Abstaining From Logic

Luis Lama’s April 30 column “The Wonderful World of Sex” indirectly draws attention to another viewpoint not often brought up aloud in the United States: the folly of abstinence education. Human beings are plainly not “meant” (for lack of a better word) to be abstinent, and trying to deprive one’s self of sexual fulfillment is quite unhealthy psychologically. In fact, abstinence education has a rather sinister subtext, as George Orwell pointed out 50 years ago in 1984: “Sexual privation induces hysteria, which is desirable because it transforms into war fever and leader worship.” Granted, war fever and leader worship can certainly occur m a sexually relaxed society (think 1930s Berlin as depicted so vividly in Cabaret) but mass sexual frustration still provides a powerful source of unused energy.

If Americans really want to prevent sexually transrnitted diseases and inopportune pregnancies, we should follow the exarnple of Western Europe, whose young adults are more sexually active yet suffer from fewer unfortunate consequences. In those societies, well-planned government-flinded sex education prograrns help to ensure that their children end up as sexually healthy adults, whereas America’s massive Puritan holdover cormunity attempts to derail any such efforts here. The United States may be flirther along in terms of sexual rnaturity as a society than the countries mentioned by Mr. Lama, but if we are ever to overcome our bizarre mix of simultaneous prudery and prorniscm.ty, we still have a long way to go.

Scott Charney

Sophomore English and History major