Teens As A Sexually-Repressed Minority

Liberated Christians
Cyber Swing/Polyamory Resource Center
Promoting Intimacy and Other-Centered Sexuality

Teens As A Sexually-Repressed Minority

What do you call it when the government singles out a group and denies them:
* information
* health care services
* the right to consensual sexual activity

Sounds like discrimination, doesn't it?

In fact, American teenagers are a sexually repressed minority. In half of America's schools, teachers are not allowed to answer simple questions about the clitoris or anal sex. Teens are discouraged from using condoms through a combination of government lies and government-funded lies (see faith-based funding of socials services). In many states, teens are prevented from getting healthcare, including abortions. And worst of all, teens are jailed for consensual sex with each other.

I've previously written about Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who demanded the medical records of all minors seeking abortions, pregnancy tests, birth control, or STD treatment. I've also written about Nebraska jailing teens for videotaping themselves having sex--at 17 she was old enough to consent to the sex, but she's still a minor, so her boyfriend was convicted of manufacturing child porn.

Two years ago Georgia locked up 17-year-old Genarlow Wilson for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old. The former honor student and star athlete was sentenced to 10 years in prison and life as a registered sex offender. When a judge reviewed the case and ordered Wilson released, Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker appealed the order, blocking Wilson's freedom.

Baker is a sick man. Kline is a sick man. This country is full of sick men and women who are more frightened of teen sexuality than of anything else-including the destruction of our Constitutional right to be left alone.

The abstinence movement continues to sell America the fantasy that teen sex is so dangerous that anything that discourages it is justified: lying to teens, terrifying teens, withholding information and services from teens, jailing teens. Why not go all the way and execute teens who have sex with each other?

When will people understand that damaging people in order to save them from (perhaps) damaging themselves is disrespectful, anti-American, and just plain cruel? And when will the abstinence crowd be brave enough to admit that the primary engine of their commitment is not their concern for kids, but the desire to reduce their own anxiety?

"Reprinted from Sexual Intelligence, © Marty Klein, Ph.D. (www.SexualIntelligence.org)."