You know teenagers today. They're crazy. Much crazier than when we were all teenagers. They try to find ways to stay out past curfew, snag their first beer or first drug and then try to top it all off with a clumsy first venture into having sex.
Those crazy, rotten teenagers. Doing all the same things that teenagers have been doing for years - trying anything an authority figure tells them not to. They're all punks now, anyway. We sure didn't behave like that. We had respect.
If that hypothetical exchange sounds familiar, it should. The college community has the benefit of retaining a sharper memory of our teenage years than our elders do, but the characterization of the era is consistent.
We wall were trying to rebel, whether you listened to Duke Ellington, The Who or Kanye West. Teenagers have the benefit of being the chameleon of the demographic - they might blend into an attractive culture, but the tendencies are only temporary and the soul is the same. Teenagers always will long for the things they're told to wait for.
High up on that list, you'll find sex. But unlike booze or drugs, it's your rapidly maturing body telling you to try it, not necessarily your friends. Sex doesn't get you a high - well, not a long-lasting one anyway - it doesn't impair one's ability to drive and your parents surely can't notice sex on your breath as you stumble in late one night. It's a natural urge and a natural act and, like all other things natural, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it.
The right way to have sex, for people young or not, is to have it safely. The common perception is that sex results in sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy or anything else unplanned. That's misguided. Unsafe or unprotected sex is the culprit of all of those scary consequences, and that needs to be made clearer to our nation's young people.
State Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, introduced a bill earlier this year that we feel is contrary to that. Kuipers' bill - currently awaiting vote in the state Senate - places an emphasis on teaching young people abstinence in place of safe-sex methods. The bill is one we hope is soundly defeated.
What Kuipers should know - since he was on a committee to reduce teen pregnancy as a state House representative - is that abstinence actually is a method of safe sex. Young people face the choice - have sex or don't. Sexual situations are an inevitable phase of growing up, and if only abstinence is emphasized, how will young people know about birth-control measures or how to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections?
To be sure, sex education always should teach young people that abstinence is a choice. It's the undoubtedly safest method of birth control by far, but it's only one option of many ways to keep safe. Young people are going to continue to experiment with sex, and the best way to protect them from its scary consequences is showing them how to protect themselves effectively.
Make no mistake, abstinence is not a bad option in any way. Teaching young people how to deal with the issue of sex, however, is a superior alternative to urging them to deny it altogether.
