[quote]T Ham wrote:
tom63 wrote:
Personally, I think there should be a lot less people having sex. All I have to do is run to Walmart to wish more people practiced abstinence.
Could they then, be the people who tried to practice abstinence, truly believed in it, and yet still failed?[/quote]
I doubt it. Idiots shouldn’t have sex. They have idiot kids who again have sex and so on.
Abstinence has worked every time it has been practiced. There’s a lot of changes I’ve seen in the last thirty years that aren’t good. I never saw a teenage pregnancy in my high school. I graduated 1981, btw.
You can’t say that now a days. And you’re crazy if you think we didn’t have urges back then.
I saw on the news last year that boys and girls who do this have 10x as much anal sex as normal couples. They think it’s not sex. Maybe you can’t get pregnant-that’s true. But it spreads STDs much more readily. Most who take this pledge aren’t oppposed to oral sex either.
[quote]tom63 wrote:
T Ham wrote:
tom63 wrote:
Personally, I think there should be a lot less people having sex. All I have to do is run to Walmart to wish more people practiced abstinence.
Could they then, be the people who tried to practice abstinence, truly believed in it, and yet still failed?
I doubt it. Idiots shouldn’t have sex. They have idiot kids who again have sex and so on.
Abstinence has worked every time it has been practiced. There’s a lot of changes I’ve seen in the last thirty years that aren’t good. I never saw a teenage pregnancy in my high school. I graduated 1981, btw.
You can’t say that now a days. And you’re crazy if you think we didn’t have urges back then.
[/quote]
Teenage girls got preganant back in the 70s and 80s too. The school was more likely to ask them to leave. Or the parents voluntarily moved for a year. Or the girl spent a year at ‘Aunt Sally’s’.
What so many people miss when they talk about this stuff is to look at what the situation was when this culture actually stressed abstinence before marriage and in other cultures which still do.
Obviously things were never perfect and never will be. But 100 years ago, when virtually everyone stressed that people, especially females, should not have sex before marriage, out-of-wedlock pregnancy and spread of STDs were much LOWER. So were divorce rates, which are connected in a way I won’t get into now. It’s ironic that now that everyone has easy access to birth control and condoms and are educated in school about them, unwanted pregnancies and STDs have gone way up, not down.
It’s also about more than just unwanted pregnancies and STDs. Most women will find little comfort in casual sex. Not that it won’t feel good; obviously women enjoy sex. But it won’t ultimately be a satisfactory experience. And it will often leave them emotionally messed up. Not all women. But most. 100 years ago everyone knew this. Today we indoctrinate girls to believe it’s not true. But increasingly people are having to admit that they were wrong that women could have sex indiscriminately without consequence. Surveys are revealing that young women going to college and indulging in the casual sex culture they find often end feeling empty and scarred. Even many of the physiological mechanisms that cause this to happen are understood. People release a hormone after sex that causes them to become emotionally attached to their partner. Women release it in greater quantities than men; also in men testosterone tends to dull its effects.
Anyway, I just think a quick glance around at what’s happening with unwanted pregnancies and divorce rates compared to the way things were in the past should be a pretty big flashing indicator that maybe modern ideas about sex aren’t working out so well.
I think that the vows would be taken under duress, IE the father tells his little girl she is going to take the vow. Kind of makes the vow useless don’t you think?
I have a general dislike of pledges that children are forced to take, period.
We generally accept that children cannot sign binding contracts. That’s a point of law. Why do we hold this? Because a child is not yet equipped with the reason and experience necessary to understand and accept all the consequences of his consent.
But schools and parents pass out these pledges that children sign to affirm that they will never do drugs, or have sex, or whatever else. The children are generally at an age where they are too inexperienced to know what the pressures really are.
They are either forced to sign explicitly (with threats of suspension or other sanctions) or implicitly (we’ll tell your parents you wouldn’t sign), or peer pressure goads them into doing it.
So parents and schools utilize the same methods of pressure that they ostensibly urge children to resist.
These kinds of pledges are made in bad faith. Further, they are a shortcut to the real work of parenting: teaching a child enough to make his or her own decisions, not simply teaching him what decisions to make.
Finally, the whole process seems to degrade vows and pledges of any kind as they are forgotten or ignored. I support the use of “contracts” between child and parent for certain things (if the child does X a certain number of times he will get Y), because they set clear boundaries and reinforce the nature of contract and agreement between two parties.
I only support them, however, if they are made in good faith and the contract is followed - if the child does NOT do X, he does NOT get Y. Otherwise, the message is that contracts and pledges are formalities to be forgotten; mindless ceremonies or documents that appease while signifying nothing.
[quote]Mike Benfield wrote:
What so many people miss when they talk about this stuff is to look at what the situation was when this culture actually stressed abstinence before marriage and in other cultures which still do.
Obviously things were never perfect and never will be. But 100 years ago, when virtually everyone stressed that people, especially females, should not have sex before marriage, out-of-wedlock pregnancy and spread of STDs were much LOWER. So were divorce rates, which are connected in a way I won’t get into now. It’s ironic that now that everyone has easy access to birth control and condoms and are educated in school about them, unwanted pregnancies and STDs have gone way up, not down.
It’s also about more than just unwanted pregnancies and STDs. Most women will find little comfort in casual sex. Not that it won’t feel good; obviously women enjoy sex. But it won’t ultimately be a satisfactory experience. And it will often leave them emotionally messed up. Not all women. But most. 100 years ago everyone knew this. Today we indoctrinate girls to believe it’s not true. But increasingly people are having to admit that they were wrong that women could have sex indiscriminately without consequence. Surveys are revealing that young women going to college and indulging in the casual sex culture they find often end feeling empty and scarred. Even many of the physiological mechanisms that cause this to happen are understood. People release a hormone after sex that causes them to become emotionally attached to their partner. Women release it in greater quantities than men; also in men testosterone tends to dull its effects.
Anyway, I just think a quick glance around at what’s happening with unwanted pregnancies and divorce rates compared to the way things were in the past should be a pretty big flashing indicator that maybe modern ideas about sex aren’t working out so well. [/quote]
The urge to procreate has always been strong in males and females since the dawn of man. This will never change. Girls two hundred years ago as someone else said were usually married by age thirteen and had six kids by age nineteen if not more.
Sixty to a hundred years ago teenage sex still occurred it just wasn’t talked about. Many young girls either disappeared to boarding schools for a year (then the kid was put up for adoption) or had back room coat hanger abortions.
True it happens more today, hell they are more people today and others factors are at play. However, the best defense against this in my opinion is education. Talk about it give them examples of the consequences of early sex and safeguards against disease and pregnancy if they succumb to temptation.
This will be more effective then a vow that will be soon forgotten in a car on lovers lane when hormones are at full peak and raging.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
Further, they are a shortcut to the real work of parenting: teaching a child enough to make his or her own decisions, not simply teaching him what decisions to make.
[quote]Kayrob wrote:
I think that the vows would be taken under duress, IE the father tells his little girl she is going to take the vow. Kind of makes the vow useless don’t you think?[/quote]
At the time they sign it, they believe it. Children that young generally want to please their parents, want to be perfect. There are some exceptions, but there are many that follow that mold.
The problem comes when they are older and start to feel as though they have been tyrannized. They won’t verbalize it as such, but that is what they feel; as though they have been treated like a slave. How else can one feel when one has been given only rules without having questioned them or their foundation? Not that most 11 year olds will be able to understand or question the rules (some can, but most cannot).
So please don’t understand me to mean that we must explain rules to little children. Children are not equipped with the tools to understand rules beyond immediate consequences, and it is only in that context that they may be given. So I have no problem with that.
But there comes a point when the mode of instruction must change, as the child gets older. And relying on pledges and the extension of dogmatic teaching ignores the growth of the child’s own soul.
Abstinence pledges are the last bid attempts of these dimwitted zealots to preserve their ‘kind’ by abusing their children. And I’m so glad it ain’t working.
What I’m pissed off about is tax money going to any religious activity whatsoever. May a large rock climbing shoe catch them from out of the toilet.
dosnt it seem like lower class people are always the ones having all the kids and shit too. maybe they cant afford condoms? o maybe its cause they get more money from the government?
All I have to say is These kinds of pledges are made in bad faith. Further, they are a shortcut to the real work of parenting: teaching a child enough to make his or her own decisions, not simply teaching him what decisions to make.
[quote]lizard king wrote:
Could be that the past you are envisioning is more an idyll than reality.[/quote]
Guys, we don’t have to speculate about this stuff because the data is readily available. People record this information. Births to unwed mothers have gone from around 20 (unwed births per 1000 young women) in 1940 to around 70 today. The rate has more than tripled.
The divorce rate in the US today hovers around 50%. In societies that emphasize traditional sexual values, such as some Hindus in India, the divorce rate is around 3% or 4%.
Those of you who are saying that girls did have babies young in past years, they were just married already… you are correct, at least partially. But that just supports my point. Babies outside of marriage are less likely to be in a good situation. I actually think the rising age of marriage is a pretty bad thing.