Condoms in Rome

Rome has once again sparked a furor that’s made international news.

This is, in part, because the “City of Love” is also the “City of Catholicism,” in that it completely encircles the worlds smallest independent nation, the Vatican.

Officials in Rome’s public schools are alarmed at the high rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) and have therefore developed a pilot project to put condom machines in one of the high schools.

School officials say it is a concession to reality, to try to curb these very real problems confronting young people.

The Vatican says the decision trivialized sex and reduced it to, “. . . a mere physical exercise,” and that educators are more concerned with,” . . . the health and hygiene consequences of sex,” rather than its moral implications.

Is that so wrong? Somehow, I think that I’d rather the kid’s math and science teachers be concerned with health and hygiene than with the children's morals.

In the United States, we have many of the same problems where those counties with the highest incidents of teen pregnancy and the associated ills are the same ones that most strongly oppose the introduction of medically based education in favor of “abstinence only” curricula.

There’s a disconnect between the thinking and reality that fails to acknowledge first that teenagers have little enough common sense about lots of things, but most especially sex.

The statistics are all over the place on this, so I’m not going to cite to anyone’s web page or information. Conservatives argue that anything other than abstinence only implicitly allows and encourages sexual activity (although, if we think about it, most teens need no encouragement in that regard at all; all they need is an opportunity), and liberal groups point to the high teen pregnancy rates among those who’ve been raised with a more fundamentalist ideology.

I base my opinions on what I’ve observed, both growing up as an active church member and having been involved with juvenile law for over 25 years.

Good kids get in trouble. Kids that aren’t “wild” and who know right from wrong. With full information in that regard, it seems illogical to keep that same kind of full information regarding protecting themselves from both unwanted pregnancies and diseases that can have major life impacts.

I was at a social event a few days ago, and fell into conversation with people that I hadn’t met before. They covered the breadth of the social spectrum, including teachers, social workers, and lots of others. We started talking about the stupid information that kids have, and one of the teachers who works in a district that allows abstinence only education confirmed that she sees high school students every week who have the same bad information that we had in the 60’s and 70’s.

You can’t get pregnant the first time you have sex.
You can’t get pregnant if we do it standing up.
I’m safe, you can’t catch anything from me because I’ve never done anything before.
I have a football injury and am sterile.
I’m on the pill, that protects us from STD’s.
I can’t get pregnant, I have my period.

This, in the age of the internet and almost unlimited information and kids are still as misinformed as they were almost half a century ago.

Rome Schools have the right idea. Denying the reality of teen sex does nothing to protect children from their own stupidity. It is about as rational as allowing a three year old to play in the street. It is up to adults to provide them with the tools they need to be safe. That includes not only an appropriate ethical foundation from their parents, but also the tools they need to keep themselves safe.

The appropriate thing to do here is to make the safety net of condoms readily available to keep one bad mistake from turning into a lifetime of regrets and more mistakes.  They also need to be provided an education in HOW to use them before they're faced with some tough decisions and insufficient blood flow to the brain.

This can then be complimented with the education their parents deem appropriate with regard to WHEN to use them.