Two days and two columns from the Daily Sexan--err, I mean, Texan--about the subject of sex. I am, of course, not counting the weekly "Hump-Day" column in which Ms Mary Lingwall writes about how to have better (and often, more depraved) and sometimes "safer" sex; the explicit purpose of this column is to subvert traditional attitudes regarding sex, but I digress. Yesterday, we had Ms Anna Russo's "Who can be promiscuous;" today, we have Ms Ashley Shew's "Texas' failed sex education."

Miss Russo's column has as its crux the complaint that there exists a double-standard in our society as regards to male as opposed to female sexuality.
"Since the onset of significant dialogue about giving young boys the vaccination...there has been no rhetoric concerning the possible encouragement of promiscuity in young males....The lack of any perceived threat of male promiscuity related to young boys and Gardasil upholds the idea that young men participating in sex is nothing to worry about....[This is] a double standard when it comes to male and female sexuality."

Taken as a simple and objective observation, I find myself agreeing with Miss Russo on this one point. There is (or at least has traditionally been) much more concern about the virginity of women than for men--a double-standard as such which originates in the days of pre-Christian antiquity. Within the Christian societies of the West, this "double-standard" was not so much taken up as turned around: the dignity of a woman rested in part on her chastity--which meant virginity in the case of the unmarried woman. I man's dignity was too often detached from this, and thus women became the de facto guardians of sexual morality in western culture. In other words, while adultery (and fornication) have always been considered immoral by Christians, and while both the men and the women are equally morally culpable, it was too often the woman who was entrusted with being the last voice of resistance to this sin.

This was, of course, for a variety of reasons. Women seemed to have more self-control as regards this particular desire. Moreover, the woman could become pregnant; and while pregnancy is a blessing, it also meant that she would be more obviously an adulteress than the man, for the evidence of the woman's unchaste behavior was there for all to see. Finally, women were more likely to resist for the simple economic reason that it is easier to raise a child when there is a man to provide a source of income (or, today in the era of the two-income household, he could provide an additional--and probably more steady--source of income).

Where Ms Russo gets it wrong is here conclusion. It is true that there is a deplorable sexual double-standard (if only traces of it remain). It is true that there are still some traces of the old wisdom that women ought to be chaste, and yet some of the pagan contradiction which says that men ought not to be chaste.But the correct reaction to this problem would be to promote chastity amongst men, and to instill into the culture a more universal value of chastity. Men ought to strive to help women guard their virginity (and thus the men's own chastity)--and so should become less promiscuous.

Miss Russo proposes the very opposite solution, namely, that women ought to become more promiscuous and less chaste. Seeing a different standard for men than for women, Ms Russo calls not for men to again adopt the Christian virtue of chastity--which has for long been apparently preserved (if only barely) by the women--but rather for the women to join the men in their vice of promiscuity. To paraphrase G K Chesterton, it is as if there was a battle long waged between the sexes, albeit with the women taking it far more seriously than the men. And then suddenly, the unexpected happened: the women surrendered.

All of this brings me back to the second article, today's piece by Ms Shew. For, in order for women to become promiscuous as men, all of the consequences of that promiscuity must be removed. This includes the taboos and the societal value placed on virginity (if not exactly chastity), but it must also include the more "physical" consequences, namely pregnancy and the transmission of diseases--the so called "STIs." From the way in which Ms Shew talks about pregnancy, one would think that I am being redundant by listing it as a separate consequence from the STIs.

Miss Shew begins her article by noting that Texas has the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the country. This is certainly not good news, but teenage pregnancies are nothing new. Unless the entire female (or male) population is sterilized (as per, say, John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich) by age 13, teenage pregnancy will always be with us. There will always be at least a handful of people who choose not to abstain from premarital sex, no matter how holy or prudish the culture becomes, and no matter how strong are the taboos against premarital sex. This remains true no matter how much "sexual education" we ram down their throats and no matter how many times they hear that they should "always use a condom;" teens are not, after all, the most responsible of people, and even if every teenage boy is forced to carry a condom with him at all times--heck even if every teenage girl wears a Malthusian belt a la Brave New World, there will always be some combination of horny teenagers who forget.

In any case, that Texas has the third highest teenage pregnancy rate is unfortunate, but there is a question which lies hidden behind Ms Shew's article. That is, what are the hidden variables which we are not seeing? One of them is the teen abortion rates. In Texas, there are parental notification laws in place, which tend to reduce the number of abortions, but which therefore mean that once a teen becomes pregnant, she will likely stay pregnant until giving birth. If three quarters of the pregnant teens in the states of New York or California have abortions, then the teen pregnancy rate only reflects the quarter who did not abort; meanwhile, if only one quarter of the pregnant teens in Texas abort, then their actual pregnancy rate will measure 3/4 of the teens who actually became pregnant. Thus, the data is a bit skewed.

Of course, Ms Skew--I mean, Ms Shew--surely knows this. For she is quite outspoken in her praise of Austin as the city
"boasts three Planned Parenthood clinics...useful resources for curious and cautious young people."
That's right, Planned Parenthood, as in the abortion giant with a vested interest in seeing people get pregnant (no pregnancies means no abortions), and especially seeing them get unintentionally pregnant. There is, after all, a reason why the condoms distributed by Planned Parenthood are the least effective of all condoms on the market; or if not the least effective, then among the least effective. Miss Shew's claim amounts to crying that we need more objective "sex education," and thus we must ask for the aid of the least objective of all sex educators: the abortions providers whose bread-and-butter is "unwanted" or "unplanned" pregnancies.

And of course, Ms Shew abhors the idea of parents being involved in the "sex education" of their own children:
"Placing all the responsibility for sex education in the hands of parents puts them in the role of health-care specialist, and they potentially give out bad advice and inaccurate information."
If this statement is accurate--a point which I do not concede--then the solution is not necessarily to have mandatory sex-education. For this latter approach takes the responsibility of sexual education completely out of the hands of the parents. The parents are not given any particular choice in the matter, but this does not bother Ms Shew of her friends in Planned Parenthood. After all, the proponents of abortion have never been particularly comfortable with presenting anyone with a genuine choice.

It is the very fact that Planned Parenthood et al so often lurk behind the "comprehensive sex education" which makes parents all-too-happy to choose the "abstinence only" option. Abstinence-only may not be the best of all "public health" sex education options--then again, the approach taken to it hasn't exactly let it play out. Miss Shew concludes by stating
"It is unfortunate that sex education in our state is reduced to the stereotypical image of the brawny health teacher/coach barking about abstinence while handing out condoms."
This is exactly why abstinence-only fails. It's not being given any particular support by many of the dissidents in society. There are plenty of people who oppose abstinence on principal--whether it's abstinence-only, abstinence-based, or abstinence-inclusive sex education. These people will always do everything in their power to subvert anything abstinence-related, and especially abstinence-only programs.

There is, however, plenty of blame to be spread around. This includes the pastors of churches who avoid the issue in dealing with teens (and even adults). It includes those in the school system who work actively to subvert abstinence-only (or even abstinence-based) "sex education," but it also includes those who passively subvert it, by not providing good role-models or by not working to promote a culture which values chastity. Finally, plenty of blame can go back to the parents who have shirked their responsibility by assuming that the abstinence-only "sex education" programs will take care of everything. After all, abstinence will certainly fail when removed from chastity, and the first place children ought tot look and see chastity is in the love between their parents.

People have for so long used chastity, virginity, and pre-marital abstinence interchangeably that the words have become conflated. Each of these words means something slightly different, for a person may have lost his or her virginity once and then repented into abstinence; and chastity can be practiced between married lovers who (rightly) do enjoy marital intercourse. Finally, a person who is abstaining from sexual activity may not be living a chaste life in the least, for chastity is a condition of the soul, too. It is all-to-easy to forget the words of Christ as recorded by St Matthew, "But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28). Chastity goes far beyond mere abstinence, for the word means being in a state of sexual purity--loving and not lusting.

It is doubtful that in the secular "public" schools we will ever see a chastity-based sexual education. Abstinence is as far as they will go. It is the job of the parents first and the churches second to teach chastity, and in this both have largely failed. Too often, it is from either a lack of effort or a lack of coherent techniques. Few people have heard of--little alone heard, read, or otherwise studied--the Theology of the Body or other similar philosophies; the result is that both parents and churches are often under-equipped in giving the philosophical, theological, or theoretical basis for desiring chastity.

Worse still, all-too-many families are ending in bitter divorces, which tends to undermine the love between the family members--and thus also to undermine the very basis for chastity. For it is one thing to preach chastity with the mouth, and another to preach it in one's actions. This is a thing in which nearly everyone in our society, myself included, ought to strive for improvement, both for our own good an the good of society at large.

Underlying the high divorce rates and the apparent failure of "abstinence-only" sexual education is surely a lack of chastity. For how many married couples are using contraception as a mere convenience, and not for actual medical reasons? Indeed, I have not heard of many genuinely legitimate medical reasons to need artificial birth control, and those are exceedingly rare in the population. Rather, artificial birth control is used to contracept, and as such it is an act of violence against chastity in sexual relationships. For in so doing, couples remove the primary end from sex--procreation, but more importantly unification. The are saying with their bodies "I give you this much of myself, and no more." They are, in other words, not entirely open to loving one another purely. Contrary to say, NFP methods of family planning, there is no communication needed between spouses who contracept. This may be a part of why the divorce rate is so high for the population in general, but also so low for couples who practice NFP.

Be that as it may, there is a clearly notable double standard which parents seem to have towards their children as regards the sexual education. For parents can rely on abstinence-only education to fail if they themselves are using contraception. Without chastity, abstinence is truly a stale and dead thing. And parents who are contracepting are not sending a message of chastity to their children, no matter how hard they otherwise try. Miss Shew and Ms Russo both seem to occupy a world which is free of chastity, as are many from my generation. To such a world, abstinence-only education truly is a failure, and truly is a cold and dead thing.