The New Sexual Revolution
As the mother of teenagers I found your articles on abstinence most enlightening if not a bit too optimistic for today’s kids (Special Report, Dec. 9, 2002). If the current administration really wants to instill family values among teenagers they would do better by putting more pressure on the media. How can kids expect to remain virgins if they are constantly bombarded by overtly explicit images everywhere they turn, whether it be on television or in movies, magazines or billboards? The message in the United States is that sex sells, whether we like it or not. And until we get our priorities in order, we won’t be able to change anything. Vicky Mamieh Mexico City, Mexico
Thank you, President Bush! It’s about time a world leader spoke out on the benefits of abstinence and the physical and emotional perils of sex outside of marriage. Your article “The Battle Over Abstinence” says “there’s so far little evidence to show abstinence works,” but you don’t need to be a scientist to figure out that someone who doesn’t have sex is not likely to catch a sexually transmitted disease (STD) or get pregnant. If you meant that there’s little evidence that teaching abstinence works, history has shown that it has worked very successfully throughout the last couple of thousand years. STDs and “unwanted” pregnancies were largely avoided until the sexual revolution. There is also evidence that the past 40 years of sex education in America has failed. Liberals who don’t care to hear about other alternatives like abstinence are petrified of “turning back the clock” on the rights they have gained to “no fault” divorces, abortion and homosexuality–behaviors they tell our children are acceptable. Is the idea that “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity” really such an appalling and dreadful one? Todd Proctor Turku, Finland
You say “the Bush administration wants to spend millions more [dollars] selling teens on the virtues of virginity.” Instead of spending millions more, let’s take a vow that we’ll spend more quality time with our kids and educate them about the virtues of virginity and the consequences of contracting AIDS. Our actual target group should be parents and elders who do not seem to think that decent child raising is also a virtue. Pullela Murali Mohan Hyderabad, India
President Bush wants to globalize American “family values.” Which values are these? American kids often go off to college far away from their families and, when finished, often find jobs far from their hometown. Some consider it a failure if one stays in the town in which one was born and went to high school. Americans also put their elders into old-age homes. Rarely do you see entire families living in the same city. This is the disintegration of the family as a primary unit. Bush should look to us Latinos, who are happy to have our children living with us (even when they are older and not married) and to have our elderly parents nearby. We function as a family, not as individuals who meet once in a while. It is the family union that is the key to family values, not the individualism that American society stresses so much. Anna Luisa Leo Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The desire to have sex is in our nature. I studied in an all-girls Roman Catholic school for years. There we were basically taught to preserve ourselves for our husbands. We were educated about the reproductive system, but the nuns did not talk about safe sex. After graduation a lot of girls got pregnant. The point is that education is the key, and kids need to be educated about the consequences of having sex. Promoting abstinence is all well and good, but it’s also unrealistic. It’s not enough to tell kids to deny what is in their nature. What we should do is educate them about safe sex. Genie Hermoso Cebu City, Philippines
Fundamentalism has many faces, and no one likes any of them if it is forced upon him. These faces are usually reserved for the “traditional” religions, but fundamentalism can be any system of beliefs that is held to with ardor and faith. An example is the “amoral” fundamentalists who try to portray themselves as champions of liberty but exhibit the very signs of intolerance they attribute to religious groups. Insisting on an amoral society is no less fundamentalist than the holding of moral absolutes. What NEWSWEEK describes as a “new moral order” is merely a backlash against the attitudes of a pushy amoral society. R. Craig Bundy Quito, Ecuador
Reading the articles on abstinence, I did not know whether to laugh or be angry. Despite claims to the contrary, those who think the law should not encourage family values do not themselves care about the welfare of the people in developing countries. The family-planning industry, with its agenda of condoms, contraceptives, abortion and population control, cares only about making a sale. In Africa (where I am from) there is more access to reproductive health than to clean water. People there are dying of AIDS not because of a lack of condoms but because of poverty, ignorance and the greed of governments and biotech industries. We are sick to death (literally) of the cultural imperialism of the past 30 years. Maria Harrison London, England
