Sex and Kids: The Battle for Purity
By Paul Strand
CBN News
August 31, 2007
CBNNews.com - BOULDER, Co. - Imagine a world where adults rarely ever talk about abstinence with kids. But more than that, parents actually encourage them to experiment with sex.
Parents should know that's actually happening these days. And there's also a move to kill much of the funding that makes abstinence education possible.
Watch Paul Strand's report and Pat Robertson's comments by clicking on the play button to the right.
Boulder High School, in the hip, left-leaning town of Boulder, Colorado, recently hosted a panel addressing the question of Sex, Teens, and Drugs.
What a couple of the panelists said to their teen audience set off a firestorm of criticism from figures such as Bill O'Reilly and James Dobson.
Clinical Psychologist Joel Becker said, "I am going to encourage you to have sex and encourage you to use drugs appropriately. Why I am going to take that position is because you are going to do it anyway."
"This really goes to the end of something we're seeing more and more," said Jim Pfaff of the Colorado Family Institute, "not only in this state but across the country, where kids are being encouraged to experiment with sex."
"Now what is healthy sexual behavior?" Becker asked. "Well, I don't care if it's with men and men, women and women, men and women, however, whatever combination you would like to put together."
He added, "We all experiment. It's very natural for young people to experiment with same-sex relationships."
But there apparently was some wrong reporting, like charges that one of the panelists encouraged 12 year olds to try homosexuality.
The group that sponsored the panel released a statement to the press in which they say that the panelists spoke 'sensibly' and provided "'valuable and cautionary information about sexual issues.'" But the family that has been the main protestors against this panel released a counterstatement to the press in which they say that claim "is an insult to any rational and reasonable adult.'" They also go on to charge that that day of the panel teenage abstinence was dismissed as an unwise choice and indicative of religious hangups.
Boulder conservative David Kopel was offended by some of the panelists. He said, "Joel Becker, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, was a real anti-religious bigot."
But Kopel's Independence Institute think-tank still put out a 30-page correction to misstatements in the media over this controversy because he feels Boulder, Boulder High and its fine people were being libelled by misreporting.
"It's wrong to try to turn this into some excuse to trash Boulder as a city and the really great students and teachers in one of the top high schools in the United States based on academic achievement," Kopel said.
Whether the panelists have been misrepresented in the press, the general thrust of their comments seems like a good example of how many educators and adults look at kids these days -- as creatures of lust, driven by their very nature to fulfill those lustful desires, and the best we can do is give them safeguards against pregnancy or diseases.
"This is the logical conclusion of comprehensive sex education," Pfaff said. "It's a scheme of study that is designed to tell kids 'Listen, we can't stop your urges, so go ahead and do them. Just make sure you use a condom.'"
But some teens we met on a Boulder street defended the panel.
"Gay, straight, bisexual.whatever...it's good to encourage safe sex, and I think that's exactly what they were doing," one girl said.
Still, a group of Christian youth at East Boulder Baptist Church wonder if public schools end up encouraging this sexual activity.
Ariel Fletcher from the University of Colorado at Boulder said, "In school they're teaching you all about evolution and Darwinism, and it's 'natural' for 'animals' to have sex -- it's not unnatural -- and you shouldn't have to keep yourself from having sex until you're married."
"The whole school environment is sort of preo-sex-before-marriage instead of abstinence," said Mike Woessner from Lafayette, Colorado. "Even in middler school, a lot of kids started having sex in seventh and eighth grade."
Paige Cantliffe couldn't believe her public high school.
"I was a freshman, and it was weird that I was a virgin," she said. "I mean, I was in the minority."
It seems many kids are experimenting sexually these days.
"Yeah, we have sex already," said one girl.
Andy Vaaler of Grand Forks, North Dakota said, "You're by yourselves and you're with a girl you like, then, of course. But not just any random girl...I'd do it because I cared."
Clay Jones of Second Glance Ministries says that even 10 to 14 year olds are becoming sexually active -- so many, the CDC for the first time ever is studying sexual disease rates among girls that age.
"Those young women between the ages of 10 and 14 contracted more cases of chlamydia," said Jones, "than all the women between the ages of 40 and 50 put together."
He said, "We're seeing young people seven, eight and nine years old beginning to act out sexually in ways we've never seen before."
And many Christian young people are succumbing, or at least playing up to the edge.
"Some kids definitely push the boundaries," Lydia Woessner of Lafayette said. "It's not like 'actual sex,' so they still consider themselves virgins."
Fletcher said, "I think it's all just about going as far as you can without 'actually having sex.'"
Clay Jones studies the sexual stats. And he talks a lot to youth pastors.
"Their kids are having sex," he said. "If they're not, they're participating in oral sex. And if they have young people in their groups who aren't sexually active, they're the rarity."
Cantliffe said, "So many parents have no idea what their kids are doing."
But one thing parents do know: surveys show that 90 percent of them know they want their kids to remain abstinent.
And yet Congress right now is considering cutting much of the abstinence funding. If what's known as Title Five isn't renewed before June 30, it'll automatically die. That's the federal program that helps fund many of the state abstinence education programs. The congressman holding the purse-strings, Democrat John Dingell, cites research he says shows abstinence-only education is "a colossal failure."
But a leading advocate, Valerie Huber, says the study Dingell cites stacked the deck by ignoring many successful abstinence programs.
"There were about five programs studied out of 700 to 900 programs nationwide," Huber said.
Ayinde Russell teaches abstinence to children in the Denver area and says they're thankful for the lesson.
Russell, the abstinence director for Alternative Pregnancies Center said that kids tell him, "We appreciate you coming and talking about this because we didn't know. Nobody's talking about it."
Some teens balk at abstinence education.
"I don't think those classes really help that much," Vaaler said, "because kids are going to do what they're going to do anyway."
But studies show that many young people wish they hadn't lost their virginity.
Ayinde said, "Two in three teenagers say that they actually regret their first sexual experience."
"I've had a lot of friends who wanted to be popular and cool, and so they do it, and they end up regretting it," Cantliffe explained.
Dr. Gary Rose of The Medical Institute says that if parents can't trust the schools to teach abstinence, at least they can do it themselves.
Many resources are available for believers, like The Medical Institute's "Questions Kids Ask about Sex" or Second Glance Ministries' soon-to-be-released "Raising Kids in a Sexually Saturated Society."
Rose said, "More than 90 percent of young adolescents and adolescents, in general, want a very strong abstinence message from their parents. They want parents to talk about abstinence. And the problem is, so many of us as parents are uncomfortable talking about it."
When parents don't talk to their children about refraining from sex, many never even hear the idea.
Cantliffe said, "There's nothing that they've been told except for 'don't get STDs, be safe, wear a condom.' I mean, abstinence -- I don't even know if everybody even knows the word."
For kids who want to stay chaste in this sex-saturated society, it's pretty tough out there. But maybe what we're choosing to teach our kids about sex isn't making it any easier.
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