Op-Ed: Let's Talk About Sex

....is the title of the documentary I watched the afternoon.

But seriously, let's talk about sex.

I'd always been a little chicken to cover this topic on the blog, but, like almost anyone my age, I think about sex a lot. It's not like an obsession, or anything, but whenever I see someone get married, I start wondering when it will be my turn. Not just to get married, but also to have someone to be physically close to. I want that so badly. I want to feel that deepest of all human connections. I'll say it: I want to have sex.

Not now, obviously. Not with some rando. But with my husband, whoever that turns out to be.

The documentary spent a lot of time drawing comparisons and contrasts between the approach to and concept of sex in different societies. In the United States, sex is pretty taboo. The media tries to make us think that it isn't, but how many parents are comfortable talking about sex with their kids? Most teenagers are educated about sex by a combination of primetime television, the music industry, and Google Images. I'll admit openly that a lot of my knowledge of how sex actually works and what certain body parts look like came from a series of covert internet searches. I didn't feel comfortable talking sex with my parents, and I figured they wouldn't either.

Europe is a different story. Sex education begins as early as third grade in some countries and it's treated like any other topic of conversation. Sex is not controversial there. Sex is not embarrassing there. I remember experiencing this little phenomenon while I was in Spain. My host sister absolutely loves the show Sex and the City. It came on during primetime, which I thought was a little odd, since every episode has at least one sex scene. My host-nephew would watch the show with us, and Carol had no problem with that. Once, when he was at his dad's for the week, I mentioned to Carol that I found it interesting that Sex and the City was on so early and how easy it would be for kids to find it. She didn't really get where I was going, so I told her about how shows like that are on way late at night because they're considered raunchy and highly inappropriate for kids. She said, "Why? It's just sex. It's normal. Everybody does it. It would be like censoring a show that shows people eating or going to the bathroom."

Interesting take on it, huh? But she was right. Sex is stigmatized in American culture, probably because of abstinence-only sex education and the vocal conservative religious community. Teenagers grow up with the notion that sex is something secretive, something controversial, something wrong. And what do teenagers do when they are told they're not supposed to do something? They immediately want to explore it. And why not? Why take someone's else word when you could find out for yourself? If I saw how much pleasure the people on TV get from having sex but am told by my parents and teachers that sex is bad, who am I more likely to believe? I'd want to figure out for myself who's right about sex and who's wrong. The discrepancy between how the media portrays sex and how parents and teachers portray sex is astounding. Mixed signals fly and kids remain unprepared when they start exploring.

My sex education at a Christian school went like this:
4th grade: The classes were split into girls and boys and the girls watched a video about periods and growing up. I have no idea what the boys did.
5th grade: Another video about periods and growing up, but with a bonus of how babies are made. AKA exactly what sexual intercourse is.
6th grade: Yet another video about periods, plus a side of reproduction, and a Q&A session about sexual processes. I distinctly remember one of the girls in my class asking what a condom was, and the teacher got pretty embarrassed and described it as being similar to a raincoat. I didn't figure out what a condom actually was until I saw the movie Never Been Kissed, which features the quintessential sex ed scene in which the students have to put a condom on a banana.
8th grade: A set of six classes, one per week, about teen pregnancy and STIs conducted by a counselor from Pregnancy Resource Center. For the first time ever, we were in with the boys to talk about such things as chlamydia and semen. This was my first real taste of abstinence-only sex education.

After 8th grade, all formal sex education stopped. We were left to our own devices (our friends and Google) to learn about sex. Oh, the revelations we reached. If we're not supposed to have sex under any circumstances until we get married, then what the heck is a condom for? What would a woman need with a diaphragm? Hmmm, there must be other options than just saying no.

I don't think that abstinence-only sex education works. Adolescents the world over start exploring their sexuality at roughly the same age, regardless of the society they live in. The difference is that some adolescents know how to explore responsibly, and others wind up pregnant. I'll give you one guess where the U.S. falls on that spectrum. The rate of teen pregnancy in the U.S. is more than three times higher than the next leading country because our students are told to simply say no when faced with a sexual situation. Then, when they give in to their hormones and have sex and experience consequences like a baby or an infection, we shake our heads and lament the direction in which our youth are headed.

It's like giving an eight-year-old a box of matches but not a bucket of water. Most eight-year-olds know what matches do and, if given the opportunity, will jump at the chance to play with fire. It's dangerous, it's exciting, and it's just a little bit wrong. If they aren't given a way to put out the fires they start, things can spin out of control pretty quickly.

I think it's the same way with sex. We feed our kids just enough information to intrigue them, and then we shut down discussion by saying that sex is wrong and that they shouldn't do it. Of course they're going to want to give it a try now that you told them they couldn't do it. Sexuality is something that every human being was born with and exploring it is only natural. Unfortunately, they're not equipped to explore it responsibly. We don't teach them what condoms are for, we don't teach them about getting tested and treated for STIs, we don't even admit that sex is as much fun as everyone says it is. If we would just take all the mystery out of sex, kids wouldn't be nearly as interested in it.

Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that sex should happen between two people who are married. But I'm also a firm believer in the fact that you can't actually control what other people do (or want to do). I know everyone says that, but if everyone actually believed it, we wouldn't have legislation about making abortion illegal or that abstinence is the only right option when faced with sex. If two teenagers really want to have sex, a parent or teacher telling them they can't is not going to stop them. It will probably make them want to do it that much more. Instead, why not approach the topic with them from all sides, put forth all opinions, and show them how to exercise responsibility? In Europe, teenagers can get condoms for free from the nurses's office at school or from their doctor's office. Consequently, their teenage pregnancy rates are 1 in 10, as opposed to 7 in 10 here in the U.S. Some people would be horrified by the availability of  condoms, but I think it's pretty smart. They're not going to abstain just because you tell them to. You'd be better off saving your breath and giving them a condom so that they can dispel the mystery of sex for themselves.

If you're trying to discuss sex from a Christian worldview, it's important to not only discuss exactly what sex is and how to do it responsibly, but also just exactly why you want them to wait until they're married. In all my years of school, I only ever heard that the Bible says to wait and that sex outside of marriage is a sin. All that does is make a person feel really guilty about engaging in sex when they're told they shouldn't. I plan to tell my kids exactly why I think they should wait:

To me, sex is more than just a cliche gift that you "give" to your spouse on your wedding night. It's a deep physical and emotional connection that is designed to be shared with just one person. I take that very seriously. I crave that connection exactly because I know how special and important and awesome it is and I don't want to tarnish it by wasting it. It's a sign of the highest respect to save my first experience of sex for my husband. God designed it to be great. The human race probably would have died out if sex wasn't so much fun. Knowing that I waited to experience it with my husband, and that my husband waited to experience it with me, that we respect each other that much without even knowing each other yet...it's hard to describe the feeling that that thought gives me. I say that I can't wait to have sex, but really I can - because someone else loves me and respects me enough to wait too.

I think that if I can convey this feeling to my children, maybe I won't have to resort to pregnancy statistics and nasty images of STIs. Instead of guilting them into waiting with warnings of God's wrath for those who participate in premarital sex, I want to teach them to actually want to wait.