Red Sex, Blue Sex.....Interesting

[AnnInLa]

Sorry if this was posted previously.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/03/081103fa_fact_talbot

Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.

snip

Regnerus argues that religion is a good indicator of attitudes toward sex, but a poor one of sexual behavior, and that this gap is especially wide among teen-agers who identify themselves as evangelical. The vast majority of white evangelical adolescents—seventy-four per cent—say that they believe in abstaining from sex before marriage. (Only half of mainline Protestants, and a quarter of Jews, say that they believe in abstinence.) Moreover, among the major religious groups, evangelical virgins are the least likely to anticipate that sex will be pleasurable, and the most likely to believe that having sex will cause their partners to lose respect for them. (Jews most often cite pleasure as a reason to have sex, and say that an unplanned pregnancy would be an embarrassment.) But, according to Add Health data, evangelical teen-agers are more sexually active than Mormons, mainline Protestants, and Jews. On average, white evangelical Protestants make their “sexual début”—to use the festive term of social-science researchers—shortly after turning sixteen. Among major religious groups, only black Protestants begin having sex earlier.

snip

Bearman and Brückner have also identified a peculiar dilemma: in some schools, if too many teens pledge, the effort basically collapses. Pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed thirty per cent, and proclaimed chastity becomes the norm, that special identity is lost. With such a fragile formula, it’s hard to imagine how educators can ever get it right: once the self-proclaimed virgin clique hits the thirty-one-per-cent mark, suddenly it’s Sodom and Gomorrah.

snip

Too often, though, evangelical literature directed at teen-agers forbids all forms of sexual behavior, even masturbation. “Every Young Woman’s Battle,” for example, tells teen-agers that “the momentary relief” of “self-gratification” can lead to “shame, low self-esteem, and fear of what others might think or that something is wrong with you.” And it won’t slake sexual desire: “Once you begin feeding baby monsters, their appetites grow bigger and they want MORE! It’s better not to feed such a monster in the first place.”

((very long article, 4 pages, and most of it we already knew, but it was interesting to see it all together in one piece.))

[alfredo]

1. Here's what I have to say about that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFfTyGEtYpg&feature=related

[pitohui]

2. liberals love their daughters and want them to be happy, religious nuts don't

if there is another interpretation of this data, i can't see what it is

liberals want their daughters to be happy and to have full lives and to get an education

religious nutters just want them to be brood animals and if it happens sooner rather than later, well, it just saves them the cost of pretending to educate them so it's all good

they really do hate their daughters, don't they? i mean, i know it intellectually because i can see how they raise them...but they really, really really want them to fail and be miserable broodstock

ugh!!!

[Arugula Latte]

4. Yep. I want my daughter (and my son) to get an education, travel, try different careers,

and also go out with plenty of people before committing to a marriage. You have to have a broad basis for comparison with boyfriends/girlfriends, IMO.

[VOX]

6. Good points, pitohui. Pitifully sad, but true. n/t

[aquart]

3. No wonder they get so hateful and dangerous.

Yikes. Would not like to be a teenager living with that level of frustration.

[sarcasmo]

5. Missionary and only to make babies.

Doggy style and fun.

Oops, I thought they were speaking of the differences.