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Make kids responsible for when they have sex
I taught a comprehensive Human Sexuality course at Pima Community College for many, many years.
Even though I have been retired for several years now, I remember that course very well. I remember so many students telling me, with regret, that they wish that they had had such a class when they were in high school.
I would ask them what might have been different had they had such a course in high school. Many replied that they would have been more careful, while others said that they would have postponed becoming sexually active.
Many adults fear that if we provide young people with information and knowledge regarding sex, love and relationships, they will be more likely to become sexually active. My experience, as well as some research, suggests the opposite is just as likely.
But if they do choose to be sexually active, with comprehensive sex ed, they will be more likely to protect themselves from diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
Too many young people feel pressured by others – boyfriends, girlfriends, parents or others – to either have sex or to refrain from sex. It should not be up to others.
In my opinion, we would do our young people the most good if we simply told them that they have some important decisions to make and that the decision is theirs rather than others to make.
When given responsibility, many of our young people are much smarter and wiser than we give them credit for.
With or without information and knowledge, some teenagers will be sexually active while others will not. But when armed with knowledge and empowered with the choice, they will be safer, healthier and happier. And they will more likely become parents when they choose to become parents.
The Tucson Citizen is to be commended for its support of comprehensive sex education.
David W. Gallagher
Lakeside
Listening to Obama like eating Chinese food
Nice Speech President Obama, but, “Where’s the beef?”
Oh how we miss Clara Peller, the “little old lady with the whisky voice” who cut to the quick on rapier wit.
Obama is still on the campaign trail giving lofty speeches bringing the hall to its feet. But afterward, you feel like you’ve been to a vegetarian Chinese restaurant. Nothing.
Nonetheless, we must applaud Obama. He did not drag George W. Bush through the sheep dip of Democrat disdain. He is either a gentlemen or read Scott Rasmussen’s caution to him in print. Conservatives take hope from the turning of the public taste tired of rubbing GW’s nose in the droppings of Democrat discontent.
Obama has yet to deal with the real budget of the government. All this money is only to patch up the errors of many years in which the major auto makers gave the farm to unions and the Barney and Chris gang held up Freddie and Fannie Mac. And, George W. Bush fell on his knees before the D.C. Evil Empire to become a default Democrat.
Today, Wall Street is running on a 1929 train schedule. It took four years to destroy 89 percent of the equity in U.S. corporations and they are “on time” by historic reckoning. They should arrive at the end of the line four years from Dec. 21, 2008 – just in time to see the end of time predicted by the Mayan calendar, the Aztec calendar and an analysis of the book of IChing.
Will the curse of Santana, “Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it,” come true in our time? Or, is it just the end of time?
Adrian Vance
Lakeport, Calif.
Obama enabling lamestream media
The lamestream media continues to display its enormous biases – and it isn’t helpful that President Obama indulges them.
For example, during Obama’s first nationally televised press conference, he took his first question not from somebody who is currently a reporter, but rather from a left-wing columnist, Helen Thomas.
This is the same Ms. Thomas who snarkily labels mass murderers of innocent Americans “so-called terrorists,” and the same Ms. Thomas who – when she was a reporter – was actually proud of her comment that “of course I’m a liberal, what else would a good reporter be?”
Shame on Ms. Thomas for her textbook left-wing closed-mindedness.
Mark Kalinowski
New York, N.Y.