This is what abstinence-only programs hath wrought. From
Reuters:
One in five U.S. teenagers say they have engaged in oral sex, an activity that some adolescents view as not sex at all and certainly less risky than intercourse, a report released Monday said.
The survey of 580 children with a mean age of 14-1/2 found 20 percent said they had engaged in oral sex, compared to 14 percent who said they had engaged in sexual intercourse.
In addition, one-third of the multi-ethnic 9th graders surveyed said they intended to have oral sex within the next six months and nearly one-fourth planned to have intercourse during the period. It was more common for boys to have performed oral sex on girls than vice versa, the report said.
Previous studies and numerous campaigns aimed at deterring teenaged sex have focused on intercourse, but as many as half of adolescents experience oral sex first, the report said.
The risk of transmitting infections, including HIV, is significantly less with oral sex than with intercourse but is likely underestimated by teenagers, said the report in the journal Pediatrics.
Youngsters who engage in oral sex rarely used condoms or dental dams, even though herpes, hepatitis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis as well as the virus that causes AIDS can all be transmitted orally, it added.
Why, when we live in a time when we could be
so educated about these issues, do we continue to be so ignorant? Face it, guys: The cat is out of the bag. The horse is out of the barn. Whatever analogy you want to use, kids are going to engage in sexual activity of some sort. Not arming them with comprehensive sex education is like giving teens a license to drive a car with no training, or giving them a firearm and not showing them how to use it. Just as dangerous. The longer we wait, the longer we fuss over teaching them exactly what they need to know - no matter how uncomfortable it makes you - the worse our future will be.
