Hey Kids, It's Anti-Mardi Gras Day

CNN.com - Teens promote abstinence with 'Day of Purity' - Feb. 13, 2004

[Melissa] Millis, a high school senior in Michigan, and thousands of other students across the nation plan to wear white T-shirts to school Friday, the day before Valentine's Day, to publicly show their commitment to not having sex outside marriage. They're calling their effort the "Day of Purity," and they will distribute pro-abstinence pamphlets to their peers.

Pro-abstinence pamphlets? No floats, no beads, no hedonistic wandering through the French Quarter? Throw me up something, mister...

Seriously, though, does anyone REALLY think that teenagers can, uh, THINK their way out of sexual situations? Excuse me, but far better that we provide the following to teens:

Realistic Sex Education taught by health professionals who can shatter myths and explain the benefits of responsible sexual health.
Access to birth control, particularly condoms--but any and all forms of birth control.
If someone REALLY wants to throw a hissy fit, sexual abstinence until one reaches the age of majority should be encouraged, but done so with the understanding that human sexuality isn't something that can be turned off like a lightswitch.

Al Franken, of all people, said in his most recent book much the same thing. As a father, he notes that his kids have NEVER seen any contradiction between encouraging abstinence until reaching the age of majority, and the idea that, if you REALLY want to have sex, to take precautions, particularly by using condoms as a prophylactic against pregnancy and sexual disease.

Festivals like Mardi Gras, the Bacchanalian rites of ancient Greece, the Saturnalian rites of ancient Rome, etc. etc., are part and parcel to the human experience. That's why they've lasted as long as--well, as long as humans have collectively organized and chronicled their history. "Purity Days" are a joke: they will no more keep basic urges in check than pulling down the shade will keep the sun from rising.

That doesn't mean that people should be entitled to engage in the human equivalent of the rutting season. I'm simply saying that hedonism is a natural component of human existence, just as piety is--and balancing these and other components of human existence, with the perspective of an adult--or, in the case of a teen, a young adult--is at least my idea of "the good and proper life."

OK, so much for hedonism and new age. Back to poltics...