No sex is safe sex for teens in America (Guardian)

I was just formulating in my head a fairly complimentary post based on this article, along the lines of “It’s not how I’d go about it, but they’re clearly doing better than us so perhaps their strategy is better.”

Then I got to this bit.

‘What do you also hear will keep you safe?’ [the teacher] asked. ‘Condoms,’ they answered.
‘Do they keep you safe?’ she asked. ‘No,’ they chorused.
She is banned by law from promoting the benefits of correctly used condoms.

Oh deary, deary me. So those students who will inevitably have sex anyway will not be educated in how to protect themselves. I know the Americans are all for Abstinance Only, and I’d be perfectly happy with that if they didn’t take quite as strong an approach to “only”. This is getting dangerously close to misinformation. Though clearly not as close as this:

The Bush administration is funding sexual health projects that teach children that HIV can be contracted through sweat and tears, touching genitals can result in pregnancy, and that a 43-day-old foetus is a thinking person.

George, what are you doing to these young people’s minds?

Whilst I admit that the link is tenuous, I thought I’d tag onto the end of this post the winning entry in this year’s bad sex award, simply because it made me laugh so much.

Hoyt began moving his lips as if he were trying to suck the ice cream off the top of a cone without using his teeth. She tried to make her lips move in sync with his. The next thing she knew, Hoyt had put his hand sort of under her thigh and hoisted her leg up over his thigh. What was she to do? Was this the point she should say, “Stop!”? No, she shouldn’t put it that way. It would be much cooler to say, “No, Hoyt,” in an even voice, the way you would talk to a dog that insists on begging at the table.

Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns – oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest – no, the hand was cupping her entire right – Now! She must say “No, Hoyt” and talk to him like a dog. . .

. . . the fingers went under the elastic of the panties moan moan moan moan moan went Hoyt as he slithered slithered slithered slithered and caress caress caress caress went the fingers until they must be only eighths of inches from the border of her public hair – what’s that! – Her panties were so wet down. . . there – the fingers had definitely reached the outer stand of the field of pubic hair and would soon plunge into the wet mess that was waiting right. . . there-there-

Taken from I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe.