Christians' battle against Sex : Lack of Quality Sex Education

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As many of you know from reading this blog I grew up in a very conservative church and home. So, imagine my surprise when I was in 5th grade and my mom let me attend a sex education lecture at my public school.  For the lecture the school had the girls go to the library and the boys go to the gym. During the lecture a school nurse told us about our sexual organs, the guys sexual organs, mensuration, STD's, and safe sex. Almost all of this information was completely new to me. Although, based on the questions my classmates asked and their general demeanor during the talk, it was pretty clear that most of them had heard about all of this. When I got home that night my mom and I talked about what I learned in that meeting and then we started reading a christian sex education book. I tried to remember the name of the book, but can't right now. The book talked about how my body was going to start changing, which meant that I needed to dressing modestly, and then of course it pushed abstinence. It didn't cover STD's, or safe sex practices. At church there were times during Sunday School that the youth pastor's wife would take all the girls to a different room than the guys to explain how God wants us to save ourselves for marriage. She would also take it up a notch and say if we had sex before marriage most Christian guys wouldn't want to marry us because we weren't virgins anymore.

My sex education background is very typical among conservative religious circles. With this kind of education parents shouldn't be surprised when their teens have sex and end up becoming parents themselves before they graduate from high school. Let's look at this form of sex education from the teenagers view. They are told by every adult that is in their lives that they aren't supposed to have sex until they are married. As a teenager waiting until marriage is an extremely long time to wait. On top of this they have at least some peer pressure, even if they are going to a Christian school and hormones that are going crazy. Then if they decide to have sex they have very little information about safe sex, plus they likely don't have any friends they can turn to that know anymore than they do about safe sex practices. So, it isn't all that surprising that teens have sex and don't use proper safety practices.

This is the first blog post in a series that I have been working on about all the craziness that conservatives inject into every aspect of sex. The next post will be about abortions and all the new laws that make abortions almost impossible in some states.