Commentary
Oregon Daily Emerald
Thesday, February 22, 2005
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■ In my opinion
education
emotion
ethics
Before I say anything else, I just want
to get this out there: Putting a condom
on a banana is nothing at all like put
ting a condom on one’s self. For one
thing, there are different angles. Also,
one is done in a crowded, awkward
moment while the other is done in an
intimate, passionate moment. Perhaps
most importantly, if you accidentally
pinch a banana, it won’t leave you
singing soprano for a week.
Having gotten that out of the way, I’d
like to talk about some other, more gen
eral problems with contemporary sex
education. The current debate is be
tween abstinence-only programs and
programs that teach the use of contra
ceptives. If you ask me, this entire de
bate is ridiculous because neither pro
gram prepares students to deal with the
emotional and ethical dimensions of
their sexual behavior.
I’m not saying that educators should
impose their values on a captive audi
ence. I am saying that parents and edu
cators in this country should find a
middle ground between “Thou shalt
not” and “Insert tab A into slot B.” It’s
certainly possible to raise and discuss
questions of ethics without imposing a
particular agenda. In the case of hu
man sexuality, I would say it’s not only
possible, but necessary.
Hear me out on this because I’m not
talking about ethics in the Bible-thump
ing sense of the word. There’s an ethi
cal dimension to almost every human
action, and certainly to every interac
tion. Most of the time, we aren’t con
scious of the ethical dimensions of the
choices we make. Hell, most of the
time we’re not even conscious of the
GABE BRADLEY
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
fact that we’re making choices. But we
make ethical choices in what we say in
class, how we act at the bank and
where we buy our groceries. And you
better believe we make ethical choices
in who we screw and how.
However, contemporary sex educa
tion describes sexuality as if it were a
biological transaction. Learning about
sex is not like learning about geometry.
Sex cannot be reduced to facts, figures
and statistics because it is a practical
subject that affects every single person
alive. Sex education misses the boat
when it focuses on communicating dry
information, such as how to recognize
a herpes sore or prepare a piece of fruit
for protected intercourse, instead of
practical dialogue, such as learning
about a partner’s emotional needs or
respecting each other in the morning.
You can’t have casual sex any more
than you can snort a casual line of
coke. Any attempt at sex education that
does not deal frankly with the emotion
al and ethical realities of sex is practi
cally worthless.
Again, I’m not saying that anyone
should push a particular agenda. But
young people need someone to raise
these issues, present various points of
view and facilitate discussion.
Some say sex education should
take place in the home. I agree with
this in theory. But in practice, it’s just
not happening. When I was younger,
I got “the talk.” One parent told me
the mechanics and left it pretty much
at that. Like countless other young
people, I went into adolescence woe
fully under-informed. In all the talk
about what goes where, no one ever
told me what I was going to feel. No
one ever mentioned what it was going
to be like to be homy or confused.
And nary a word was breathed about
how my partner would feel.
Though there’s something to be
said for learning “the hard way,”
there’s no inherent virtue in making
mistakes that could easily be avoided
if one were to possess more informa
tion. Because of a lack of information
and candid dialogue, generation after
generation ends up repeating the mis
takes of its predecessors. There’s got
to be a better way. There shouldn’t be
“the talk,” there should be many
talks. Sex should be a topic of conver
sation like any other topic. For one
thing, there’s way too much informa
tion to dump into one talk. Also, a lot
of the information won’t even make
sense to kids until they’re older.
My point, put simply, is this: Sex is
more than just mechanics. Incorporat
ing this reality into sex education
would mean an increase in dialogue
but a decrease in banana sales to public
schools. I suppose tradeoffs have to be
made somewhere.
gabebradley@ daily emerald, com
■ In my opinion
Remembering a
counter-culture icon
The life and death of the American
counter-culture has been told ad nau
seam in countless sappy documen
taries and mindlessly simpering books
harking back to a nonexistent time of
artistic experimentation and political
revolution. It has been breathlessly spo
ken of by aging baby boomers patting
themselves on the back and claiming
no music will ever be better, no art will
ever be greater and that no cultural
movement will ever be as honest and
authentic. They create a fantasy land of
revolutionary politics and god-like mu
sicians, bearing as much resemblance
to reality as Charles Manson’s vision of
the upcoming Armageddon.
But nobody documented this move
ment and its long, strangled aftermath
better than Hunter S. Thompson, who
blew his brains out this weekend at the
age of 67. With prose as bombastic and
breathless as his lifestyle, he fashioned
himself into the screaming mad genius
of journalism, rewriting the boundaries
between fact and fiction as he ranted
like a street corner prophet quoting
from Revelations through nearly four
decades of political corruption, hellish
warfare and two-faced hypocrisy on
nearly every level of authority.
There is no one else like him and
there probably never will be. Journal
ism does not allow for it and never
RYAN NYBURG
BUDGET RACK
really did. He covered everything, from
horse races to Hell’s Angels, from po
litical campaigns to motorcycle compe
titions. Every story was touched with
his unmistakable style, full of brim
stone and amphetamines. He exagger
ated, he falsified, yet he always told the
truth of an event, often more so than
straight journalists. There was nothing
objective about him, nothing discon
nected or separate.
Thompson was a part of every story
he wrote, his personality as intractable
from his writing as his apocalyptic hy
perbole. He was the antithesis of every
thing American journalism is supposed
to stand for, yet he told the sick, sad
truths about our culture at which oth
ers were not even willing to look.
His death was the final touch on a
life marked by rampant drug use, astro
nomical expense accounts and wild po
litical activity. His life cannot be told as
a straight narrative, only as a series of
notable events. He covered a drug en
forcement conference while tripping on
mescaline. He threatened to set Gary
Thideau on fire. He fired off a gun ran
domly from the porch of his Colorado
home to let off steam. He ran for sheriff
of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket. It
was a close race even though he sup
ported drug legalization and the ban
ning of urban development. He and
some friends once blew up a jeep.
Such a scattered and manic past
hardly hints at Thompson’s consider
able literary merit. He published count
less articles that now stand as some of
the greatest reporting of the past
40 years (any aspiring magazine writer
should read “The Kentucky Derby is
Sick and Depraved”) and published at
least one literary classic, “Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas,” as well as nu
merous books of incredible social and
political worth. For all of its hyperbolic
styling, “Fear and Loathing on Cam
paign Tfail 72” is one of the best books
about American politics ever written.
Even his collected letters are worth pe
rusing for their insights.
Now that he is gone, we mourn his
loss and know that nothing was ever
the same once he came onto the scene.
Go in peace, with fear and loathing.
ryannyb urg@ dailyemerald. com
■ Editorial
Government
places ideals
on top of
smart sex-ed
As newspaper editors, we tend to be biased
against ignorance. While the religious right
might believe that Eden is lost when you eat
from the Ttee of Knowledge — especially the
TVee of Sexual Knowledge — we do not share
their fear of education. Nor do we share their
belief that young adults are made safer by be
ing kept in the dark about sex and contracep
tion while in high school, when 60 percent
and 70 percent of teenage women and men,
respectively, have sex before age 18.
We believe knowledge is empowering for
young people, especially young women who
have historically lacked control over their
own sexual lives. That is why the Emerald,
along with the majority of Americans, cannot
support the Bush administration’s push for
abstinence-only education in public schools.
Since 1996, the federal government has spent
$1 billion trying to sell the virtues of absti
nence, with even more to come in the next fis
cal year, despite the fact that more than
75 percent of parents prefer comprehensive
sex education over abstinence-only, according
to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
it is not surprising that parents are appre
hensive about abstinence-only education.
Studies have shown that these programs fail
to significantly delay sexual activity, reduce
the number of sexual partners or reduce teen
pregnancy; in fact, evidence suggests these
programs stunt sexual maturity, leading to in
creased incidents of unprotected sex and the
potential for sexual disease and pregnancy,
according to research from the Alan
Guttmacher Institute.
Abstinence-only programs also fail to
deliver scientifically accurate information, and
more often than not pass along bogus religious
propaganda about the dangers of everything
from masturbation to homosexuality to abor
tion. A 2004 report, released by Rep. Henry
Waxman, found that more than 65 percent of
these government-funded programs contain
misleading or inaccurate information, from
overstating the pregnancy risk associated with
condoms to suggesting that HIV can be trans
mitted through sweat and tears.
Abstinence mis-education is only one as
pect of a larger religious movement to regu
late our private lives. They want to ban gay
marriage, outlaw gay and lesbian sexual acts,
make marriage harder to dissolve, criminalize
adultery, censor pornography and all acts of
“indecency” on television and radio, make
abortions illegal and restrict access to contra
ception, especially for those under 18.
The overall intent is to teach young adults
to fear sex and feel ashamed of their natural
desires and fantasies. We should be teaching
just the opposite in the schools: how to em
brace one’s sexuality, how to enjoy sex re
sponsibly, both physically and psychological
ly, and how to adequately care for a partner’s
sexual and emotional needs; maybe even, god
forbid, how to have more pleasurable, more
inspired sex.
The truth is nothing to fear. And hopefully
one day we will have the courage to tell our
children the truth: Sex is a healthy thing when
done responsibly.
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