The Portland Contraception Controversy. Posted by olvlzl.
You, like the rest of the sentient world, have heard about the decision of the school board in Portland Maine to extend the contraceptive services provided to students of the King Middle School. I say to extend because condoms have been provided there for a number of years now, to little notice from the wider world. I guess the pundits think it’s all right for boys that age to be gettin’ it on. You might wonder who the pundits think they’re partners are. Assuming they’ve thought it out that far. And no one should bet their pay check on pundits having thought through anything before they start their mouths flapping.
Where did you first hear about this controversial decision? It is tempting to single out the irresponsible report on TV where I heard it first, incomplete, somewhat inaccurate and geared to fan the controversy without any context given. Of course the canned outrage was interspersed with commercial messages and followed by programming which mostly consisted of the non-stop message, “have sex, have, sex, have sex ....”. You’d think that the members of the school board were going to class rooms and encouraging the 11-year-olds to get laid as soon as possible, while the TV and radio talking heads, as well as the media in general, are the ones giving them that message from the time they’re able to understand the images put in front of them.
But, since the media shills won’t do it, imagine that you are a school nurse in a middle school where the children you are responsible to care for begin showing up pregnant. Imagine you are a teacher, administrator or school board member who have pregnant children in your care. What would you do? Would you make believe that it isn’t happening, as apparently the coalition of outrage ostriches are advocating? Would you rely on abstinence sermons? Since the media are expressing their pretended outrage on the part of “parents” you have a right to ask why their abstinence sermons are either not being given or are proving less than effective.
While I don’t like children that young having sexual intercourse one little bit, no one has a right to pretend that it isn’t happening. No one has the right to pretend that it isn’t happening now, least of all the broadcast and cable media who are advocating irresponsible sex to their audience 24-7.
My biggest problem with this situation is having 11-year-olds in the same school with 13-year-olds. It’s a good idea to prevent pre-pubescent children associating too closely with those going through the temporary insanity of puberty to the greatest extent possible. But that isn’t the situation the people who have the responsibility for these children find themselves in. Their job is to do what they can to get the children they care for a large part of the year to adulthood alive and with as little damage as possible, with some education taking place. They have the entire commercial culture advocating irresponsible and dangerous behavior, too few of the parents of these children are taking enough responsibility to keep their children from engaging in those activities. I’m sure some of them are exposing their children to the full range of commercial media which is selling them the idea that there is something wrong with them if they’re not having sex.
And, I’m sure it won’t come as a shock, the reason TV sells everything with sex is because sex is one of the greatest and most irresistible pleasures nature provides us. Children possessing genitals find from a very early age that sex is pleasurable all on their own, even when kept in complete ignorance. Pretending that children don’t have sex lives is sheer hypocrisy. Practically every adult in the world knows it. The problem has never been dealt with on the basis of reality and honesty and children won’t relieve their sexual desires in ways that don’t carry dangers of the most real and deadly kind until that fact is faced. I won’t give my masturbation and frottage sermon again today, however.
So, how would you solve the problem if it was your responsibility? Take into account the real situation of having sexually active and pregnant middle school students in your care. Take into account that you won’t be able to control the hypocrites in the commercial media who are encouraging all their viewers, of all ages, to have sex, including those in the years you have to deal with. And we haven’t even talked about the market explicitly selling sex to even younger children to almost no condemnation by the media hypocrites. Making believe that it’s not happening is not an option. Public health officials unlike pundits, federally funded faith-based phonies and other organs of the outrage industry don’t have the option of playing let’s pretend.