Our culture, especially the "official" culture which controls the media and cultural power centers - religion, government, and business - is addicted to sexual guilt and shame. This addiction is, naturally enough, reflected in what is communicated by addicted educators.

I dounbt that can be repaired by addressing the problem as it exists in the schools. The society at large requires healing before it will tolerate anything other than guilt and shame about sex when communicating about it in "official" contexts - including education.

How can we heal? We need psychological, medical, and counseling professionals who spend their time identifying the symptoms and signs of addiction to sexual guilt and shame. One could start by using an organizational structure and ideology complementing that created by the "sex addiction" movement (which only exacerbates the severity of the culture's addiction to sexual guilt and shame).

We need twelve step processes to assist people who are trying to break the negative patterns and self destructive consequences of their addiction to sexual guilt and shame. And we need codependancy theory to help people stop being enablers of those who are caught in the terrible web of sexual guilt and shame. (Visualize the woman whose sexuality is suppressed by a lover who is addicted to shame and guilt about sex, but who cannot bring herself to break that pattern by leaving the relationship, and finding a partner who loves and accepts sexual pleasure as an essential and humanizing aspect of life.)

We need professional and community based organizations of professionals who lend assistance and support to those who have been abused and oppressed by addicts to sexual guilt and shame.

Qualified organizations and professionals should hold academic and professional conferences to share information about the full dimension of the evils brought by this addiction, and how it may be fought and its effects on individuals and society lessened.

Perhaps when our official culture and its organs of communication and indoctrination have overcome their need to support our addiction to sexual shame and guild we can hope for improvement in sex ed.

And I think his stats are correct. We still need proper, correct sex education schools, because it's the right thing to do. Kids need to learn, school is the place you learn things and it's criminal to teach them the wrong things -- to teach myths or untruths, or to preach religion at them. Just the facts, as clearly and forthrightly as it can be taught.

They also need moral guidance, and that MUST come from parents at home. You can't expect schools to fill in for that. They can't.

Unfortunately, what we have now is a perfect storm of stupidity -- schools teaching nonsense. Parents abdicating responsibility because A. they are ignorant too, B. they are embarrassed and C. they are often doing exactly what they want their kids NOT to do.

It is a sad truth that you can't teach one thing to kids, then go out and do another. 40% of kids grow up in fatherless households. You can bet they see their single divorced (or never married) moms dating and living with men, and ditto for their dads, and they are raised seeing promiscuity, out of wedlock births, lack of birth control, irresponsibility and "drama". They also watch about a million hours of TV, including graphic cable shows, that tout sexual irresponsibility WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES.

We are really good at teaching the following things: your body, especially DOWN THERE, is icky and embarrassing -- never talk about it in public! Ewww! Never touch yourself, except during sex...your body belongs to your lover(s) and not to yourself. Condoms are gross and embarrassing, and don't feel good when you use them. You can't get pregnant the first time you "do it". Every man wants to have a baby with you, and if you have a man's baby, he will love you 4-ever and stay with you, cuz you have just given birth to his BABY and that means a lot. Marriage is a just a piece of paper from city hall, and doesn't mean anything, so it's fine to just live with somebody, and have babies, and you'll eventually get married when you have a lot of money for a big wedding and a fancy dress.

We have taught those values perfectly to our kids, and we are living with the results. No sex ed system, even the most comprehensive one in the world, can combat deeply encultured ideas about life, about love, about men & women, about pleasure, about intimacy.

But we still need facts, and I'm glad if Florida is taking a small step in the right direction...let's just see it proportionately as what it is, and not make too much out of it.

For several years I volunteered as a pregnancy counselor at a Planned Parenthood clinic in a working-class, ethnically diverse town. I observed that denial can drown out the best sex-ed messages, and fear can overpower the most authoritative moral teachings.

Then again, some people obviously aren't paying attention to either type of instruction. I once helped counsel a prostitute who seemed a little unclear on the birds and the bees. When we suggested she use a condom every time she had sex, she replied indignantly: "Not if I know the guy!"

"My wife and I engaged in premarital sex (yes, yes, with each other) before we got married. Sadly, our marriage has only managed to last twenty years to date."

That made me think: you know, pretty much everybody, practically speaking, has sex before marriage. Even back in the mid-20th century, if you hadn't done the deed before the formal engagement, it was considered wink-and-nod okay to do it after the engagement. Even "good girls". You were "practically married", after all.

So that means that a vast majority of the couples that surround you who have been married 20, 30, 40 years, and who are married until one of them dies, had sex before they got married. Maybe only with each other, but you know they did.

So this "premarital sex" = no permanent relationship horse shit is completely indefensible on its face.