Anorak

Anorak News | Labelled With Love

Labelled With Love

by | 8th, March 2004

‘WE have health warnings on packets of cigarettes, we are about to get health warnings on bottles of alcohol, so why not health warnings about the dangers of unprotected sex?

Just who is on the other end of the line?

As the Mail reports that an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases is hitting Britain’s teenagers, fuelled of course by the “liberalisation of school sex education programmes” under this Government, it is a question that needs asking.

And Robert Whelan, director of Family And Youth Concern, is on hand to ask it.

“Young people today are growing up in a culture where there is widespread pressure to have promiscuous sex,” he says. “We ought to be telling them that such behaviour comes with a health warning attached.”

But where do you attach the health warning? It is a potentially painful question and one to which we have no easy answer.

One suggestion would be to put them on condoms, but the Mail has a better idea – teenagers should be taught to say ‘no’.

“For years, schoolchildren have been deluged with resolutely non-judgmental advice, free contraceptives, leaflets such as The Cool Lover’s Guide To Slick Condom Use and the abortion-inducing morning-after pill,” it says.

“The consequences? Last week, it was revealed that under-18 pregnancies have risen again – this is a nation that already has Europe’s worst rate of teenage pregnancies.

“In America, where there has been a swing back to the teachings of traditional morality, the picture is very different. Pregnancies, abortions and STDs among teenagers have fallen sharply.”

With the Government now not sure whether to encourage people to have safe sex or to encourage them not to have sex at all, Anorak turns to the Mirror for a third way – cybersex.

“Britain is fast becoming a nation of cybersex addicts,” says the paper, which claims that more than half of us have surfed the Internet for porn and one in six of us has indulged in cybersex.

The country is divided as to whether using chatrooms and instant messaging for sexual gratification constitutes adultery in the same way person-to-person sex would do, but it is clear that there are two major advantages to cybersex – no pregnancy and no risk of STDs.

In which case, the Government can solve the teenage STD epidemic at a stroke…by combining sex education classes with computer studies.’



Posted: 8th, March 2004 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink