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Techno Dyke of the Month presents:
Why Scarleteen? Certainly, abstaining from penis-in-vagina intercourse, that Holy Grail of heterosexual activity, will prevent most pregnancies. It's pretty good at that. But abstaining only from penis-in-vagina intercourse, and thinking that other forms of sexual activity are perfectly fine - and this is what many, many teens and young adults seem to be thinking, not only based on our experience but on that of numerous researchers, clinicians, and health care workers - doesn't prevent a whole lot else. And what it doesn't prevent is damned serious: the widespread transmission of a variety of sexually transmitted diseases and infections, many of which can ruin a life or even end it prematurely. This puts not only our children's health at stake, but public health at large, including our own.
The sad thing is that a great many adults and even sex educators support the myth that sex equals penis-in-vagina intercourse. Either they may not know any better themselves, they've never taken the time to think about it, or they are simply content to allow personal and sectarian ideals of "morality" outweigh real and ethically sound concern about and care for the quality of life and health of the young. Many adults in the abstinence camp are more concerned about the quality of life and health of unborn children than they are of the children living today, an irony not lost on those of us who realize that the children whose sexual health is being so blithely relegated to a "just say no, sweetie" are the children who will be the parents of the next generation. Those children may be conceived and born within the bounds of holy matrimony, but how does that benefit them if they're born with congenital infections - HIV, one of the new antibiotic-resistant strains of gonorrhea, hepatitis B or C, syphilis, chlamydia, herpes - that their parents contracted while having unsafe but "abstinent" non-intercourse sex? For that matter, how does it benefit a young adult to wait until marriage for intercourse if they contract HIV in the meantime?
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