People Are Still Having Sex, Redux

Reuters says that half of all Americans can expect to get an STD by age 25. The solution, something new and exciting, a bold beacon of hope in these dark times: "medically accurate information on condoms."


Hooray. We're saved.


I'm positive you've heard this spiel before: "Although abstaining from sexual activity is guaranteed to prevent STDs, some adolescents and virtually all young adults will eventually choose to have sex," quoth Sharon Camp of the Guttmacher Institute, in a statement on the news. "Before they do, they need realistic sex education that teaches them how to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies."


So the thing that's guarunteed to prevent STD's and unwanted pregnancies, we're not going to push that. We need something more "realistic," which is to say, something more risky and, therefore, guarunteed to result in at least some STD's and unplanned pregnancies. Super!


She goes on: "It is essential to have medically accurate information about condoms and other contraceptive methods, and guidance on how to access appropriate prevention, testing and treatment services."


Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me! Is it...a)condoms work best if you use something else with them, like spermacide, and b) look in the phone book under "Free Clinic"?


Is there really anyone out there who hasn't gotten the "safe sex" message by now? It hasn't changed for the whole of my lifetime: DON'T DO IT*






*but if you do, put a rubber on your willie, but be sure to get tested anyway, cause you never know, and if parts start to itch and ooze in ways that no loving God ever intended, be a sport and stop shagging the co-eds at the club until we can give you a shot, huh? Remember, you're being RESPONSIBLE!




Why do we have to keep having this conversation? If there were a whole smorgasbord of diseases which caused infertility, cervical cancer, warts and sores, immune system failure, and death, and it was caused by wearing flannel shirts, you know damn well that these chuckledheads would be picketing Congress until the Second Coming demanding an all-inclusive Flannel Ban. The fact that lumberjacks and retro-grunge rockers might insist on wearing flannel anyway would avail them naught. There wouldn't be a stitch of flannel from sea to shining sea, because the "risk" would be "too great." Even one flannel-related death would be too many.


But because it's sex, we have to hem and haw and give in before we fight, because patting ourselves on the back about how hip and un-hung-up we are is far more important than the health of the next generation. Deep down, we've come to accept the idea that the sex drive is our master, that it will not be gainsaid, it cannot be contained in a useful structure, and that only self-flagellating reactionaries would even want it to be.


Well, guess what? When we taught young people to keep in in their pants until they got married, we didn't have a 50% infection rate. We didn't get the 50% infection rate until we spent a few decades saying it was okay to have sex whenever the hell you got a willing soul and a sea room. We aren't going to undo the 50% infection rate until we start shouting from the rooftops that if you have sex outside a committed relationship, you're taking your life into your hands.


Because here's the flip side of "But they're gonna do it anyway, even if we tell them abstinence works,": They know that condoms and the rest of it work, too. They don't use them anyway. They cost money and take time and energy. Unsafe sex is free.