Gonz said:
Me? Ravings? Nah, I'm pro-choice. That would be an interesting study & I bet different.
OK, called them ravings because you started talking about effects of abortion more or less randomly...
Gonz said:
If they can't make kegal decisions, they aren't an adult.
That's where
you're failing to see the light (or at least, the light is shining in a different direction
). I'll determine the level of adulthood of my kids by the decisions they make, not by some arbitrary number imposed by some politicians who have never met my kids and who (more importantly) have to set standards for the average family who raise their kids teaching them backwater ideas precisely like abstinence.
Gonz said:
That's where you're failing to see the light. That is not what abstinance teaches at all. It teaches you that we're more than mere animals. It teaches you to have control over your urges. It teaches you independent thinking & actions far outweigh instinctual behavior. It also tends to make the act more special. What gift could be better than knowing you're the first & only to do these things to this person, because he/she waited for YOU?
Abstinence doesn't teach anything of the sort. It's human interaction and experience that teaches that - the very experience that you're trying to take away from them. How can you possibly claim that it's teaching independant thinking when you're not giving them the chance to think for themselves? Indeed, your argument just a few posts ago was that they're not
capable of making those decisions.
As for actions and instinctual behaviour, instinctual behaviour in the end is simply what you've so far taken for granted and haven't got around to questioning yet. If you want them to get past their instincts, show them a world where sex is not a dirty word, rather than simply pulling a few woollen sweaters over their eyes.
Let me clear something up here. I have no problem
per se with the promotion of abstinence, in and of itself - if you prefer that then you can let your kids know. What I find abhorrent is the idea that people are thinking they can create sexually healthy kids by
HIDING all knowledge of how to look after themselves sexually. Teach them everything and then encourage abstinence, fine - just don't shout abstinence at them all day and then lock them in a box so that they never know anything else.
What gift would be better than "saving yourself"? How about the freedom from this putrid idea that sex is "giving yourself up" to someone? Perhaps maybe the knowledge that you won't have to worry about what your wife is teaching (or repressing) your kids about sex when you're not around? The knowledge that your kids will be able to grow up leading HEALTHY sex lives instead of treating it as something to be ashamed of? Granted, today's crop will need a bit of help getting to the healthy (not in the medical sense) part, but the least we can do is point them in the right direction. Then it's up to the parents to allow their children to figure out for themselves what a fuck-up has been caused by sexual repression in the past. Then maybe we just might have given them a decent chance.
