aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Damnable hypocrites doom our youth

They’re found dead tied up in wetsuits (warning, disturbing) and seeking sex in bathrooms (Let’s get the straight men out of those tea room stalls!) and get off on wearing diapers and sexually assaulting sleeping house guests and the list goes on.

And still they get away with spending public money for this nonsense:

4parents.gov is a government website run by the Department of Health and Human Services that is meant to provide parents with “information” to help “teens make healthy choices.”

But this “information” is not grounded in science. A recent federal report concluded that abstinence-only programs have had “no impacts on rates of sexual abstinence.” Yet the latest public service announcement by 4parents.gov “encourages parents to talk with their kids about waiting to have sex.”

In the ad, various children say that they want their parents to talk to them about sex and tell them to “wait.” Near the end, the narrator says, “Tell your kids you want them to wait ’til they’re married to have sex.” Watch it:

In July, ThinkProgress noted that 4parents.gov revised its website to include ideological, unscientific claims about abortion, stating that “some women” feel “sad and some use more alcohol or drugs” after having an abortion.

What’s ultimately so tragic about that campaign is that the beginning of the message is so true, our kids desperately want us to talk to them about sex.

On Morning Edition [March 8, 2007], from Blunt Radio in Portland, Maine, produced by Youth Radio and reported by Johanna Greenberg:

Ms. JOHANNA GREENBERG (High School Student, Portland, Maine): I’m sorry to say this, but parents are falling down on the job when it comes to The Talk.

Have your parents given you the sex talk?

Unidentified Woman #1: No.

Unidentified Man #1: No.

Unidentified Man #2: No.

Unidentified Woman #2: I feel uncomfortable.

Unidentified Woman #3: No, they never did.

Unidentified Woman #4: No.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GREENBERG: At school, when we compare notes, my friends and I realize we are learning about sex from the Internet and movies because our parents aren’t talking with us.

Unidentified Woman #5: They just assume that I did it already. But they didn’t talk to me about it.

GREENBERG: Have your parents given you a sex talk?

Unidentified Man #2: No.

GREENBERG: Nothing? They didn’t say anything about sex to you? Nothing at all?

Unidentified Man #2: No. None whatsoever. No.

Listen up, it sounds to me like the problem is the parents and we’re blaming the kids.

They need us to talk to them about sex. And because that’s difficult, we hide behind sweet abstinence mirages that get us off the hook but leave the kids hanging out to dry.