Tag Archives: condoms

Abstinence Only Education: The Ultimate Act of Futility

Every time a conservative person, particularly of the religious persuasion, goes off on how important “abstinence-only” education is, an angel loses his dick.

Hey, the Bible says angels had sex with women at times, so they must have some junk under those white robes. And in this season when the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” tends to get a lot of play (every time a bell rings, a new angel gets its wings)…well, it seems an apropos image.

But back to the topic. Why the hell does this notion of teaching abstinence get so much play? Have all the members of the GOP conveniently forgotten that almost all of them had sex in their teens…before being married? Did they forget that many of their parents had them in their teens and got married primarily because those future Republican politicians and pundits were growing in a young womb?

I’m not saying we should be teaching the Kama Sutra in classrooms and letting teens watch pornos in school, but damn it, they need education about the risks of sex and how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Even loudmouthed fucking Sarah Palin’s teen kid got pregnant while unmarried in the midst of Mrs.-Holier-Than-Thou-Rewrites-History-and-Can-See-Russia-from-Her-Backyard’s efforts to try to drum up a presidential campaign.

Considering how much sexually transmitted disease is out there, and how many STDs are becoming resistant (or already long since have done so) to most available treatments, it is downright criminal to be trying to keep teens from getting access both to knowledge and condoms.

Because you know what? Teens are going to have sex. If they can get a person who’s willing to have sex, they will have sex. I know that I would have, if only the nerdy girls weren’t turning me down for dates just as much as the more popular ones were.

Teens have been having sex before marriage forever. For. Fucking. Ever.

I want conservatives to point me to this magic period in history when teens didn’t have sex before tying the knot. And don’t go back to the 1940s and 1950s and tell me how pure kids were then and how they obeyed their parents and were stalwart bastions of virtue. They got married in high school or right after often because the girl was knocked up.

So, conservatives, let me give you a math equation: Rampaging hormones + penis + vagina = teen sex.

No amount of pushing abstinence-only education will change that. Shepherds back in biblical times were telling their kids to keep in in their robes, too, and they didn’t listen then. They didn’t keep them in their slacks and poodle skirts in the 1950s, either.

So, shut the fuck up already, accept reality and let’s shoot for healthier and safer activities. Education and condoms aren’t going to increase teen sex.

But they might decrease the amount of disease and early pregnancies out there.

That evil condom…

…and other supposedly sinful contraceptive devices, of course.

Just wanted to mention for anyone that’s interested, since I don’t get heavy comment traffic around here, that my recent post Pro-con(traception) attracted the attention of someone who disagrees with me. So, there has been at least a brief flurry of debate. I got a bit peevish at times, but in my defense, I think the poster is still dodging some issues by failing to give a biblical basis for why contraception, particuarly barrier methods like the condom and diaphragm, could possibly be evil. Instead, he keeps falling back on doctrine that is church-based and NOT bible-based.

Check it out here and feel free to pitch in on the debate, for or against me.

Pro-Con(traception)

Dear Pope:

I realize that running the Roman Catholic Church, a global entity with millions upon millions of members, is a frightfully massive task. I understand that you are an elderly man with some old-fashioned standards. I know that you have issues with sexual immorality in the world. I’m sure that you love the sound of newborn babes uttering their first cries before putting their heads to their mothers’ bosoms. I sympathize with you, truly.

But, with all due respect—where contraception is concerned—please get your head out of your ass. Particularly about this condom thing.

How can you and the rest of your Vatican hoard be against something that prevents rampant overpopulation in struggling nations and can greatly slow the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, not the least of which is HIV/AIDS?

Jesus might not have been in favor of premarital sex, and in his day having as many kids as you could was a good thing. But he’d be ashamed of your short-sighted dogmatic habit of clinging to an outmoded notion that condoms promote immorality and that preventing pregnancy is by its very nature a slap to God’s face.

The Vatican has had some 2,000 to get its act together. On this issue, I tell you simply:

Grow the hell up.
                                                                                                      

I realize that many Islamic leaders and many on the conservative Christian right also seem to equate contraception with contravention of God’s will. And they think that for government agencies and others to spend money condoms for disease prevention and pregnancy prevention (and other forms of birth control just to stem the tide of unwanted pregnancies) is somehow the same as advocating immorality.

They are also full of shit. But there are many of them, and only one pope, so it’s easier to write a fictional pissed-off memo to him. Besides, the Vatican has been one of the most prominent evildoers when it comes to anti-contraception bullshit, having spouted off around the world even in recent years that condoms are bad. C’mon! Pulling out early is acceptable and using the “rhythm method” is OK, but physically stopping the sperm from getting near the ova is a sin. I’ve heard some talk from Vatican folks more recently that suggests condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS is the “lesser evil” but that isn’t much of an improvement. I understand if they want to speak out against premarital sex but to talk of a barrier form of contraception as evil is so mind-numbingly idiotic my brain just wants to shut down even writing about it.

I’m willing to concede that none of us really knows when life begins. I’ve heard arguments that birth control pills and IUDs aren’t simply anti-pregnancy measures but also sometimes abortive measures. Some of the reasons given for that seem a bit specious scientifically, but I’m willing to entertain the possibility, at least, that they sometimes may be interefering with the formation of life at a stage that is after conception (the fusion of sperm and ovum).

Personally, I’m not entirely comfortable with the concept that a small human isn’t yet a true life—and thus open season for abortion—simply because he or she has no possibility of survival outside the womb. Seems to me at some point before it has a chance to be a legit preemie in a hospital  incubator, a baby in the womb has organs and the beginnings of a mind and deserves more than a casual brush off on a scientific technicality. But that doesn’t really come into play with contraceptives from any reading I’ve done on the subject. I don’t know of any half-formed fetuses dead with IUDs in their chests. And condoms and the pill and foams and the rest likewise have no effect on an actual embryo or fetus.

And still, what gnaws at me most of all, even if you can come up with some slim argument against chemical means of birth control or the IUD: How can you speak out against condoms?

What kind of absolute moron do you have to be to oppose condoms? Are we to believe that the moment a man ejaculates, a soul is deposited into one of his sperm—the exact right sperm to do the job? If God is that freakin’ precise, he wouldn’t have given us men millions of swimmers and given them such an overall shitty chance of impregnating a woman.

I swear that if someone ever tells me a condom is evil because it subverts God’s will, I am probably going to smack that person across the mouth. I won’t be proud of it, but may just lose my cool. Because it is such idiocy.

Men’s sperm die in the testicles and get reabsorbed all the time. St. Paul commented on how wonderful it would be if more people could simply be celibate and focus on spreading the gospel instead of splitting their heart between a human lover and Jesus. So God apparently doesn’t mind if sperm or ova go unused in the body.

Yet we have numbnuts who want to go on about how bad condoms are because they prevent a sperm and egg from ever meeting up. Oh, I’m sorry. So, every husband and wife should be saddled with as many kids as fertility allows, even though their finances, time or even sanity (and society’s) might not be able to handle that many kids. Everyone who engages in premarital sex should be required to have the very real and high-level risk of a unwanted pregnancy that might lead to an unhappy union, a neglected child or an abortion. Everyone who engages in sex, married or otherwise, should be exposed to the risk of contracting a potentially lethal sexually trasmitted disease.

Yeah, very forward-thinking, you religiously extreme contraception fascists.

I’m not very comfortable with abortion overall. I’m not pro-life in the sense that I would take the choice away from women, but I freely admit the idea of abortion just doesn’t sit well with me personally. But contraception? I see not one problem with it. If we can stop the process before a human being is formed—in cases where a couple doesn’t want a baby—I’m all for it.

And for those who would rail against the use of contraception, and condoms in particular, I feel like saying you should all pull a damn condom over your head until your brain starves from lack of oxygen and you relieve the world of one more irredeemable idiot.

But I’m against suicide, so that won’t work. Oh, well.

(Photo by Ian Britton, from www.freefoto.com)