Why are some people so against birth control and sex education? Why is it that talking about safer sex riles them up so? Is it truly that they think that showing teenagers how to be safe will encourage them to be promiscuous? Or is it something more? In this post, I will attempt to show that it is something more, that there is a basis for all of these ideas about sex.
I believe that those who would deny sex education and protection to those in need have a fundamental fear of sex, believing that sex is something that must be separated from children, from teenagers, from society at large.
These views are wrongheaded. There are things that we must protect children and teens from, but knowledge about their bodies is not one of them. Kids will find out about sex. Teens will have sex. And they won’t ask permission from their parents before doing so. All that parents can do, should do, is ensure that their children are prepared.
Preventing teens from knowing how to have safer sex will never be protecting them. It will only ever be opening them up to unwanted pregnancy and STIs. Similarly, preventing teens from accessing birth control will only ever prevent them from having safe sex, not sex in general.
I mentioned above that there were things that there are things we need to protect children and teens from. One of them is well-meaning sexophobes who would deny teenagers protection and necessary knowledge about their bodies in an attempt-already proved multiple times to be ineffective-to keep alive an outmoded code of morality that died decades ago.