An .. tic ... i ... pa ... -- Oh, Never Mind

We all saw the story the other day that people who are "abstinent" catch STDs at the same rate as people who aren't. They just find ways around the strict definition of sexual intercourse.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like delayed gratification is just hard, in general.

This San Antonio radio station interviews a guy with a good point:

But Dr. David Wiley, a Professor of Health Physical Education and Recreation at Texas State University in San Marcos, and a recognized expert in the field, told the [sex education] conference that abstinence only doesn't work.

"There have been virtually no abstinence only programs which have been evaluated which have led to behavior change," Wiley told 1200 WOAI's Bob Branson.

In fact, Wiley said sex ed itself is not a factor in determining teen sexuality.

"They don't necessarily cause kids to stop having sex, but then they don't cause kids to start having sex," he said.

Wiley said the entire concern about teen pregnancy is in response to the older ages that people are getting married today compared to previous years.

"Today our average first marriage in the U.S. is between 26 and 27. In our grandparents day teen pregnancy wasn't an issue because they were married at fourteen," he said. Research: Abstinence Only Sex Ed Doesn't Work

Well, duh. Those first ten or twelve years of waiting are not that bad, because, uh, you're a kid, for cryin' out loud. But once the hormones hit, once you're through puberty, in a normal world you'd get married right then and there.

But we don't do that. We wait.

There's still this thing about human beings, about being able to decide how we will behave. You could say that people need to exert their willpower, just bite their lip and hold out for ten or fifteen years of celibate sexual maturity. But some people'd need to have a really, really, really good reason to go against what nature has designed us for. "Because the Bible tells me so" might not work for everybody. The statistics say that a whole lot of people decide to have sex (in one form or another, maybe it ain't cheatin' but it's not necessarily safe sex) before they get married. Like, almost everybody.