JodyWheeler.com

In the recent upgrade to MT 3.5, about 12 months of entries between 2004-2005 were corrupted. The back-up files still exist. It's just going to take me a while to enter them again. Until then, there are quite a few "gaps" on these archive pages.

Those Krazy Kids...
June 27, 2002

We've got people left and right pledging, and we still have business executives trashing their companies, city governments closing community hospitals, and national congresses voting pork on pork for the good of America. As many of these are people who grew up saying the pledge, with the word "God" in it, and it didn't do all that much to help them in the "let's help my country and my community before myself" category, pardon me if I'm just a least bit skeptical of the hue and cry (and photo ops) that are occurring as a result of this ruling.

Curtailing privacy rights on young people participating in after school activities is of just a little more importance, in my book, than Congressional sound-bites...errr "outrage"...over the 9th Circuit's decision. The young people targeted by the ruling aren't the one's that are most likely to have a substance abuse problem or to be at risk of having a problem. It's a cheap solution (testing instead of education), on the wrong population (achieving teens vs. at risk ones) that will more than likely turn out the wrong results (teens who've experimented vs. those with a chronic problem) for the wrong reason ("out of control" young people.)

Fresh from the parrot's mouth
June 24, 2002

Let's explore the 1990 figures you cited. 20% of priests are homosexual (not "gay", mind you!), and another 4% are pedophiles who target boys. Thus, a total of 24% of the priests surveyed prefer sexual contact with other males. The conclusion drawn is that "gay priests [here I must protest, the word "gay" was not the operative term in the survey!] -- they are no more likely to act inappropriately with minors than straight priests are". And yet, 6% was the operative number for pedophiles, and 4% go after boys. 2/3 of the pedophiles seek homosexual contact, when homosexuals make up only 1/5 of the priestly population (and only half of these are active). Therefore, they are indeed far more likely to act inappropriately!

Yeah, if you are interested in wrong conclusions. I've never found that stopping at being wrong did any good. The best that being wrong does is tell you to look again, start over, figure out your mistake and try to correct it. That works for me. Yet if you are into being wrong, then hey, it's a free country. Go be wrong. Go have a parade. Just don't think that such a conclusion is right. Most definitely don't think that being wrong makes you sound knowledgeable, insightful or even intelligent.

Speaking of errors, my calling the people in Sipes results "gay" was such. As they self define - or as Sipes categories were defined --"homosexual," calling them gay was incorrect. "Gay" is a different identity term. After spending time in that last message talking about problems with targeting HIV prevention efforts to people who don't identify as "gay," one would think I'd have caught my own mistake. Alas I didn't. Then again, I never claimed infallibility when speaking from my throne. I do, though, often seek toilet paper when speaking from it. ("Hey! Who used the last @#$#@$#@ roll of Charmin!)

Where was I? Oh yeah. Sipes wrote that 20% of his sample were homosexual and 4% were pedophiles who target boys. That's different. Repeate after me: pedophiles are not homosexuals. Homosexuals are not pedophiles. Gay men are not pedophiles. Pedophiles are not gay men. Equating the two is boneheaded and ample evidence as to why all opinions are not equal and that the kiddy table is in the other room for a reason.

If you want to lump anyone who has sexual contact with those who have xy chromosomes together in one big pile, fine. If that is to be the case, we then take that 20% who are actively involved with sexual relationships with women add to it the 2% of pedophiles who target girls and then tack on the remaining 8 to 10% who are engaged in "heterosexual exploration" and get a nice round number of 30 to 32% of priests with a predilection for yy chromosomes. As 32% greater than 24% then I'd have to say that heterosexuals win again.

While there are homosexuals who target children and are thus pedophiles, there are also heterosexuals who target children and are thus pedophiles. The screwy part is that most all pedophiles self identify as heterosexual and not homosexual (or gay for that matter.)

The reason why? Targeting pliant kids is different than being with consenting adults. Of either gender or sexual orientation.

4% of pedophiles targeting boys means that 2% target girls, so I guess you could say that pedo priests who target boys are twice as inappropriate as those who target girls. Which is a lot like saying being impaled on a 6 foot spike is vastly preferable to being impaled on a 12 foot one. Preferable, but still pretty freakin terrible.

And while homosexual pedophilia then occurs more frequently than heterosexual pedophilia, given that Sipes also says that "...homosexual contacts are four times more likely to come to the attention of parents or authorities, especially if the sexual involvement stops short of intercourse in heterosexual cases..." there still remains a huge amount of heterosexual pedophilia occuring out of view. Which is a lot like saying that most six foot spike impalings occur just out of view. Horrible, and criminal if you forget to account for this.

In any event, I personally would never assume that heterosexual-victim pedophilia is in anyway similar - save for the chromosomes of the victims - than sex between heterosexual adults. So too, neither is homosexual-victim pedophilia the same as sex between consenting homosexual adults.

That's not quibbling, Ken. That's clinical practice. Something I'm rather familiar with.

Churches in general are the targets of your ire, not just the Catholic Church.

Yet actually you should open it up to people of no faith as well. Pedophilia isn't restricted to those who sit in the pews or in the presider's chair. It also extends to those who hang out under bushes in parks and frequent glory holes.

Actually, Ken you are just a wee bit in error here. (I'm detecting a running theme here. What about you?) While I'm more than certain atheists are pedophiles too, pedophiles really don't hang out under bushes or frequent glory holes. Pedophiles go where the action is, either in their own family, in schools, or churches. Which is why children are of greater risk for sexual assault in their homes and with relatives than any place else. As bad as churches are, they pale next to the abuse that occurs within those traditional families.

Lest you think I'm down on traditional, or for that matter untraditional, families that is not the case. I'm down on anyone who naively thinks that the gay guy living next door is more of a monster than kindly Uncle Vic, visiting while Aunt Suzzie is away, and just waiting to take Suzzie and Stevie for a "swim."

How do you respond to the anonymous correspondent that Andrew Sullivan published: "Until all queers are able to face the fact that we have created for ourselves a culture that values youth and beauty above all else, and to realize that this obsession creates, in at least some gay men, a deviant and abusive tendency toward sex with minors, we are doomed to continue to create victims as surely as the atrophied Church." When homosexuals who are priests become entangled in this gay subculture, they too are more likely to create victims, which is something none of us want.

I'd point out to that fair anonymous correspondent that it wasn't only queers who created for themselves a culture of youth and beauty. Straights have been doing just fine in that same activity for quite some time. And the obsession to have sex with minors isn't a gay thing any more than a straight one, as I'm reminded time and time again by my legion of straight friends who've lusted after Natalie Portman since The Professional and Lee-Ann Rimes since she hit the pop stage at 14. I'd further point out that the Catholic Church is reaping what it sowed, with a clerical culture that values its priests above its penitents, labels gay men and women's sexuality as being "intrinsically morally disordered" and playing fast and loose with concepts of "right," "truth," and "justice."

Priests only wind up "entangled" when they stuff their sexuality into a little box and stick it on a shelf in the back of their psyches and hope against hope that something perfect and natural will never be opened again. Believing an anti-sex notion of life created by a man who, after compulsively screwing everything on two or four legs that couldn't out run him, codified his own shame into a dictum that causes nothing but grief, pain and suffering. Talking openly and honestly about sex and sexuality with children, teens and adults, far from creating a sexually permissive society, instills responsibility and security in those same people. Teaching shame, sin and evilness to something so normal as consensual sex allows those who do the teaching to freely commit evil and instill shame on those children least able to protect themselves.

You and I agree, Jody, that pedophilia is a great evil that must be rooted out because it is doing untold harm to our young people and to society in general.

No, you and I disagree. Pedophilia needs to be found and punished, prevented if we can and treated if at all possible. Those who rape children, whether genetically programmed or mentally deficient, by every objective measure are sick and destructive. What is doing untold harm to young people is lumping them into a category called "child" and wishing away their intelligence, desires and sexuality, because of a 70 year old rubric created out of our collective discomfort in all matters sexual and our need for new markets to sell to. It's a rubric that not only shafts our young people with one-size-fits all school systems, difficult access to family planning or accurate sexuality education materials, but also consigns the youngest of them to adult penal systems because it is more convenient and politically popular to play into the notion that our physical future is lawless, corrupt and under the influence of some evil, alien and liberal force.

So far, you refuse to admit that the numbers bear out that homosexual men are far more likely to commit this heinous act.

Bingo! You win today's prize. I am though willing to admit that people who equate moral superiority with the gender of their sex partner frequently have an to grind against those whose gendered sexual partner isn't the same as theirs. They are also far more likely to pull any lie out of their nether-regions to support their heinous and vile opinions.

Until you and those who parrot your opinion recognize that, you cannot help avert this crime.

This indicates to me that Jody has squelched his conscience, and would have everyone do the same in the name of liberty. He wants us to follow his dictates rather than the moral law inscribed in our hearts. This is advocating liberty from the moral law, which debases our human nature and destroys society.

Dearheart, don't presume to lecture me about conscience, liberty, moral law or crime. You are arguing from a philosophical position that, on the merits of its 2000-year-old record, doesn't have much to brag about in any of those categories.

When the long, twilight struggle ceases and my eyes close last to behold the vast, dark night from which all our days are born and unto which all must return, if the best thing I ever did was stand fast and shout loudly that the demons are merely the inquietude at the edge of a child�s bed, that the gods do nothing and take everything, that the best in us needs no birth in providence, no succor from angels� wings and no assent from beings �given to airy nothing a local habitation and a name,� that there was, that there is, a better way, then my day ends with the greatest victory possible and the most blessed of assurances imaginable:

Life in California: Age 14....Age
June 04, 2002

Seems as though my fair California politicians, seeking to get votes instead of actually dealing with a problem, are looking to raise the age at which one can legally buy tobacco in California to 21. The reason? Because research says that if you haven't started smoking by the age of 21 you aren't ever likely too. Brilliant misuse of science there folks.

Instead of...I dunno...raising the price of cigarettes outside of a 14-17 year old's reach, which studies have shown have a dramatic impact on stopping teens from smoking we're going to create yet another new milestone in our ever widening path to "adulthood" in society.

It's par for the political course in making sound bites over sound policy. In my adopted state, we believe you are perfectly capable of understanding your actions to commit a felony at 14, but can't figure out if you really want to have sex with someone you like until you are 18 and most definitely can't understand that you are killing yourself with cigarettes until you are 21. Believing the myth that young people are out of control as well as a danger to themselves and society, we'd rather pass, or try to pass, dumb and draconian laws that cost much less to implement than the alternative.

It's a hell of a lot easier to lump young people into one monolithic, hormonally challenged and vaguely "retarded" (meant in the coarsest way possible) class than to provide the education, understanding and a resources necessary to allow them to become thinking, purposeful adults they can be. The former requires an investment in television and print advertisements. The later, an investment in the Future.

LA Times on Kids and Sex
June 03, 2002

The Los Angeles Times has a fairly good article aboutKids and Sex. It covers many of the issues that have been debated around here. The one aspect the author didn't touch on was -- and I'm a broken record here -- how the rest of the Western world goes about teaching the same subject that we do, better than we do, and with better results.

Da Kidz R all--Rite...
May 28, 2002

USA Today has a good article about how good our young people are actually doing. With all of the talk about teens and sex, you might actually walk away with the idea that our young people are actually some kind of uncontrolled rabble, drunk and amoral.

I actually had read only a passing reference to social norming months ago, but didn't really know that much about it. I'm actually surprised, and pleased, to see it being used across college campuses. I found a few links to reports on the subject here and here. (Do a Yahoo search to find more.) Working in public health you forget that the majority of young people do well and enter into society as healthy as possible. Having changed assignments within my own agency, I've actually been surprised at how well we actually do in keeping kids safe and providing something approaching a normal life for them.)

There are always problems -- it's obvious that we can do a much better job in educating around young people and sex -- but we need to pat ourselves on the back at how well we've been able to do at ensuring health and safety for not only our young people but for the general population as well.

But hey, we can always do more. What kind of liberal would I be if I didn't beleive that?

Afterthought: With the early, apparent success of using such a model to reinforce healthy behavior in college students, perhaps something similar can be done for high-school students as well? I need to do a little more research to see longitudinally how well this model is doing, but it would be great to try and apply its principles to other, targeted populations. Research grant! Doctoral dissertation!

Instapundit on teens and sex...
May 25, 2002

Geez...InstaPundit. has finally weighed in on the whole teens and sex debate. For once, I was ahead of the curve! Yes! Glenn's comments are actually pretty good and on the money. Check out his comments and add your own enlightened ones. He's getting way too much shit from people on the right -- people who really don't know anything (Yes, Jonah Goldberg, this means you.)

No, no, not the Jonah crack. Rather, it's not so much that the reactionary mass doesn't understand as it is that they don't want to understand. Life is a lot less complicated if you believe that the expanse of young people from age 18 on down are intellectually and hormonally challenged when it comes to sex. Being kept ignorant is "for their own good." The world becomes much more complicated when the truth comes out -- that young people do just as well, or just as poorly, as adults do in regards to the subject matter.

I've pointed out many times that it's our culture of not talking about sex --really talking about it, not packaging it for consumption -- with young people that puts us on par with former East Block countries for rates of STD transmission, teen pregnancies and abortions. "Abstinence only" education is the ultimate boondoggle, a case of myth over fact. "Teens" were never teens. Sex was never a "bad thing" and ignorance is never better to information, explanation and understanding. The mess that we have today is a direct result of believing the contrary.

Our European cousins don't have the same problems that we do with their "teens" around sex. While they have a lot to learn from us about diversity, we've got a lot to learn from them about seeing "teens" as the young adults they really are.

More on Teens and Sex
May 24, 2002

Katie, at her siteLoco Parentis has another good take on teens and sex. She mentions a posting from Instapundit that I'm going to go track down. In the mean time, check her site out.

Stanley's Star Wars, or Why Gay Men are the Root of All Evil...
May 20, 2002

Does Stanley Kurtz really share the same planet as the rest of us or is he just going through the motions, all the while mentally occupying a plane of Star Wars like fantasy where gay men are the cause of all the evil in the universe?

Imagine that someone had said, back in the 1970s, when homosexuals were flooding into Catholic seminaries all over the U.S., that substantial numbers of gay priests, far from accepting the rule of celibacy, would deliberately flout that rule, both in theory and in practice. Suppose that someone had argued that homosexual priests would gain control of many seminaries, that many would openly "date," that many would actively cultivate an ethos of gay solidarity and promote a homosexual culture that would drive away heterosexuals � especially theologically orthodox heterosexuals � from the priesthood. Suppose this person went on to argue that, at its extreme, the growing gay subculture of the priesthood would tolerate and protect not only flagrant violations of celibacy, but even the abuse of minors. Then suppose that this person predicted eventual public exposure of the whole sordid mess, an exposure that would precipitate a crisis within the Church itself.

Bah! Ha! Ha! Yes, our great plan is finally coming to fruition! (Is that a pun?) The great Homosexual Subversion is a smashing success! We knew that the problems of secrecy and authoritarianism, coupled with a view of sexuality formed when camels were seen as more important than women, wasn't going to be enough to undue the Catholic Church. No! We had to penetrate (another pun? Nahh..) the very heart of Catholicism and start our grand, 30 year plan to pull it down from within!

Did I just wake up in a queer version of Star Wars or something? Are gays the new Clones or ? (More to the point: does this mean I actually have a shot at Hayden? Ewan? Temuera? Yoda?) If we are the Clones destined to take over the Republic, convert it into an Empire and corrupt poor defenseless Anakin, does that mean that Palpataine -- the evil Emperor, the head Dark Lord of the Sith-- is actually...

What's clear from Berry's account is that sexual abuse of boys by homosexual priests (the typical form of abuse in the current scandal) was part and parcel of a larger gay subculture within the priesthood, a subculture that effectively enabled the abuse of minors by encouraging flagrant homosexuality, and openly flouting the rule of celibacy itself.

Funny. I thought the abuse happened because those who were supposed to put a stop to it -- you know, the Cardinals -- covered their holy asses, transferred people about, paid off complainers and generally hid behind the sanctity of Sanctimony? Or did I miss something?

Isn't it just a bit odd though that, with all of these invading hordes of homosexuals -- which must be like invading hordes of Moslems, only better dressed, better cooks, able to ride in time to the latest "Pet Shop Boys" album and can do wonders with old, musty Cathedrals through judicial uses of color swatches, accent mirrors and Salvation Army Castoffs-- the incident rates for sexual abuse is basically the same for boys, girls, adolescent males and adolescent females? Could that mean that wacked-in-the-head gay priests occur in the same numbers as wacked in the head straight priests?

THE SKY THAT FELL
This is exactly what has happened to the Church. It has been at least 30 years since the homosexual presence in the priesthood began to increase markedly. All along there were signs of trouble, yet no profound institutional crisis.

Exceedingly odd, isn't it, that the majority of cases of abuse cited so far in the press are ten, twenty and sometimes even 30 years old? It doesn't seem to be that many young priests -- you know, those all of those new, subversive clones that have invaded the noble republic -- that are carrying out the abuse, but a bunch of crusty old men who came of age well before the "decadent" revolution of gay rights? Odd and telling...

Here is a case in which gay sexual culture has not been tamed by, but has instead dramatically subverted, a venerable social institution � an institution built around an ethic that is a first cousin to marital fidelity itself...

Oh yeah, like that happened. Those 50% of marriages that ended in divorce were all gay men who secretly married clueless women, only to divorce them later for some nefarious goal. And that 25 to 40% of marital infidelity? Yup. Gay men were sleeping with women (other than their clueless wives) to further demolish the notion of fidelity. (All that sleeping with women and we still found time to sleep with each other. Thank god for Palm Pilots.)

You know, when we gays sit around our secret bathhouses, performing centuries old dark Sith rites on children, animals and the various droids we've managed to abduct, we love to laugh and chortle about how successful we've been in destroying....well everything. Baseball, football, cars, fashion, education, capitalism, gun ownership, frequent flier mileage and of course, Coke-a-Cola (New Coke? BAHAHAHAHA!!!!). Yes, we all sleep better at night (together, in one large orgy, drifting off to "Over the Rainbow") knowing that it wasn't human frailty, ambition, hubris, greed and arrogance -- human traits residing equally in both hetero's and homo's -- that has greatly tarnished the Catholic Church, but rather our evil, centuries old plans, endemic to homosexuals and only homosexuals, that brought to glorious fruition this grand event.

Yes, yes, Stanley, we've only just started. You see, for our next trick (there's that punning again) I'd like to show you this thing we're building called the Death Star....

A Review of Levine's Harmful to Minors
May 18, 2002

While everyone else is bouncing back and forth the question of �What did George Bush forget and when did he forget it,� I�m off writing a book report about sex. Story of my life."Those who can't, teach...." Ah well, the things that I do for accuracies sake.

Harmful to Minors

It has taken on gospel between the coasts of Blog-Land (and all the adjoining realms) that Judith Levine�s book Harmful to Minors is an advocacy tract, a manifesto for everyone who wants to diddle with a six-year old to come out of hiding, grab a banner, and in the best fashion of persecuted minorities throughout history, protest the horrible injustice done to them by the dominant, repressive heterosexual, white male Christian paradigm. Since Levine is a single, childless woman writer with a history of publishing articles on sex, who admits to once having a relationship with an older man when she was a teenager, it�s pointed out again and again that she is speeding the downfall of a Western Culture already caught up in a fast spin flow towards the bottom of the crapper. People like Progressive Catholic or Mark Shea and even the esteemed Tom Delay�s are the few voices of sanity, vowing to circle the wagons and defend America from a radical text that both endangers and imperils youth.

The more controversial the book the more necessary it is to actually read it. That is easily the best way to understand what the controversy is really about � reading the author�s words, understanding their argument and then trying to figure out how much of it makes or doesn�t make sense. It�s a way of not only exercising the brain but of also being intellectually honest about one�s own conclusions and points of view in reference to the subject. Of course, it�s also time consuming to do this and is far easier to just join the existing bandwagon and parrot the conventional wisdom making the rounds. Easier, but fair? Correct? Honest?

As this applies to Levine�s book, the conventional wisdom is actually quite wrong. While radical, Harmful is only so if you believe that providing honest information to kids and teens about sex and sexuality is a bad thing. If you believe that teens are incapable of making real decisions about how and when to be intimate, or that any decision other than �just saying no� until marriage is wrong, then the book will be radical. If however you feel that our current approach to the entire subject of young people and sex is misguided, incomplete and in many cases dangerous, then Levine�s book serves as a good starting point for further discussion. She points out many of the misconceptions and outright falsehoods that have developed in our culture about �kids� and sex, then advocates for a better way of approaching the entire subject -- one that is much more honest and straightforward.

Right up front, Levine states clearly that she does not believe sex is a bad thing:

Harmful to Minors says sex is not in itself harmful to minors. Rather, the real potential for harm lies in the circumstances under which some children and teens have sex, circumstances that pre-dispose them to what the public health people call �unwanted outcomes� such as unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

She is deeply concerned that, ��[c]urrent youth policy and parenting advice teeters between high anxiety child protection and higher-anger child punishment. It would appear that children are fragilely innocent until the moment they step over some line, at which point they become instantly, irredeemably wicked.�(xxvii) It is this disconnect that troubles her the most. In our American ��ambivalence about children and [in] our role�to protect the idealized child while squashing the sinner�� we wind up creating a contradictory system wherein as �� the age of consent for sex [is raised], we lower the age at which a wrongdoing child may be tried and sentenced as an adult criminal.�

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Defining Kids

One of the first things she points out is that our American habit of grouping everyone under the age of 18 into a category called �kids� is at best misleading and at worst harmful

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Six year olds are not the same as sixteen year olds and eight year olds aren�t the same as eighteen year olds. Anyone who has worked with kids and teens is well aware of this. Children are developmentally different than young adults; designating them all together under one category isn't appropriate. Indeed, it has only been relatively recently that we�ve regarded �teenagers� as children. (In fact the term �teenager� and the concept of a separate class of youth didn�t really arise until after World War II.)For much of the history of our country, if you could do a man�s (or woman�s) work, you were considered such. The American frontier was actually settled by people who today wouldn�t be allowed to drink, drive or, in some states, receive information about contraceptives.

Somewhere after the turn of the last century, under the influence of psychology, �white slavery� scares, immigration pressures and some very real and very deplorable working conditions for young people, the idea of teens as �large children� who are slaves to invading hormones, psychologically incapable of making valid decisions due to their lack of development, intellect and experience, as well as constantly under assault of a degenerative culture and clueless peers, took hold and evolved into our prevailing view today. Levine shows how research doesn�t bare out this popular view.

Dr. Daniel Offer, a psychiatrist at Northwestern University Medical School who has studied adolescent development extensively, points out that, intellectually, American 16-year-olds are as advanced as the adult population. ("In Defense of Adolescents." Journal of the American Medical Association. Volume 257, number 24 p.3408.) Their reasoning and decision making techniques are the same as those of adults. Psychologically, adolescents suffer the same rates of mental illness as the adult population. (Ibid, p. 3407) He further found that adolescents thrive with new responsibilities, share similar values with adults and actually have good relationships with those adults and others in authority. It is the situations in their lives to which they find themselves, brand new and never before encounters, that are the source of any anxieties or emotional responses they may display. Dr. Offer states, "the normal American teenager sees him or herself as a competent individual who is able to resolve the problems that come his way during the adolescent years, without too much pain, suffering, doubt, or indecision." (Offer, 1981, p.78.) He points out that our �adult fears and urges may interfere with their ability to correctly perceive what teenagers are really like.�

It�s this fear that Levine says is at the heart of our current beliefs about teens and about the policies we enact. By believing them to be children, we wall off much needed information from their preview.

One of the chief criticisms leveled at Levine is that she is a (supposed) proponent of intergenerational sex, that she sees nothing wrong with adults and teens having sex, doesn�t believe that it is damaging and that , the rules preventing adults from having sex with teens should be abolished. That is actually not what she does in the book. She points out that teens have been having sex with those over 18 for a long time, and that both history and research points our that they do so willingly, that it isn�t always harmful, and that often they even are the ones initiating the encounters. She neither condemns or condones this sexual expression, but points out that:

�As a point of reference, there is a large body of research that backs up this statement. In the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth , a 22 (year1973-1995) survey �based on personal interviews conducted in the homes of a national sample of women 15-44 years of age in the civilian, non-institutionalized population of the United States�[t]he main purpose of [which] was to provide reliable national data on marriage, divorce, contraception, infertility, and the health of women and infants�� about 50 % of those surveyed between the ages of 15-19 reported that they�d had sex. One third of those surveyed between the ages of 15 and 17 had had intercourse. over two thirds of those between 18 and 19 years old had. Of those women who first had sex before the age of 16, 66% had first partners who were under 18 years of age. 21% had partners 18-19 years of age, 7 percent had partners 20-22 years of age, 2%, 23-24 years of age and 4 percent had first partners 25 years of age or older.

Kilpatrick�s Long Range Effects of Child and Adolescent Sexual Experiences (1992) returned similar results. 83 % of her 500 subjects had their first sexual experience between 15-17 years of age. 38% of the respondents reported the sexual experiences to be "pleasant" while only 25% reported them to be "unpleasant." 39% of these adolescents 15-17 years reported being the initiator. Only 4% of the respondents reported that they would have liked to have had counseling afterwards.

Historically, young adults were often married shortly after puberty, either to people their own age or those substantially older. 100 years ago few girls got out of their teens without being married. As little as 50 years ago, the median age for a female�s marriage was a few months past 18, which meant that almost half of newlyweds were in their mid-teens. In short, despite what our popular media points out in an alarming manner, teens continue to have sex as they always have -- and they are doing so again as they always have, with both their immediate peers and those older than they. What has changed in America is our view that they are victims of either �precocious sexuality� or of sexual abuse, whether they feel they are or not.

�She takes a very broad, inclusive and open view of teens as sex. She does state that she finds the Dutch age of consent laws, where 16 is the age of full consent but those persons as young as 12 are also considered capable of giving consent provided there is no valid objection raised by a family member, to be a good guideline. She also finds that the general European attitude and philosophy, which Advocates For Youth characterizes as ��[a]societal openness and comfort in dealing with sexuality, including teen sexuality, and pragmatic governmental policies that create greater, easier access to sexual health information and services for all people, including teens�.leads to better sexual health outcomes...� is a much better paradigm to work from.

This attitude, across the board, has resulted in lower rates of teen pregnancy, STD transmission, HIV infection, and number of partners among European youth. (The U.S. rate of teen pregnancy alone is more than nine times higher than that in the Netherlands, nearly four times higher than the rate in France, and nearly five times higher than that in Germany.) She takes great issue with the �abstinence-only� educational policy, which she says isn�t helpful and may actually be harmful to the sexual health of young people. (Research, such as that from National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, bares this out.)

Levine does raise the point that sexuality, like all our feelings, is a life long in duration. Even the youngest of children express these feelings, mostly by touching themselves (or other children) in their respective erogenous zones. In light of our �out of sight, out of mind� attitude towards young children, Levine�s argument that ignoring or squashing children�s attempts at expressing their sexuality, it is much better, and far more productive, to encourage it within the milieu of all the other values that they are already instilling in children honesty, kindness, and respect to self and other. She believes quite strongly that walling off sexuality from everything else children are experiencing doesn�t help them to both better deal with those feelings and to integrate them fully into their lives. It�s this sexuality positive attitude, I think, that causes a lot of the misplaced hue and cry from social arch-conservatives.

Our fears of pedophiles on the internet and child predators lurking around every corner are overblown and have little to do with reality. There is little evidence that child porn is made or distributed in numbers any higher than in the 1960, at the height of the last public outcry. She quotes from Paul Okami, a professor at admission�s psychology department and an expert on the subject of pedophilia that there are in fact few real pedophiles in the population. The problem with the wildly varying numbers that numerous experts give for the pedophile population, numbers that range any where from 1% to 50% depending on who you ask and what their personal philosophy is, that a �..�pedophile�, depending on the legal statute, the perception of the psychologist, or the biases of the journalist, can be anything from a college freshman who has once masturbated with a fantasy of a twelve year old in mind to an adult who has had sexual contact with an infant.� Okami believes that the number of people whose primary erotic focus is on pre-pubescent children, the �classic pedophile,� is only about 1% of the population. Worst case scenarios of children being abducted, raped and killed in the US works out to between 1:364,000 and 1:1 million. Tragic enough, but a child�s risk of dying in a car accident are twenty five to seventy five times greater.

It�s focusing on the �enemy out there� that distracts from the real threat to children � their own families. The threat of sexual abuse from a member within the family or a parental substitute is much greater than anything recorded as coming �in� from �outside,� with 217,000 incidents recorded in 1993 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, 1993) While this does not say that families are harmful to children, most of the harm that does come to children, occurs from within their families.

Sex is a good thing. The positive, safe and healthy expression of it should be the goal for any parents interactions with their children and teens. Rather than treating sex as an unwanted aspect of life, it should be integrated into all aspects of life. The disservice done to young people is by misleading them as to the dangers of sex, denying any conversations about it or in forcing its sole acceptable expression into the narrow view of heterosexual, monogamous, life long marriage � something which, even its firmest supporters are only able to achieve 50% of the time (ignoring the data on infidelity.)

If we are really interested in the sexual health of our young people -- and not in just scoring political points by being alarmist and grandstanding-- then it�s worthwhile to read and consider the issues Levine raises. Our approach to our young people is misguided and flawed. Teaching our children and guiding our young adults requires honesty, compassion and understanding. Fostering ignorance through misinformation and shame only leads to scandal and tragedy.

School Daze...
May 10, 2002

Slate chimes in on the whole "Blame the Gays" debacle of the Catholic church.
April 25, 2002

Salon.com : The real war on terrorism
April 24, 2002

Salon.com 'The real war on terrorism' Robert Young Pelton, author of "The World's Most Dangerous Places," says the U.S. military has killed "thousands and thousands" of people in Afghanistan, al-Qaida is a myth and the WTC was brought down by a "Mickey Mouse" outfit.

Interesting article. Don't know if I believe all of it, but it is an interesting critique of the War by someone neither on the Left or the Right.

The one piece in the article that does strike a cord is that Pelton contends that Al-Queda is essentially the same catch-all phrase as "The Mafia," used to give cohesion to something that essentially isn't. He states that the WTC wasn't brought down by a highly organized and financed international conspiracy run out of the back caves of Afghanistan, but a loose, "Mickey Mouse" collection of dissatisfied radicals living among us, who with some money, some knowledge and a whole lot of moxie were able to inflict such horrendous damage.

I'd rather belive that Al-Queda is a huge conspiracy out of a James Bond novel. Kill Osama, or a few other leaders, and the whole thing will wither and die. I'm afraid though that it's not going to be that easy, that Al-Queda is more or less a symbolic rallying point and not a top down organizational structure, useful for a lot of lost, aimless and violent men as justification for their own homicidal rages. If that's the case, then we're going to be in for a battle as old as humankind itself.

Sex, Sin and Zen, Part II: Facts vs fantasies...
April 23, 2002

The current scandals with the Catholic Church are nothing new, despite what some pundits suggest. The Catholic Church has been dealing with priests stepping out with parishioners since its inception, be they with males or females. From time to time such relations seem to have even been of the same �epidemic� proportions as they are now.

The Church�s bigotry towards gays and lesbians is also nothing new, having waned and wd throughout the millennia. This bigotry was justified religiously and morally, and received a further helping hand by the conventional wisdom of the time. Of course, this wasn�t animosity directed a gay people per se. The idea that one could be gay or lesbian as a constitution wasn�t considered until the late 1800�s and the birth of the study of human sexuality. (Look at Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) for a discussion on one of the first modern theorists who moved past actions into identity.)

Today, many religious groups are wrestling with the whole concept of human sexuality. Our science has granted us insight into the workings of human needs and desires � the mechanics of the biology and psychology behind both who we fall in love with and who we have sex with. A good deal of mystery remains around these topics, though now, in this 21st century environment, as a result of our investigations, we understand enough to be able to separate our old, superstitious notions from those rooted in facts, observation and empiricism.

It is now a solved question that homosexuality is a natural and common expression of sexuality. We have a large body of evidence that shows its occurrence across animal species. Fairly complex animals, be they closely related to us genetically like primates, or distant relations like penguins, are all documented as being either situationally or, as far as we can tell, constitutionally �gay.� Even farther afield, in a relatively simple organism such as Drosophila subobscura (the fruit fly) has its own gay members. . (While the gene studies on humans are more strongly suggestive than demonstrated, arguments for a purely genetic basis for homosexuality grow out of the manipulations of a few genes in Drosophila. I doubt though that for humans sexuality is that cut and dried.)

As an aside, for animals, �gay� of course is an anthropomorphic term. We have no idea if the animals studied consider themselves to be gay as we use the term: one who is primarily emotionally and sexually attracted to someone of the same gender. By all outward signs though they do behave in the same way that humans who profess to be gay or lesbian do. However, as anthropomorphizing is fraught with problems, until Dr. Doolittle publishes a peer-reviewed survey of actual animal interviews, their own self-identification will remain hidden to us�

Psychologically, from Evelyn Hooker (1956) forward (Armon, 1960; Hopkins, 1969; Siegelman, 1972; Freedman, 1971; Obison & Wilson, 1974; Thompson et al 1971; Wilson & Green, 1971; Saghir & Robins, 1973; Oberstone & Sukoneck, 1976; Adelman, 1977; Bell & Weinberg, 1978; Hart et al 1978) it was established clearly that sexual orientation was natural and was not, in and of itself, a mental illness. Over 50 years of research, in psychology, sociology, biology, neurology and genetics, have created a firm foundation into the �naturalness� of both homo- and hetro- sexuality. Causes, origins, reasons are still subject to a vast amount of debate. Over the next fifty years though, I�m certain that all of our personality characteristics will be linked to genetic, environmental and nurturing factors, indicating just how complicated the simplest emotions and behaviors are in their origin.

It is as an outgrowth of all of this research that we�re able to demonstrate exactly how pejorative claims of �deviancy� and �immorality� about gays truly are. In real terms, not in the closed, self-sustaining theological terms of so many religious groups, phraseology such as �objective moral disorder�to which no one has any conceivable right to express� is not only rationally noxious but potentially deadly in so many ways. Our science --the systematic process of investigation and understanding which has allowed us to create such a world of abundance, �miracles� and �magic,� -- has given us definitive insight into this fundamental aspect of human existence. It's an insight that forces us to abandon our old, "Just So" story mythology and deal intelligently with the realities of life.

Further, it's the height of hypocrisy to extol and enjoy the benefits of science and modernity and then denigrate and ignore it when it shows that generations of dogma have no basis in reality.

Homosexuality isn�t deviant. Gays aren�t any more likely to sleep with children than straights are. The violating of trust by acting out sexually with teens has little to do with sexual orientation and a lot to do with an ancient, superstitious system that mostly encourages secrecy, shame, obedience and deference under the guise of humility, compassion, morality and social justice.

More "Harmful" controversies...
April 22, 2002

Debbie Nathan at Alternet writes about the controversy around "Harmful to Minors" as well as other, similar work around young people and sexuality.

John Leo at US News and World Report also takes on the same subject. He goes a different direction, basically saying that the book is an apologia for pedophile whose author thinks it's a" good time to endorse some priest-boy sex." He further knocks the Rind study as "the new bible of pedophiles and their groups." He also plays the "child" and "boy" card, using those terms in a misleading and ultimately alarmist sense.

I'm no pedophile (not like you'd really know if I was lying...) God knows I've dealt with enough of them over the years, dealings that really cut your faith into what adults can and will do to the weakest among us. But as I've pointed out time and time again, there is an order of magnitude difference between a 17 year old and a 7 year old. Intellectually, developmentally and morally they aren't the same thing. This continuing to group them all together into the same category as "children," a grouping that is relatively recent in American history (70 years or so) and has no basis in reality, doesn't help to keep children or young adults safe.

The problem with books like Harmful and studies like Rind aren't that they legitimize child predators (they don't), but that they lend empirical credence that our "out of sight, out of mind" views of adolescent sexuality is a terribly misguided at best.

Sex and Zen and Sin, part I
April 17, 2002

I get an email from a friend of mine, Phil. He says �Hey, Jody, what with all of your atheism and all, why are you posting all these quotes from Zen Buddhists?� I was actually quite surprised by this note because Phil wasn�t one of the two people known to regularly read my site�

To answer him, it�s easy enough to say that Zen Buddhism isn�t so much a religion but a philosophy. Of course, it�s easy enough to say that but can be terribly hard to prove, as there is such a vast panoply of gods, demons and various incarnations of the Buddha as to at least give every appearance of being a religion. And sitting under a tree, slaying the Mara with a touch and ascending into Eternal Bliss only to be called back by the cries of the suffering of the world isn�t qualitatively that different from being divinely born of a virgin so that you can sacrifice yourself to yourself in order to save everyone and everything. (And that last one, dear readers, deals with more than Christianity.)

It could be because that in much of the writings of the Zen dudes that I�ve read, they�re obviously in on the joke, or the con, or the fiction (depending on your point of view) as they demand their victims, marks or fans to let go of what they think they know and approach, directly and experientially, what they are. It could be that somewhere along the way they learned that everything in life, every philosophy, outlook, item, possession, relationship, religion or way of being, was ultimately a trap in as much as getting wrapped up in any of the mentioned walls one off from living and being, spontaneously and creatively, in the tick tock of time.

To be honest though I just like those quotes. They constantly reframe the discussion away from texts, theses, dictums, and dogmas and back, squarely, painfully, burdensomely, onto the shoulders of reading. Mostly those quotes are reminders that that which is doing the pointing is not the pointed at thing. Maps aren�t the landscape, recipes aren�t dessert and movies aren�t reality.

Well, I started thinking about those platitudes (this time, as I�ve pondered on these things for much too many times) after the whole �scandal� with the Catholic Church filled every cranny of the paper that wasn�t already filled by the perpetual bloodshed between Palestinians and Jews. It was also the responses from some of the sites that I surfed to, places like Louder Fen, HokiePundit, Annuciations or Between Naps, where the faithful, to me at least, did intellectual pirouettes and double thinks in order to continue to cling to cherished beliefs by either ignoring ample evidence against those views or in separating, and then elevating, themselves from any who hold differing views.

This intellectual pirouetting is what is necessary to live in a modern world, framed by science and democracy, enjoying it�s benefits and advances but holding fast (and loose) to a world view framed at best in First Century superstitions and at worst by pre-historic paranoia. In two thousand years we�ve learned much about the mechanics of how the world works: why the sun rises, what stars are, why objects at rest remain at rest and what it really takes to fly through the air. In the last hundred, we�ve made great advances in evaluating and comprehending the mechanics of us: how DNA forms the template of our bodies, how certain genes impact on brain functions, how PET scans reveal thinking, emotion and perception, even the general expressions and cognitions behind our psychology, emotionality and physicality. Quantitatively, we aren�t the same folks who explained rainfall by how well we behaved the year before.

Some argue that qualitatively we are little different than those savages. There is no doubt that greed, avarice, cruelty and dominance still influence much of our interactions in the world. Yet we have matured. Women are no longer (widely) regarded as secondary to men, �race� is no longer seen as a discrete but rather arbitrary or illusory (and in any event, no longer a determinant of inherent value) and might is no longer the sole determiner of right. Democracy has become the ideal, security the goal and advancement the orientation of an increasing number of societies worldwide. Our youth and inexperience continues to trip us up, but we have tried to lessen the impact of those ideas and concepts, which limit and destroy us. So much remains in front of us, yet the distance to go in no way negates the miles we�ve come.

The Catholic Church continues to pronounce a system and world-view vastly out of step with modernity. Some argue that that is a value, something to be celebrated and spread. Adoration of priests, filial, unquestioned duty to Rome, denigration of gays and lesbians, and proclamations of the complete understanding of �truth� are not values, but rather dogmas designed to mitigate against the uncertainties of life. Compassion, selfless service, social justice, truth and honesty, those are real values. Those are catholic -- universal � values, of infinite merit and enduring beauty.

The "war" on youth continues.
April 09, 2002

Drug Tests for Entire School Weighed

The "war" on youth continues. It's been going on for 150 years, and isn't likely to end anytime soon.

Posted by Jody at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

Kids, Sex and those guys
April 03, 2002

If you are worried about sex, about the age that young people first do jump in the sack, which is something that does concern me given the number of young women I�ve had on my caseload with babies or abortions, you have to wonder why it is that among our fellow first world industrialized nations, we have the highest rates of teenage STDs, pregnancies and abortions, the earliest ages of first sexual contact and the highest number of sexual partners before age 18.

It can�t be �the media� as is so often bandied about. All things being equal, our neighbors to the north have roughly the same pop culture we do, generally the same freedoms and responsibilities, and a pretty common standard of living relative to us. Yet Canadian teens wait longer, use more protection, don�t have as many abortions and have lower STD rates than we do. Jump over the pond and you find the English best us again. France, Germany and the Netherlands do as well.

And it can�t be the age of consent because we have some of the highest legal levels in the world and it doesn�t seem to make a difference on what goes on. In the country with the lowest and least restrictive age of consent law, The Netherlands where, depending on conditions and situations, consent runs between 12 and 14, teens wait longer than any where else.

�So let�s just throw open the doors and let kindergartners go out on �dates� with 40 year olds, right?�

On every level, from schooling, to health, to laws and with regards to attitudes, the rest of the industrialized world treats teens as a resource, as inexperienced, though eager adults, to be supported in their choices and not jacked into the out of site, out of mind role that we constantly cram ours into. There are job programs available in large numbers for young men and women to get decent work well before the age of 18. Young people are told from day one the facts of life, with out shadings and rules about what can and can�t be discussed. Healthcare meets them at their level and keeps them on track to better health. In short, they aren�t treated like kids, or even consumers, but as young adults, needing progressively less guidance and more support as they grow.

There is an excessively small group of folks with a terribly narrow world view that have shanghaied sexuality education away from reality and towards educational goals that are both laughable and criminal. Abstinence-only education, a program that has cost us $100 million dollars with no positive results that can be demonstrated anywhere other than in the fantasyland of its proponents, continues to suck up money, time and resources that could be better spent on honest education, support and health services.

We have incredible difficulties in the United States in talking not just about sex but about the realities of lives for teenagers. Out of site and out of mind tends to be the mantra, followed by outrage and astonishment when 16 or 17 year olds are found to be anything other than dumb kids.

We deny sexuality education, and are surprised when a young person gets pregnant or doesn�t know that just because a guy with a collar tells you to have sex with him, you don�t have to do it.

Or hey, when they say they�re gay, they wanted to have sex and they found a less than scrupulous priest (or coach, or teacher or�) who was more than happy to oblige, we think the scandal was because there were gay priests in the church in the first place. We don�t talk about the fact that if we�d been talking about The Facts, perhaps much of this wouldn�t have occurred.

We send every teen out now for a drug test, whether they have a problem or not, just because they are young and �we all know how kids are.�

Instead of making a place for young adults in society, giving them options, shifting more and more responsibility their way and also holding them accountable for their actions, we just wait and hope that they won�t give us any problems until they are 18 or 21 and out on their own.

Archive Note
April 11, 2005

Those Krazy Kids...
June 27, 2002

Fresh from the parrot's mouth
June 24, 2002

Life in California: Age 14....Age
June 04, 2002

LA Times on Kids and Sex
June 03, 2002

Da Kidz R all--Rite...
May 28, 2002

Instapundit on teens and sex...
May 25, 2002

More on Teens and Sex
May 24, 2002

Stanley's Star Wars, or Why Gay Men are the Root of All Evil...
May 20, 2002

A Review of Levine's Harmful to Minors
May 18, 2002

School Daze...
May 10, 2002

Slate chimes in on the whole "Blame the Gays" debacle of the Catholic church.
April 25, 2002

Salon.com : The real war on terrorism
April 24, 2002

Sex, Sin and Zen, Part II: Facts vs fantasies...
April 23, 2002

More "Harmful" controversies...
April 22, 2002

Sex and Zen and Sin, part I
April 17, 2002

The "war" on youth continues.
April 09, 2002

Drug Tests for Entire School Weighed

The "war" on youth continues. It's been going on for 150 years, and isn't likely to end anytime soon.

Posted by Jody at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

Kids, Sex and those guys
April 03, 2002

Archive Note April 11, 2005

Those Krazy Kids... June 27, 2002

Fresh from the parrot's mouth June 24, 2002

Life in California: Age 14....Age June 04, 2002

LA Times on Kids and Sex June 03, 2002

Da Kidz R all--Rite... May 28, 2002

Instapundit on teens and sex... May 25, 2002

More on Teens and Sex May 24, 2002

Stanley's Star Wars, or Why Gay Men are the Root of All Evil... May 20, 2002

A Review of Levine's Harmful to Minors May 18, 2002

School Daze... May 10, 2002

Slate chimes in on the whole "Blame the Gays" debacle of the Catholic church. April 25, 2002

Salon.com : The real war on terrorism April 24, 2002

Sex, Sin and Zen, Part II: Facts vs fantasies... April 23, 2002

More "Harmful" controversies... April 22, 2002

Sex and Zen and Sin, part I April 17, 2002

The "war" on youth continues. April 09, 2002

Drug Tests for Entire School Weighed The "war" on youth continues. It's been going on for 150 years, and isn't likely to end anytime soon. Posted by Jody at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

Kids, Sex and those guys April 03, 2002