The Pro-life Hypocrisy
I can respect the pro-life side, but I just cannot bring myself to join them. Why? Because they want to ban abortion but often they also want to ban birth-control. If people used birth control, there would be less abortions. Preventing people from getting the correct information does not prevent people from having sex. They just are not responsible when they engage in sexual activity. And pro-lifers love to talk about how birth control does not work. So no pro-lifers use birth control or they want to believe that it only magically works for married couples? I don't get it.
And it annoys me that right-wing Christians promote abstinence as STDs continue to spread. They want people to be abstinent by attempting to instill the fear of STDs, but if the idea of getting STDs scared people, they would have changed their sexual behavior long before being infected. Unfortunately it didn't scare them into celibacy and they did not change their behavior, and therefore people continue to get infected and spread STDs. And married people can get STDs if their partner is unfaithful or one partner had a past. With couples that decide to save sex until marriage, often one of those partners has a sexual history. Also, people are not going to be abstinent forever. They may be at some point in their life, and then not. People with STDs are not going to be abstinent forever and I don't think anyone has the right to force them to be. What they need to do is be honest and open with their partners about their health and make responsible decisions that may or may not include abstinence.
I don't know when pro-lifers will get it. I bet any money the majority of young unmarried couples in their churches are having sex, whether they want to believe it or not. I just hope that we can get people in our government who will face this reality and implement realistic sex-education curricula and help family planning organizations provide birth control and counseling to people at high-risk of unplanned pregnancy and STDs.
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Sexuality Education in Church:A Progressive Christian's Response
I have to agree that the Pro-Life constituency often display a naive point of view regarding sexuality. Pro-Choice aside for a moment --it is very frustrating when the reality of our culture is that most people do not wait to have sex until they are married anymore, and to assume that is the norm without encouraging sexual education (beyond abstinence only ed) without providing information on contraception is simply irresponsible. To do this only leads teens, and adults for that matter, down a precarious road that not only promotes ignorance, but is also dangerously unhealthy.
As progressive Christians, we need to be responsible for promoting sexuality education. We cannot naively assume that our parishioners are going to refrain from sex, and therefore do not need to be educated. We also, cannot assume that they are going to get education anywhere else. My denomination, the United Church of Christ, partnered with the Uniterian Universalists to publish an excellent curriculum called Our Whole Lives. Right from the start Our Whole Lives encourages parents to be the primary sexual educators, but as we all know, parents often have a difficult time having these conversations with their kids. So, ideally, parents should be encouraged to have the conversation, but secondarily the church can and I believe should, promote sexuality education.
Why should we do this? Because if we are to believe that God is present in all aspects of our lives, we must also believe that God is present in our sexuality as well. Sex is not something dark to be hidden away from God, to remain unspoken about, and to be considered evil --it simply is not! So, if we are to talk about loving ourselves as God's beautiful creation --that means loving our entire selves --our sexuality included.
Our Whole Lives is a curriculum that presumes that all people are created and loved by God --that means all orientaitons. If you aren't comfortable with homosexuality or bi-sexuality than this isn't the curriculum for you.
It is a beautifully written and illustrated curriculum that I wish I had had as a child, and I wish that all children/teens/ and adults will have an opportunity for such education.
Rev. Sarah Halverson
www.ocfairviewchurch.org
Fairview Community Church
2525 Fairview Road
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
SexEd Curriculum
Rev. Halverson,
Our Whole Lives sounds like an excellent curriculum, where can church leaders go if they would like a copy?
A 99% and you flunk the course if you are taught abstinece only
Yes and it is often the children and young people of fundamentalist and conservative Catholic background who are taught abstinence only that get that 99%. One mistake and they flunked the course. It is kinda sad if you think about it, they can say "No" night after night, month after month, then one wild night and they have an unwanted pregnancy on their hands.