Tuesday, October 31, 2006

SCARY BUT TRUE INFORMATION: THE CONSEQUENCES OF DISOBEDIENCE TO LAWS OF PERSONAL PURITY

So – my mother, who is prone to providing unwanted advice, pressed this into my hand after dinner on Sunday. She wanted me to give it to my son. I think, instead, I’ll post it for your bemusement. The following is verbatim. Imagine the impact this might have on a teen who is, for various reasons, lacking alternative sources of information. I won’t bother refuting all the inaccurate or misleading statements – who has time?


SCARY BUT TRUE INFORMATION: THE CONSEQUENCES OF DISOBEDIENCE TO LAWS OF PERSONAL PURITY
“Choose you this day, whom you will serve.”


The usual feelings of invincibility possessed by teenagers, lead them to believe
It won’t happen to me.” As a matter of fact, these things happen with alarming regularity.

Media
92% of LDS teens say they have seen at least 1 “R” rated movie in the last year. A common statement is: “There was just a little bit of bad stuff in it.” SO: If you had a bowl of delicious soup with just a little cockroach in it, would you eat it?

Teens say “Media does not affect me.” Of course it does. Nike sales soared 378% when Michael Jordan said to wear them, and Nike paid him 27 million dollars to say it.

57% of high school kids do not list parents, relatives, historical figures, literary figures, religious leaders (including Christ) as their heroes. They list, in order, movie stars, rock stars and athletes.

The internet has become a pernicious in-home source of animalized sex which installs itself on out computers.

In interviewing 14 year olds who had seen a very popular PG rated movie no less than 5 times, (they were considered “experts”), they were asked if the movie contained any four letter words. They said they thought there were three or four. Actually, there were101. Asked if there were any sexual overtones in the film, they said “no”. Actually there were 7 sexual conversations and one sexual scene.

In 1991, the most common four-letter work in “R” rated movies was the F word. The #2 word was the SH word. All thigh school kids list those same two words as the most common profanity at school. The use of profanity has increased 650% among high school kids since the motion picture industry changed its code in the 1960’s to allow vulgar language.

When a movie star went on TV to encourage women to start smoking a specific cigarette, the sales to women of that particular cigarette increased 312%.

SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES (STD’S)
Epidemic world wide. Used to be only two major sexually transmitted diseases (gonorrhea and syphilis) Now there are over 50. Some are incurable (Herpes and AIDS) and some cause death (AIDS).

No 1 communicable disease in the world is gonorrhea (now possibly CMV)
40-50% of infected women are under age 20.
15-19 is the peak age for occurrence in women
20-24 is the peak age for occurrence in men
It is sexist. 50-60% of the infected women do not know they have it until it has caused pelvic inflammatory disease, which is one of the leading causes of infertility. After only one infection 20% are sterile. After three infections, 75% are sterile, because of blocked fallopian tubes and scarring.

12,000 high school kids every DAY become infected with a sexually transmitted disease. Some are infected with a disease which lasts a whole lifetime, and they are capable of transmitting that disease for life. Teen pregnancy can only occur during 72 hours of every month, and affects only 50% of the population (girls). However, STD’s can happen any time to either sex.

Once a person has had a sexual encounter with anyone besides a disease-free spouse, it will require 4 chaste years before that person can be sure he is not going to turn up with something awful. Some diseases take that long to manifest themselves.

Some of the most beautiful words in the English language are the names of some of the worst diseases – and some create horrible problems for unborn babies. Listeria monocytogenes, Chlamydia, cytomegalovirus are examples.

Chlamydia: One in two people in the US has it, so you have a 50% chance of contracting this awful bacteria which is the most common STD in the US right now. Like gonorrhea, which is also “curable” it leaves 20-25% of women sterile after only one infections. Transmission to a baby during bright causes serious infections in the infant.

HPV (human papillo virus) There is no cure for this one. It causes venereal warts which last a lifetime. These increase the risk of uterine and certical cancer, and cancer of the penis in men. There is no such thing as “safe sex”. 300,000 of these little viral critters fit into the period at the end of this sentence. How much accidental contact is it going to take to cause an infection? It’s a virus. It will infect everybody it comes into contact with.

Herpes: Both Herpes Type 1 and Type 2 are on the increase and are no longer limited to just the lips, or just the genital area. Both types are found in both places. If is uncurable and results in repeated outbreaks of not one, but dozens of fever-blister-like sores in the most private of places. A mother who has an active case of herpes must have her baby by Ceserean section because if she has a vaginal biurth, the baby bears a 50% chance of contracting herpes, and 50% of the babies who get it, die, in spite of treatment.

TEEN PREGNANCY
This is the number 1 public health problem in the nation, although the rate is going down every week between 70 and 120 Utah teens gets pregnancy.

In 1989, one in every 4-5 babies born in the US was born to a single mother. By 1995, if was 1 in 3.

1/3 of all abortions are performed on teenagers. In Utah in 1991, 18% of pregnant teens chose abortion. Very few chose adoption.

Pregnancy before agte 18:
Increases the risk of birth injury to the baby 5 times.
Doubles the risk of toxemia (pregnancy-induced hypertension)
Doubles the risk of the baby dying.
Increases the divorce rate for pregnant couples who marry 3 times.
Only 6% of teen fathers take any responsibility financially or any other way for their babies.
It costs the government $68.5 million a day to help families whose first child was born during the teen years or without marriage.

Over 90% who do not abort the pregnancy, keep the babies and raise them in poverty. A high percentage of our nation’s children are being raised by uneducated, single mothers, living in poverty. Some children are abused or neglected by mothers too young to understand their responsibility. And those mothers have given up their youth, their proms, their high school graduation, etc. And they have a baby not sealed in the covenant.

Guys will give “love” in order to get sex. Girls will give sex in order to get “love”. Sex is not love and is a shabby substitution for it. A girl or guy needs to “prove their love” like a moose needs a hatrack. No definition of “love” includes exploitation of the other person, or insisting upon destroying that person physically, emotionally, financially, educationally, or spiritually. True love is protective.

BIRTH DEFECTS
Most birth defects are not controllable. Some are. A baby is born with a birth defect every 2 minutes. The most common question in the delivery room is: “Doctor, is my baby alright?” In one out of every 13 cases, the answer is “no.”

The saddest birth defects that our nations children have to live with are those 100% preventable defects caused by their parents.

Fetal alcohol syndrome (leading cause of mental retardation in the U.S.)
Prematurity due to sexually transmitted disease, or teen mother.
Small for gestational age babies because of maternal smoking
Addicted babies born to addicted mothers.

One neonatologist calls these behaviors ‘the earliest forms of child abuse’.

3 Comments:

Blogger hipparchia said...

eek!

[pauses to wipe flecks of rabid foam from monitor screen]

but ... but ... but ... abstinence-only sex education works!

11/07/2006 4:41 PM  
Blogger TenaciousK said...

Scare campaigns*:

1) Make some issue REALLY important by emphasizing how scary it is.

2) Watch your credibility get eroded (can be sudden, or gradual) resulting from a combination of experience and exposure to accurate information.

3) Watch your message backfire, as the importance of the issue remains, while the attributions assigned it change (these are psychological separate components).

The number one environmental risk factor for alcoholism is an alcoholic parent. The number two environmental risk factor is a teetotalling parent. In both instances, the idea of alcohol consumption is ever-present.

Interestingly, the focus is also unwittingly self-revelatory. Why is the woman who wrote this so focused on sexuality, you might ask?

The answer, of course, is obvious.

Unfortunately [or fortunately, depending on how exploitive you tend], she also equates sex with denigration. Not a big jump to ascertain the kind of activities she might be seduced into [shame can be perversely arousing, you know?], or the kind of bad characters she might unfortunately be attracted to.

She'd do well to find some benevolent top, you know? She could be a co-participant as she played it all out with a partner. Odds are, she'd end up with a violent Christian fella' instead. That's the sad part of the story, for her.

The sad part for the children she's speaking to is obvious.

"Psychopathology is a gift of love bestowed on children by their parents." Lorna Benjamin


*See: the war on drugs, the war against morality, the war on terror, the war against pornography, ad nauseum. Don't even get me started on how this plays out in public political discourse.

11/07/2006 5:49 PM  
Blogger obfuscati said...

hmmm ... now ... how can i get you started on how this plays out in public political discourse?

that would be an interesting discussion.




meanwhile, i suppose you could direct her to taken in hand [ a term i learned recently].

as for your condemnation of the christian fellas, i'd say that the "classic" tih man, or "benevolent top" as you put it, has been the teaching of many a religion for many a century.


[i have more to say, but i have to be somewhere in a few minutes. back later.]

11/12/2006 6:09 PM  

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