Keep Your Panties On, Twenty-Somethings

Once again, Dubbya and his cronies are all up in it. “It” being the sex lives of adults—fully grown adults, might I add.

In case you haven’t heard, the profoundly sage and fearless leaders of our government have decided that abstinence-only messages and programs should now extend beyond the pre-teen and teen groups to include unmarried people up to the age of twenty-nine. So basically, everyone should just hold off on having sex until they’re thirty.

Can somebody please tell me what kind of crack these people are smoking?

This interesting development is apparently the result of more unmarried women between the ages of nineteen and twenty nine having children. In an interview with USA Today, Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, said that the message is “it’s better to wait until you’re married to bear or father children” and that “the only 100 percent effective way of getting there is abstinence.”

True, but…

Why does abstinence have to be the only message, the one the HHS chooses to spend millions of our tax dollars to support? I’ve got nothing against teaching people about abstinence. But I think it’s just one option of a few that people need to consider. I mean, is it really sex education if the so-called education is just us being told by some ancient, conservative, white guys to not have sex? Unless I’ve been magically transported to the year 1712, a whole hell of a lot of people under twenty-nine are having sex, and they’re going to continue having sex too. There’s just too much tingling and throbbing going on down there to ignore it. So do we turn a blind eye and deaf ear to all these unmarried, under-twenty nine-year olds getting it on and pretend it’s not happening? Or do we throw ‘em a little educational bone?

I’m not an elected official and I didn’t graduate from Yale; not even close. But it seems to me that teaching abstinence-only is a tad bit irresponsible. In their attempt to bulldoze over everyone with their beliefs, it seems our friends at the Department of Health and Human Services overlooked a few important alternatives.