Canada: No sex please until we're 16

[JQ Public]

^ good for you

I want to see your views on this after college though. Unless you're living at home then too.

[Swimdude]

I'm headed to Baylor. They encourage Christian values. Thank you very much.

[coriolis]

Swimdude, even without those moral taboos, there's so many practical, realistic reasons to do what you're doing. Lets see:

-allows you to finish your education and start your career without complications, financial obligations, limitations on your options, etc etc.
-causes you and your g.f. to concentrate on the intellectual (and spiritual?) aspects of your relationship. You guys could develop a tremendous friendship which will serve you a lot better than a sexual relationship that will quickly become old news.

[Swimdude]

^ Exactly coriolis. You hit the nail on the head.

[Terrell]

those days did exist, at least in the ideal. There's always been exceptions to the rules. But if we're going to just toss out the rules, Let's just go back to being hunters and gatherers.

Who said anything about tossing out ALL the rules, just the antiquated ones.

Waiting until married to have sex is antiquated by social change.

- We now have reliable means of contraception available to both sexes so women have viable alternatives to abstinence to avoid pregnancy and condoms both male and female can prevent transmission of most STDs.

- We need more skill to make a living in today's society, this means a childhood that is a bit longer than biology may dictate.

- Avg age of first marriage being around 25 for women & 27 for men how many people of such ages can truthfully say they're virgins? http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/statistics_template.php?id=2017&topic=15&area=policy

It's hardly an exception, today most people are NOT virgins on their wedding nights. Many may wish to close their eyes and pretend otherwise but it's simply not the case. A good dose of realism would work best here.

[Regit]

those days did exist, at least in the ideal. There's always been exceptions to the rules. But if we're going to just toss out the rules, Let's just go back to being hunters and gatherers.

Who said anything about tossing out ALL the rules, just the antiquated ones.

Waiting until married to have sex is antiquated by social change.

- We now have reliable means of contraception available to both sexes so women have viable alternatives to abstinence to avoid pregnancy and condoms both male and female can prevent transmission of most STDs.

- We need more skill to make a living in today's society, this means a childhood that is a bit longer than biology may dictate.

- Avg age of first marriage being around 25 for women & 27 for men how many people of such ages can truthfully say they're virgins? http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/statistics_template.php?id=2017&topic=15&area=policy

It's hardly an exception, today most people are NOT virgins on their wedding nights. Many may wish to close their eyes and pretend otherwise but it's simply not the case. A good dose of realism would work best here.

I'm glad someone mentioned biology. One of the major problems with establishing any rules concerning sexuality is the natural sex drive. In a state of nature, human beings basically had a window of about ages 12-24 to reproduce and did it as often as they could since they didn't have that long, the kids became workers in only a few years, and most children died before age 1. It's hard to work thousands of years of nature out of your system.

We really need to just settle with the facts about today's society and try to adapt. Things are never going back to the way they were, though they've never really been that way in the first place. I think one of the differences now is the variety of media showing what the world is really like. You can't say there was no promiscuity before the 1960's. You wouldn't believe how many people in colonial America had Syphillis.

[bob rulz]

This is among the most infuriating topics I've ever read.

Let's get this debate started.

I'm tired of people thinking that SEX is the problem. SEX is not a bad thing. UNPROTECTED sex is a bad thing. The reason that there's so many unwanted teenage pregnancies and STDs is because a lot of teenagers take the "It's not going to happen to me" attitude and refuse to use protection (I'm 16; I can observe the rest of my fellow teenagers, so I'm not stereotyping, before anybody accuses me of doing so).

As long as people use protection, we wouldn't have these problems. I'm not saying that the pill and condoms are fool-proof, but if every teenager who wanted to engage in pre-marital sex used them then we wouldn't HAVE such a problem with STDs and unwanted teen pregnancies.

This is the problem with our current sex education system (and same with religious groups). Sex ed teaches that abstinence before marriage is the best way to go, when in fact it does nothing. All it does is encourage them to have sex before marriage, because people don't like to be told what to do or be bound by archaic laws and boundaries (and yes, I do mean archaic). Nobody would have a problem with teenagers engaging in pre-marital sex if they all used protection or birth control (and preferrably both), since the rate of STDs and pregnancies would go far down and consequences would be nil to none.

The worst of it all is the Christian and other religious groups who do not accept the use of condoms! That is just plain ridiculous. Not only is it encouraging teenagers to have sex before marriage, it encourages them to do so WITHOUT protection! All this does is make the problem worse! If they would advocate the use of condoms, instead of denying the right to have sex before marriage at all, then I don't think this problem would be any worse.

And please tell me why sex "was meant to be saved for marriage." It's denying the natural sex drive. Believe it or not, Humans are still animals and still have all of the instincts that animals do; having sex using all necessary precautions rarely does anybody harm.

[Yarrah]

^^ Exactly!! It's the attitude that certain religious (and perhaps also non-religious) groups have against sex that is the greatest problem. If you show teens (I'm one of them) what the consequences are of unsafe sex by educating them, there shouldn't be a problem anymore. It worked here, so it should also work in the US. Making a taboo of these things only helps to make to problems associated to it bigger.

[coriolis]

I can't dispute these arguments. I will throw out that contraception has a sucess rate that's less than 100%. I will also throw out that the attitude that the taboos don't apply any more leads to more unprotected sex - What percentage of people would "hold off" because they don't have their contraception ready in the heat of the moment? Again less than 100%.

So what rate of effectiveness is acceptable? 95% sounds good. With that sucess, there should be no restraint at all, right? So I'll go out and satisfy my biology with 20 different women. That's really not much in the average career, right? But oops! When I get that 20th notch on my gun, that pesky 5% is catching up to me.

Next Question for the advocates of free love: Would you marry a woman that had children from a previous relationship? Or, would you want someone else rearing YOUR children from your previous relationships? Would you put your money (or your DNA) where your mouth is?

I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to breaking from the ideal. But that doesn't mean that we throw out our ideals. I in fact did marry a woman that had a child from a previous relationship. I can speak from close-hand experience, that free love and divorce (not to open another can of worms) have serious consequences, creating much hurt, anger, and resentment in real life people. (Naturally, there are numerous cases where not getting that divorce would create much hurt, anger, and resentment too. But that's another topic)

Too many people concentrate on their own personal rights and freedoms and forget the wreckage that they leave behind. So far, the last three proponents of biology over morality have been young males. So tell me guys, who carries the burden when the technological "solutions" are not at 100%?

I'll quote Durant:

"We must not conclude that morals are worthless because they differ according to time and place, and that it would be wise to show our historic learning by at once discarding the moral customs of our group. A little anthropology is a dangerous thing.....Our heroic rejection of the customs and morals of our tribe, upon our adolescent discovery of thier relativity, betrays the immaturity of our minds; given another decade and we begin to understand that there may be more wisdom in the moral code of the group...than can be explained in a college course. Sooner or later the disturbing realization comes to us that even that which we cannot understand may be true.....We must expect to find some social utility,or survival value , in virginity and modesty, despite their historical relativity ..... Modesty was a strategic retreat which enabled the girl, where she had any choice, to select her mate more deliberately, or compel him to show finer qualities before winning her..... The inculcation of virginity destroyed the naturalness and ease of primitive sexual life, by discouraging early sex development and premature motherhood, it lessened the gap….between economic and sexual maturity. Probably it served in this way to strengthen the individual physically and mentally, to lengthen adolescence and training, and so to lift the level of the race.”

[GrimReaper]

Congratulations to Swimdude, you are a fine young man!!! You are a great asset to S2K!! Keep it up kid !!

[Derek Ortt]

if we just go on our natural drive... we are merely animals. What seperates us is our ability to reason.

Premarital sex is something that should never occur... leads to too many problems. There is absolutely nothing wrong with waiting... only makes your life better in the long run

[Swimdude]

I'm not too sure there's any correct answer in this whole topic - we'l probably just continue to debate until society changes its mind about things - and then we'd have something else to bicker about.

Honestly, I believe it's up to the individuals. There are countries around the world where "parents" have their children quite young - and then they have many of them. Why? Perhaps they need support for the family business. Perhaps their society deems it necessary to have a son. Who knows.

As for the American culture - it again depends on the individual. It's too difficult to get into the topic of sex without touching on religious values. We all have different opinions. But we can all AGREE that life is easier when sex is saved for after marriage - whether you believe in 'waiting' or not.

[Yarrah]

Premarital sex is something that should never occur... leads to too many problems.

So does driving a car, smoking and even marriage itself (divorces are all too common). So should these things never occur because they can lead to problems? No, because premarital sex is something that can be done without any problems at all with the right education and the right means of protection.

In the end it is all a matter of personal choices. If you want to wait until you are married, that absolutely fine; it's what you want and no one should say it's not allowed. But if you want to have premarital sex with someone, that's also fine, as long as you know what you're doing and what the possible consequences are. It's up to the parents and the educational system to teach kids these things.

[Janice]

We have made it too easy for teens to have babies. They can get financial help, low rent housing, food stamps, etc. Someone is always reaching out to them. If parents would be held responsible to pay all bills without welfare of any kind, maybe that would cut down some of these teen pregnancies. Back in our day, we were scared to death to get pregnant. Our parents would have killed us and shipped us off to have the baby and put it up for adoption.
Maybe if this was all in front of them, there would be a little less sex or safer sex anyway.

[Yarrah]

^^ Indeed, it almost seems like it's fun to have a baby when you're a teen. So teens should be made aware of the terrible consequences of having a baby while you're still that young, i.e: no education, no well-paid job, almost no chances of a good future, etc.

[bob rulz]

Premarital sex is something that should never occur... leads to too many problems.

So does driving a car, smoking and even marriage itself (divorces are all too common). So should these things never occur because they can lead to problems? No, because premarital sex is something that can be done without any problems at all with the right education and the right means of protection.

In the end it is all a matter of personal choices. If you want to wait until you are married, that absolutely fine; it's what you want and no one should say it's not allowed. But if you want to have premarital sex with someone, that's also fine, as long as you know what you're doing and what the possible consequences are. It's up to the parents and the educational system to teach kids these things.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I don't care if anybody waits for marriage. It's their decision to make. Hell, I never said I would just have sex with anybody I wanted. I would only have sex with somebody I was in a relationship with, whether I was actually married to them or not. But as long as you're responsible, I don't see any problem with pre-marital sex, as long as the people who engage in it use their brain.

And I believe that using both condoms and contraception puts the chances of pregnancy at less than 1%. I can't be positive about that, though.

[Regit]

Premarital sex is something that should never occur... leads to too many problems.

So does driving a car, smoking and even marriage itself (divorces are all too common). So should these things never occur because they can lead to problems? No, because premarital sex is something that can be done without any problems at all with the right education and the right means of protection.

In the end it is all a matter of personal choices. If you want to wait until you are married, that absolutely fine; it's what you want and no one should say it's not allowed. But if you want to have premarital sex with someone, that's also fine, as long as you know what you're doing and what the possible consequences are. It's up to the parents and the educational system to teach kids these things.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I don't care if anybody waits for marriage. It's their decision to make. Hell, I never said I would just have sex with anybody I wanted. I would only have sex with somebody I was in a relationship with, whether I was actually married to them or not. But as long as you're responsible, I don't see any problem with pre-marital sex, as long as the people who engage in it use their brain.

And I believe that using both condoms and contraception puts the chances of pregnancy at less than 1%. I can't be positive about that, though.

I agree with you. I think it has been proven over and over that you can't legislate morality. Dealing with morality is the function of the church, not the government. And just to further highlight what you said, using condoms AND contraception put the chance of pregnancy at FAR below 1%.