Virginity rare, drug use common with US-adults

That's a great point, one that really isn't arguable.

And at the same time, a lot of people wouldn't be here today if their great grandmothers weren't raped at 16 by their 40 year old slave masters either. Just saying.

I'm not a parent, but I'd like to know how many of you who are, would be ok with their 14 daughter dating a 30+ year old guy. You know, the same age range they throw guys in jail for 5 years for.

Sorry for the belated response. I tried to Google a sex education school curriculum for you, but didn't find one. Here is my personal experience from the 70s and 80s; I don't know how much of it still applies today, so take it for what it's worth.

I had sex education twice, once in kindergarten, once in fifth grade. In kindergarten, the educational hook was story-telling. Every day, at a certain hour, our kindergarteners would tell us a story, and one of the stories just happened to come from a book called "Where do children come from". The illustrated book was about a loving couple who one day decided to have a child. They had sex (shown in a sectional view). One of the many sperms won the race to the egg. Then the woman went through several stages of pregnancy. Finally she gave birth. Each step in the process was illustrated by a drawing. After reading the story, the kindergartener explained to us how the pill worked, how it prevented unwanted pregnancies, and how it guaranteed that the two children she did bear were desired children. I don't remember them telling us about condoms, nor about the problems of having sex too early, nor about the problems of sex between people who don't really love each other. But remember that these are memories from the time I was five, so take them with a grain of salt.

In fifth grade, sex education came with biology class. The educational hook was procreation -- starting with the bee story, moving on to frog eggs, moving on to humans. The curriculum included pictures of naked children, adolescents in the middle of puberty, and grown-ups. The school spent one or two hours explaining the sexual organs and their roles in conception and pregnancy. After that, another hour were devoted sexual illnesses. This was followed by another hour about contraceptives and how they work. Concluding the subject were two hours of classroom discussion with a male and a female teacher in which "no question was taboo". This was the only part of the curriculum that didn't go well: Some students tried to impress their peers by asking very direct questions about specific sexual practices. Upon hearing them, the teachers decided that some questions were taboo after all. This, in turn, left everybody else uncomfortable because they didn't know what we could ask and what we couldn't.

As best I remember it, the curriculum exclusively talked about sex related to procreation -- perhaps because it was part of the Biology curriculum. Thus, it discussed rape, how to prevent it, and where to turn after it. But I don't remember any discussion of masturbation, homosexuality, or any other sexual practices that don't lead to pregnancy. These only came up during the "no taboo" Q&A session. Finally, I don't remember any in-depth discussion of love, although the teachers probably mentioned it in the Q&A.

Overall, I'd give my kindergarteners a straight A and the 5th grade teachers a B+. To be fair though, in fifth grade, our "hee hee" reactions to many important points made teaching unnecessarily hard for the teachers. In my view, kindergarten was the better time to talk about sex than 5th grade.

I wasn't in kinergarten but had sex education twice in grammar/high school: 5th grade, just the basics and then again in 8th. (In the 60's, that was.)


(I taped the hours in 8th .... but nothing then my valuable comments were to heard later. However, the headteacher [and the teacher conference, and the parents conference [led by my father] wanted that tape otherwise ... . They got it. [Unfortunatelly, due to a technical error, even my really informative comments were deleted .... [[on a second tape]].)

Well, sometimes I do, but not nearly as frequently as you seem to think. To be specific, the only time I jerked someone around in this thread was when I asked Miller if they'd taught her about condoms in medical school.

And the only time I attempted to jerk you around was in the "stripper" thread, in the post where I called you a prude. That remark seemed funny at the time I posted it; I just reread it, and it looks kind of stale now -- not all that funny anymore. I might as well take this opportunity to apologize for that remark. It was an attack on your person, not your arguments, and this was wrong. I'm sorry I made it.

But that's it. That's the extent of my liking to jerk people around. The rest of our disagreement really comes from our diverging views on the issue. Judging by your responses to me, that is by far the greater part.

I tried to start a movement once to bring back virginity . . . but it didn't get very much attention or support, so i went out and got stoned . . .

Well, you seem to take even the smallest change to get stoned, though. :wink:

Walter and Thomes, thank you for responding to my questions. From what you tell me, I have no problem at all with the curriculum you describe.


Osso, in Mass they are, or at least were pushing the gay agenda in the schools to the point where I was convinced that they were trying to get all the students to be gay or at least try it before they rule it out.
They talked about masterbation and things that had absolutely no place in schools.

Not long before I left Mass, the school set up a sex ed meeting at another school one evening for students only, from ages 10 and up to 18 and one of the young looking parents decided to dress as a teenager, attend the meeting and record it.
The tape was sent to the Massachusetts News paper, who made copies of the tape and sent it along to anyone who requested it. I requested the tape and needless to say, I was floored when I heard what they were teaching the kids.
I was disgusted by everything I heard on that tape and so were many many more parents when they learned what was going on in this supposed sex ed meeting.
All the instructors were gay and were trying to convince the students to at least try having sex with the same sex before they rule out being gay.
The part that disgusted me the most was all the sexual positions I heard them describe in detail including fisting, which I had never even heard about until I heard the tape, where they describe how to insert a fist inside a virgina.
They talked about absolutely ever position I could think of and more, yet not once did they talk about safe sex, pregnancy, disease or anything to that nature.
The meeting sent enough parents through the roof that they parked themselves on the Governers office door step every single day, waiting to get answers and to give him a piece of their minds.
Unfortunately for them, the president sent the bastard to Canada to get him away from the angry mob.

Cellucci has now left Canada, yahoo!

No, I wouldn't want my 14 year old daughter dating a 30+ year old guy. Any more (and somewhat, but not much less) than I'd want her dating a 17, or 18, or 19 - 29 year old. In fact, I'd want to make damn sure that my 14 year old daughter knew enough about her body, natural desires, sexual inclinations of 14 - 16 year old boys (her allowed dating range), smart decisions, and potential consequences and longterm futures of some not-so-smart decisions before she ever left the house on a date, regardless of the age of the guy.

When I was 15, my boyfriend was 27 and he was one of the nicest guys I ever went out with.
My parents were not not happy about it at all until they realized that he was the best thing for me at the time and at least they knew where I was.
I was a very independent teen and no one (including my parents) could stop me from doing what I wanted to do.
Punish me, no problem. I'll just climb out the window and capture my freedom.
With Billy (my man at the time) I was off the streets and safe. He loved me, I loved him and we are still friends today.
I was the one who chased Billy from the time I was 13 and he finally gave in to love when I was 15.
He was scared **** to be with me because of the laws, or course, so I ended up breaking up with him because he wouldn't take me anywhere in public in fear of being locked up.

At the time, all the boys my age were interested in was getting me in the sack. That turned me right off, like it still does today.

Billy wasn't like that. A great guy he was and still is.

I'll just observe that same-sex intercourse was a capital crime when Jeremy Bentham first argued for legalizing it. I guess Bentham's advocacy for legalizing a capital crime must have shocked most of his 1785 readers. Indeed, nobody published his manuscript until almost 200 years later; that's how shocking it was. Yet today, we see Bentham confirmed in his moral judgment, whereas 18th century England looks bigoted and cruel.

In sexual mores, legality and morality can be two very different beasts.