Chandler,
Great LTE.

Hopefully, you will convince the myopic folk in this state and perhaps in your church (if you are Catholic) that birth control should be taught as a part of sex education.

Not because of folks like you, who are well heeled in matters like this, but because of the overwhelming number of kids who have no guidance at home and will continue a cycle of poverty if they become parents at such a young age.

The right wing ivory tower crowd would have us all believe that Ward & June Cleaver are still the norm, but that is NOT the case. Hormones rage and a stiff member has no conscience. Those are irrefutable facts that the religious and right wing wack jobs will not admit.

Until Ward and June can be surrogate parents to the children of drug addicts, children of neglectful parents, and others, birth control SHOULD be taught.

Abstinence is great, but is one of those grand ideas that cannot be expected among teenage and adolescents of EVERY socio-economic strata.

Chandler some good points made in your LTE. I can only hope that you proclaim these same points to your peers.

There is nothing wrong with still being a virgin when one hits the 20 year old mark! One can learn many things with one's own self that can accentuate the experience with another somewhere down the road. Enjoy your young life and experience it for your own self first. Then, when a more mature age is reached...express yourself with another.

Shalom

Mr. Knight, I applaud your courage and convictions for writing this letter. I am 62 years old and I don't ever remember, as a young person, being bombarded with all of the sexuality that is just everywhere today. We give young people such double messages/mixed messages about what values are and so forth.

I'm for sex education in schools just for the reasons you stated. I don't think that sex education is going to push anyone over the edge; and if per chance it does, it will be "safer sex".

Good Luck

I'm sorry to be the contrarian here, but looking back at my own life, I really wish I had started having sex earlier.

Brian,
I admire your honesty.

Brian,

Your comment was way to vague for me. How old are you now, at what age did you wish you had started to have sex, what did you feel you missed, what kept you back,what would the benefits have been. What was the STD situation and the use of birth control measures?

My question is purely psychological--not judgmental in any way. I was not an early bloomer and I seem, to me anyway, to be fairly balanced in the area of sexuality. If you respond, and I hope you do, try to keep your past in perspective for yourself; I don't think things happen for no reason---timing,religion etc may have been in the equation. The thing that we all have is the "now". Go for it now.