents slither up and begin hissing in her ear.
Marriage is broken, Kevin. Sorry, but that’s just how it is. No-fault divorce, the grotesque expansion of unaccountable State power through “Star” Family Courts, the Brady Amendment
(no, the other one, the one that denies Citizens relief from impossible-to-pay State-assigned debts — the return of peonage to the usa, basically),
institutionalized feminism (in which women’s interests are prioritized ahead of those of men AND CHILDREN; that’s the proper definition of feminism, remember), and so on and so forth have broken it.
Marriage is no longer a valid alternative for men. Not because women can’t be trusted, but because marriage is a contract between a couple (or more, in some variations) on one side, and a community (traditionally a specific church) on the other.
And for men, the COMMUNITY can no longer be trusted to fulfill its responsibilities and stick to the contract. It doesn’t matter how loyal the wife is. The COMMUNITY will push for the false accusations of abuse, the filing for divorce, the denial of custody, etc., all just to achieve one ultimate end: the highest possible child support determinations, in order to receive the highest possible matching funds from the Federal Government.
“Two people committed to one another engaged in the act of sex and two people committed to one another can now share in the act of child rearing.”
Right up until the State says the Man can’t anymore.
So good for Levi. Damn straight, kid; marriage is no longer a viable option for men. He has no rights as a father anyways — the State has made that abundantly clear over the past couple of generations — so why exactly should he stick his head in the slave collar?
Tell me, Kevin; why should ANY man get married in the usa at this point? What is the point? He doesn’t need it to fall in love, live with a woman, or make children and raise them with her.
What good is marriage to men when the community that is the other half of its contract sees them as nothing more than a means to a larger slice of the federal money pie?
A very, very, very good point, Acksiom.
It’s a complex issue and my post is really intended to address a small part of that issue – teenage sex.
But, you’re right, there seem to be very little incentive to get married today. Let alone work through issues that may lead to divorce.
Even though it’s a difficult issue that doesn’t mean we throw out the good along with the bad. Marriage IS a good thing. It’s something to be encouraged and protected as sacred. Indeed it is sacred.
The question is: Do we allow it to be continually tarnished and attacked? Is it worth defending? I believe it is. I know it is. So, what we do is create a counter-cultural movement. We have men and women come together and make a stand and declare aloud that marriage is something we need to protect.
We need to bring shame back. We need those that divorce for petty reasons, to be ashamed for their actions. We need the community to say, “This is unacceptable and we don’t want your influence around any longer.”
The problem right now is that we’re completely shameless. No one feels guilt any longer. So, if they won’t feel guilt we, as the community, must make it so uncomfortable for them to be around us that they leave.
As mentioned in an earlier post, do we want a return to the 1950′s practice of keeping out-of-wedlock pregnancies on the DL? Yes we do. We do because we hide what we’re ashamed of and a comminity realizes that, yes, there are indeed consequences for irresponsible actions.
That said, there is still forgiveness. There is still love. The child of the shameful act is an innocent. Also, we must not punish the parent too much because that child needs to learn to respect the parent.
So, there is punishment, but there is also mercy.
I know it sounds simplistic. It sounds puritanical. But love is simple. And that is where the solution is. Love. Love that says there are boundaries to be observed for the good of everyone. And when those boundaries are crossed there are consequences.
We stopped loving one another and only loved ourselves. We also have been lied to and taught love is blind. Immature love is blind.
As C.S. Lewis said of love: “Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.”
We’ve stopping willing that people change their harmful ways.
And that is how we’ve ended up where we are.
I hate to break it to you, Kevin, but despite individual cases that make you go on a rant, teen pregnancy and teen abortion have been trending down for the last 10 years. Those stats don’t quite support the “going to hell in a hand basket” view you have of our abysmal culture.
Check it out for yourself
Kevin, thanks for responding. I seem to missing something, though, so could you please explain how declaring aloud that marriage is something we need to protect, and shaming unmarried and divorced parents, are going to change the laws that say child support collections will be rewarded with partial matching federal funds, and that child support debts can never be reduced in any way whatsoever?
“But who cares, right? Those darned teenage hormones! Nothing a parent or a society can do about it!”
I don’t think anyone is arguing that there is nothing a parent (or society) can do. But abstinence only as policy does not work. So as an analogy, a communist can tout central planning and wax poetic about the proletariat, but the ideology doesn’t survive contact with reality. Abstinence-only in the face of powerful biological incentives (some of the MOST powerful incentives in life, in fact) is in the same ballpark.
Acksiom,
Yeah, I guess my reply was a little light on hard details, huh?
The thrust of my point is this: I do not believe that a legal solution will present itself until a heart solution is in place. That, until one spouse or the other stops looking at their wants and hurts alone, and stops for a moment and considers the wants and hurts of the other, there will be no legal solution.
Also I believe there will be no legal solution because each party will play the victim card when it suits them best and there are powerful forces on either side to lobby on their behalf. Currently, men have the short end of the stick. Human nature being what it is, I see no reason why men would be accommodating to women should the shoe be on the other foot. Pettiness and vindictiveness is a universal trait.
I know this isn’t the answer you’re looking for. But as I see it, the problem isn’t with the courts or the law, but with the heart. Fix that and the other will attend to itself.
Our laws are a reflection of our values. Our values are a reflection of heart. The laws don’t change until the values change. The values don’t change until the heart changes.
I think the Civil Rights movement in the 60s is an excellent example. The change in the laws to finally lift up blacks in America only occurred because the heart of the nation had finally become soft to the problem. The laws were merely the legal outward expression of an inward heart changing trend in America.
The Civil Rights movement would have failed before it started had our hearts not been accepting of it.
If you cannot change the heart of a person, you will never change the laws they think are just.
So, if you want to make support laws more fair, you need to get the men and women engaged in divorce to stop looking at themselves so much.
deadrody,
Thanks for the link. An interesting report. However, I wish the report was more up to date. I think that it’s very interesting that the rates really start to drop in the late ’80′s when Reagan conservatism has really saturated the country. I’m going to be very interested in seeing the full results of this current decade.
Also, I wish the report went back further because I believe it would show that even the lower numbers of 2003 are still much higher than, say, the ’40′s.
So, in my final estimation, there’s a lot of data I’d like to see before I start advocating condoms to kindergartners.
Data and reports from reliable sources are available, and in more recent publications than deadrody’s citation.
Mathematica Policy Research, for example, was awarded a competitive federal grant to evaluate abstinence education programming. Their reporting is available online. As a funded evaluation contractor, they were able to do traditional random assignment, rather than post-hoc sample creation.
In “”Impacts of Four Title V, Section 510 Abstinence Education Programs” (2007), they report on 4-6 year follow-ups of the kids enrolled in several of the programs. This study reported on 2,057 teens, 58.8% of whom received abstinence education. Participants were randomly assigned to either the program or control group.
The reality of the 164 page report is that while there were a few statistically significant differences between the program students and the control group, they aren’t necessarily meaningful differences. That is, a 1% difference can be statistically significant but not really mean much when you’re talking 55 versus 56 percent.
In the Mathematica analysis, program and control teens reported similar numbers of sexual partners, and equal rates of protected versus unprotected sex. They also reported similar understanding of STDs and pregnancy. They did differ on the understanding of the effectiveness of condoms for preventing pregnancy and STDs, but not on every question.
The kicker is that both groups also had similar reports of total abstinence and of being abstinent in the last 12 months. Abstinence education did not increase abstinence rates for these teens.
This challenges the assertion by critics that abstinence education leaves teens less prepared to make wise decisions, and suggests that they don’t necessarily make wise decisions about sex regardless of what they’re taught. But it also challenges the assertion of advocates that it’s beneficial.
To amend a previous comment, teens cannot be inoculated against poor choices regarding sex – abstinent or otherwise.
Elizabeth,
Re: Catch-22. That’s why I don’t support ignorance of BC. Only that BC not be taught as “have as much sex as you like before marriage so long as…”
Unlike Kevin, I do not hold that presenting the information is the same as endorsing the behavior. I’m all for the former, and dead-set against the latter.
Like Kevin, I do believe we infantalize our children much longer than need be. Historically teenagers have shown more responsibility and maturity than they do today*. I don’t think this is the result of any nefarious social ideologies. But rather that the shear amount of information needed to exist in today’s society is vastly greater (The average teen wouldn’t be taking a class on Trigonometry in the 1700s). This takes much more time to teach and so children spend much greater time in a schooling environment vice “real life” where people must make real decisions with real consequences (You know, those things that tend to make people grow up real fast).
*I do take issue with the example of teen marriage in history as an example of maturity. While the children were legally married, the children were still years away from consumating the marriage and they would often live with one set of the parents. A marriage between 14 year-olds would not be considered a “household” in the modern sense of the word. Think instead of the (now illegal) Indian custom of marrying babies at or even before birth. Sure, the babies were “Married” but that isn’t an example of their superior maturity level.
Actually, you typically wouldn’t historically find a marriage between 14-year-olds in the US. You’d find a 14 year old girl married to a 18-22 year old guy – or older, even.
The double-standard on wild oats has been around for a long time.
That way may have been *more* common. Which isn’t to say that the other was unheard of.
But even in those cases it would be the 20 year old that was considered “mature” not the 14 year old so I think the argument still stands that a young marriable age does not imply a higher level of maturity at a young age.
Yu-Ain, I think those are defensible assertions. But I also think that the “standard of maturity” was significantly different than it is today. Prolonged adolescence is the technical term for the process you described where the need for greater education keeps individuals dependent upon their parents, long past historical ages of emancipation.
On the other hand and historically, teen brides married to older men would have had their entire childhood geared toward domestic work. At 14 or 15, they’d be completely competent to run a home, and likely would have been caring for younger siblings for several years.
The modern concept of childhood is just that, modern. Particularly in the colonial and pioneer days of North America, kids had many more responsibilities than they had free-time. That’s not to say they didn’t have time to be kids, but they had significantly less time than my kids do today.
But to Kevin’s point, if you had a good reason to get married first, then that wouldn’t have been a problem would it?
There are plenty of people who have sex without a reason other than base self fulfillment. He is making a case of Palin’s daughter not getting married because the young man isn’t mature enough. The problem here is you are lumping in premarital sex, and the dilemma of marrying the baby’s father. They are separate. If this were merely a conversation about abstinence training I would not be inclined to discuss whether of not this boy and girl are wrong for not getting married. Since the situation is being criticized then it is just to counter criticize on this context.
In any case, abstinence is indeed the 100% guarantee of not having a child out of wedlock. I don’t think a person would disagree with that. What I am disagreeing with is the notion that is stated which is the “But I am mature enough to sleep with her…” title suggests. Sex isn’t about maturity. Having sex responsibly is a sign of maturity, but there are no shackles which prevent people from having sex for immature reasons. Thus people can, and will frequently, have sex for immature reasons. Now we can always set up ideal situations in our mind; but the truth is, often the ideal situation is not the only situation in an almost infinite set of possibilities that manifests. So we have a disproportionate number of ‘unideal situations’ that arise many of which having a child out of wedlock is a shared outcome.
Now it is interesting that we can propose having sex only in the confines of a marriage as a cure. Since it promotes a moral choice it is a fundamentally good moral stance, but it fails to address any remedy for situations otherwise which are bound to happen in anything but a theocratic dictatorship where pregnant teen girls are threatened with death. People are not going to have sex exclusively within the confines of a marriage in a society where individual rights are weighed as superior to the benefits of overall society. Unless we have a major social change where we begin treasuring community thought versus individual thought and expression this will never happen.
Kevin:
Wow, I guess I didn’t realize you considered the ability to procreate to be the predominant sign of emotional maturity.
This is a sad situation, unfortunately all too common in our culture. (And in every culture I’ve ever heard about.)
Sex is a powerful urge at any age, but particularly so at Bristol and Levi’s age. It is all too easy to say “you shouldn’t have sex” but to turn that into “and if you do, and she gets pregnant, you must get married” is not a compelling bit of logic to me. I suspected from the day I first heard about their situation that a marriage was an unlikely end result. I am certain that both were pressured strongly by their family and their church to get married.
I don’t have such a black-and-white view of the world. Whether Bristol and Levi should get married or not is not something I would judge strictly on their ability to produce a baby together. Frankly I feel for both of them, and the child, and their families, and I simply hope things work out for the best. One thing I won’t do is use their public difficulties to advance my own personal agenda.
JTDeshong: No, I didn’t write any such thing.
The advocates for abstinence-only education need to show how their program is “the only one that makes sense” by showing that kids in it have fewer unwed pregnancies and/or teen pregnancies. Not with anecdotes, one case here or there , because I can provide copious examples of the opposite: kids who got rigorous and complete sex education and DID NOT have kids or even have sex outside of marriage. And the example of kids who only got “abstinence only” education who wound up with unfortunate pregnancies.
What we need is proof that abstinence-only education is SUPERIOR at reducing unwanted pregnancies. Every source I’ve seen that looks at it to date shows that it has no such effect. If someone can show such results, I’d be very interested in seeing them.
People have been having sex outside of marriage ever since Adam–and heck, I’m pretty sure he never officially married Eve. ;-)
A lot of folks in the movement for “abstinence only” seem to honestly believe that sex and pregnancy out of wedlock used to be rare. I don’t believe it ever really was. It was somewhat less common before reliable birth control only because people who wanted to have sex were more scared of the possible results than they are today. But it still happened, quite a lot from what I’ve heard and read.
A lot of folks in the movement for “abstinence only” seem to honestly believe that sex and pregnancy out of wedlock used to be rare. I don’t believe it ever really was.
The Puritans had remarkably high numbers of premature firstborn children who survived to adulthood, if you know what I mean. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Of course, they also believed that conception couldn’t happen without the woman achieving orgasm, but that’s beside the point.
Derek, that’s absolutely correct. In the 1800′s few would have studied math beyond arithmetic. They certainly wouldn’t have had 2 years of algebra. Could you teach a 14 year old girl today to be completely competent in “home economics”. Sure. So long as you never actually try it. :-)
So I do think children today are less mature than their historical counterparts. And they can be again today, but it means we, as adults, have to do on purpose what hard living would have done for us naturally.
CC,
Like others I think you have misread. The statement that Kevin is making is not: “If A then B” but “If not B then not A”.
Kevin did not say “If you are mature enough for sex then you are mature enough for marriage” but rather, “If you are *not* mature enough for marriage then you are *not* mature enough for sex” and to claim otherwise is incorrect.
And on this I agree with Kevin: We, as a society, should not be endorsing the claim that the maturity level needed for sex is less than that needed for marriage.
So that takes care of the “ought”. But what “ought” is not sufficient to take care of what “is”. Which leads me to…
jrogge,
People are not going to have sex exclusively within the confines of a marriage
Undeniably true. But irrelevent. People will always lie, but we don’t say that since people will always lie we should condone it. People will always steal, but we don’t say that since people will always steal we should condone it. Life will always be what “is” and not what “ought”. Where we get in trouble is when we think that was “is” should be what “ought” or that what “ought” is truly what “is”. We should teach what “ought” and be prepared for what “is”.
Thus, we should teach them to practice abstinence and prepare them with knowledge of BC. Vice teaching them to practice BC and to hell with abstinence.
Yu-Ain:
I understood exactly what Kevin was saying. The idea that “if you are not mature enough to get married, you are not mature enough to have sex” is a nice platitude, but it fails logically because it assumes that people not mature enough not get married are somehow wise enough to recognize their immaturity and therefore forego sex.
To which my reaction is a resounding “huh?” That sort of “logic” doesn’t stop babies from being born.
“If you are not mature enough to get married, you are not mature enough to have sex” isn’t a platitude. It’s a judgement, an opinion.
An opinion can be logically sound, given the supporting material, and still not be seen as valid to the rest of the word if “the rest of the world” doesn’t recognize the authority of the supporting material.
That is, saying that sex outside of marriage is bad because the Bible says so is fine for Christians who recognize authority in the Scriptures. It doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot to folks who think the Bible is a weird collection of strange stories.
Exactly. It’s not a plan to prevent pre-marital pregnancy. It’s a value statement.
If we should stop teaching our children that if one lacks the maturity to get married then one lacks the maturity for sex because “that ‘logic’ doesn’t stop babies from being born” then we should stop teaching children that murder is wrong because that “logic” doesn’t stop people from getting murdered either.
The problem is in thinking that that is *all* we should do. It’s not. There must be a backup for non-compliance. For the former it’s Birth Control, for the latter, it’s jail.
I pretty much agree with both Derek’s and Yu-Ain’s statements above.
I differ with Derek in the Biblical point. I think Biblical points can also be shown to be logically sound in a secular worldview as well.
I differ with Yu-Ain on the birth control point, but it’s not a point I’m married to. I can live with abstinence and BC being taught side by side if that’s how it must be. It just seems like sending mixed signals.
I think you missed my point, Kevin, because I don’t disagree with you.
I didn’t say that you can’t back up Biblical principles with facts and figures, and a logical argument. I said that citing the Bible as primary support for your opinion will not sway those who don’t see the Bible as a reliable source.
If you’re arrested in Russia for protesting, you can’t claim a violation of your First Amendment rights. But you might be able to claim violation of rights protected by Russian laws. Citing the US Constitution in a Russian court won’t get you anything.
You can call the statement whatever you want. To try to craft public policy around the idea that people too immature to be married will somehow simultaneously be wise enough to forgo sex seems to me to be the height of illogic.
In the distant past what kept unmarried people from having sex was not some evaluation of their own maturity and a logical conclusion that since they were not ready for marriage, they were not ready for sex. What kept (some of) them from having sex was the social consequences of an unwanted pregnancy.
Since today there are virtually no such social consequences, expecting unwise and immature people to consciously adopt a “logical” approach to their hormonal impulses is, quite simply, foolish.
Biblical points certainly can be used to make valid points to secularists. The trouble there is not merely that some people don’t find the Bible a reliable source, however. Countless Christians have wildly differing views on the proper translation and, even more important, interpretation of scripture. Anyone who thunderingly announces “this is a Biblical principle” is usually on very thin ice unless it’s something very straightforward (and not always even then).
Use the Bible to back up whatever points you make, even to secularists. If it seems like a sound, reasonable point they will listen. Just don’t make the mistake of deciding that quoting scripture all by itself is enough–or of deciding that we’re more sinful today as human beings than we were 50, 100, 1,000, or more years ago, without any evidence to back that up.
The Bible is pretty clear that sex outside of marriage is not okay. Does it rank this behavior above numerous other sins which are very common today, and have been common for thousands of years? No evidence I’ve seen supports that interpretation. It doesn’t even (directly) mention the issue in the 10 Commandments. Indeed, the Bible includes stories of major Biblical figures (like David) committing major adultery and not even being very sorry about it. And Abraham himself had one wife, but chose to have children out of wedlock with another (with his wife’s blessing!). I see no particular condemnation of those figures for those actions.
Sin is something every single person on the planet commits pretty much every single day. In the meantime, I see no evidence that the Bible condemns full sex education. Teaching the kids exactly how it works and exactly what can happen would seem to me a much more intelligent approach than simply telling them “don’t do that, it’s wrong and will get you in trouble.” Because we know for a fact many of them will do it anyway. Heck, the Catholic school I went to, which taught that BIRTH CONTROL ITSELF is a sin, nevertheless made sure all the youngsters knew all the basic facts of anatomy and exactly how the various forms of contraception worked. Not because they were “liberal”–they still haven’t changed their stance on this, they still think “be fruitful and multiply” was a mandate and not a suggestion. But they viewed full education on the matter as necessary.
I can see encouraging abstinence. I’m all for it. But abstinence-only? I need to see data which proves that does a better job than giving the kids full disclosure. I’m willing to bet heavily that it doesn’t.
From Dean’s post, to follow up on my previous post, the idea that in the distant past young adults avoided sex due to their strong religious beliefs is just as foolish as thinking they did so out of judicious applications of logic.
The only significant incentive towards abstinence was the existence of severe social consequences of an unwanted pregnency. All the priestly lectures in the world don’t measure up to one potential shotgun in the back on the way to the altar, or the certainty of social ostracism.
Thinking that biblical scripture was the driving motivation for avoiding premarital sex is naive at best.
CC,
Did you miss where I said “The problem is in thinking that that is *all* we should do.”?
Kevin,
Whether or not it’s mixed signals depends on how it is taught. If it’s taught with a *wink*wink*nudge* then sure. But if, like the Catholic church: Here are the facts of BC, but we consider using them sinful then no.
As I recall, David was punished for his adultery. (Of course, one could make the point that he was more sorry for the death of his first child with Bathsheba than the adultery itself. ) The Bible typically tells us less about the individual sorrow of the adulterer than it does about the consequences of the actions. Even Abraham’s fathering of Ishmael caused problems.
If a Biblical idea “seems like a sound, reasonable point”, then “they will listen” not because you’re quoting the Bible but because you’ve got additional evidence to back up your assertion. I have found that making a point in the “language” used by my opponent is more conducive to conveying my point than starting out with “The Bible says….”
You can use the Bible to support your position all you want. But you aren’t necessarily helping yourself or proving your point. Heck, even Paul changed his method of delivery based on the population he was trying to reach. When he went to Athens, he based his delivery in what had meaning to the Athenians – the altar to an unknown god. He didn’t talk about the Torah.
I think CC’s got a good point about the social pressure and consequences of unwed sex. But that social pressure was underwritten by Biblical teaching. It was part of the process.
Of course, we should also note that kids in agrarian cultures learn where piglets and foals come from much earlier than most suburban kids. Plus, one-room cabins in Colonial and Pioneer American didn’t leave a whole lot of privacy when mom and dad were bumpin’ uglies. It may have been a less scientific understanding of the process, but it was, perhaps, a clearer understanding.
Derek,
You may have a point about the exposure to sex at earlier ages thing. I know that the closeting away of sex is in large part due to the actions of the Church. Pages and pages have been written by members of the Church throughout the centuries on how sex is bad and how much better we’d all be if we avoided it whenever possible.
This position is wholly alien to Scripture. Sex is a beautiful thing. As I said, it’s a literal gift from God to married couples.
But when the Church turned a gift into a curse, well, it was only a matter of time before the pendulum swung the other way and sex went from curse, past gift to married couples, to something to be engaged in as often, with as many people, as possible.
And, as I feel about guns and children, if you expose them to it early and honestly, you remove the mystery and taboo. Without the taste of forbidden fruit, they’ll be less likely to engage in it.
So, yeah. I think you’re onto something there…
Yu-Ain Gonnano, what you said, yea. An act in common practice is not justified because it is common.
I’d like a show of adult hands, those who think sex at an early age is OK (maybe a real survey, option 1 – OK outside of marraige Y/N, option 2 – OK at age x, x+n, x+2n, etc.). Focus not whether kids will have sex, but whether it is OK or not.
I have biological urges to hurt someone in repsonse to various impacts to my organisim, doesn’t make it OK to do so.
Stress: The conflict arrising from your brain overriding your body’s natural desire to choke the living sh17 out of someone who deserves it.
So… the question of whether sex at an early age is OK is worth a discussion.
The human body becomes “sexually mature” sometime between the age of about 12 and 16 for most people, girls “mature” a bit earlier than boys.
In virtually all stone age cultures sexual maturity pretty much coincides with cultural maturity, in fact most have elaborate rituals acknowledging the reality of sexual maturity which are generally called “rites of passage” or similar things. Some of those have become ritualized in our cultures to this day, even if they no longer have the same meaning.
From that perspective it is quite fair to ask what an “early age” is. I think most “modern” Western culture adults would think that 16 is pretty young to be sexually active, but 5,000 years ago it was pretty much unheard of for a 16 year old “girl” to not have a few kids already.
In fact it has been far more common in the history of mankind for a 14 year old “girl” to be sexually active than for a 14 year old “girl” to be considered a “child.”
In a stone age culture where extended families are the norm, that generally means that the 14 year old parent has siblings and parents who actively engage in the child-rearing effort.
So the question of what is an “early age” for sex becomes a very profound question about the foundations of our culture itself. Is it “better” for us to have nuclear families with little child-rearing support and to expect child-rearing to be delayed by several years from when the body is biologically (and presumably mentally) prepared to have children? Or is it better to have our culture reflect what our bodies actually tell us to do?
Of course since I am a culturally programmed Western adult, I sure don’t want MY daughter getting pregnant at 14 (she’s 20 now, so I guess that’s moot). But does that mean it’s right?
What about the other side? Is it better for a child to be born to 14 year old parents or 44 year old parents?
Hmm….. that opens up a whole new can of worms….
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