Shocking Article

Here is an article I saw on Yahoo a day or two ago. The headline: Study finds 1 in 4 US teens has a STD

Wow.
Some of the article talked about how we educate young students in America, and I know this opens up a whole can of worms over abstinence based curriculum, whether condoms should be available at school, etc. Check out the following:

"Those numbers are certainly alarming," said sex education expert Nora Gelperin, who works with a teen-written Web site called sexetc.org. She said they reflect "the sad state of sex education in our country."

"Sexuality is still a very taboo subject in our society," she said. "Teens tell us that they can't make decisions in the dark and that adults aren't properly preparing them to make responsible decisions."

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the study shows that "the national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure, and teenage girls are paying the real price."

The article says that of the approximately 26% of the adolescents 18% of that was HPV. Now, this is a new thing since I was educated in high school. We didn't learn about HPV, so I'm going to do a little research. But this article makes me so sad for the following reasons:

-First and foremost, for all those young women.
-I am not doing enough to help equip the students and parents in the church community to deal with the issues of sexuality. I must stare this fact in the face.
-We cannot depend on the public school systems to educate our kids in areas of moral decisions. The schools can give them information, but they can't teach them what is right. We must also stare this fact in the face.
-When students are making poor choices, Planned Parenthood does a better job at being accessible to students than the church.
-To me this article points to the human condition that makes us feel entitled to choose our course of action without the reality of consequences.

After reading this article the other day, I get in my car on the way home and turn on the radio. What do I hear? "Love in this Club" by Usher and Young Jeezy. Which is currently #1 after only 3 weeks on the Hot 100 charts. Lets sample the chorus shall we? As with most modern hip hop songs, it drones on "I wanna make love in this club". Hhhmmm...So the gest of the song is, Usher arrives at a evening hours establishment, sees "miss shorty" on the otherside of the club, finds her most desirable, and then the verse rapped by Young Jeezy confesses to want to "bag her like some groceries". If you're really interested, and don't mind some vulgar words, you can read the lyrics in their entirety here.

Now, am I saying that music is to blame? No, not yet. Although the older I get the more I am tempted to jump on that wagon with the rest of the Focus of the Family folks. But we have to let students know that the messages they are hearing from Z107-7, reading in Cosmo, and seeing on The Girls Next Doorare bankrupt and that is not how life works. Man, I feel old.