It’s Always About The Children, Isn’t It?

There are two stories that came to my attention that prompted today’s post:

1. Via Instapundit, Perry de Havilland finds an interview of a UK official, who discusses his interest in creating a “child-safe” Internet in conjunction with the Obama administration.
2. Scientists discuss the effects of “third-hand smoke” on children and how it may lead to universal indoor smoking bans, even in private residences.

Emotional manipulation is a powerful thing.  If you want somebody to do something for you or give you something they might not ordinarily be inclined to give you, one of the easiest ways to facilitate that is to prey on their emotions.  It usually starts with fear (”There’s a market for pictures… pictures of your children…naked!“).  You overblow it, make it seem like a common occurence (”This market is everywhere. Your neighbor could be trying to find these pictures!”).  After letting the fear sit just long enough to make the target uncomfortable, the next step begins - offering the solution.  You’ve reminded your intended victim that fear is unpleasant. You’ve shown them that what they fear could be just around the corner.  Now you give them an out.  You comfort them.  You let them know that you - and only you - can make that fear disappear.  Then you tell them how.  By getting them to fixate on that fear, they become consumed by it, or at least consumed by it just enough to not question the solution.  Stunted child development?  Toxins?  We have to make them stop! Never mind that we’re effectively talking about criminalizing one more common recreational drug, something which will invariably hurt far more children far more directly than third-hand smoke.  You think light contact to carcinogenic toxins is harmful to children?  How about watching family members end up in jail?  How about foster care?  The important thing is that you consider the cure in an empty vaccuum, one in which there’s no such thing as an unintended consequence, where the phrase, “The cure is worse than the disease” is never uttered.

Whenever somebody mentions children, you can almost universally guarantee that somebody wants you to do something you wouldn’t ordinarily do.  Children are the easiest way to get adults to experience fear.  We don’t have a financial offender registry - if you embezzle money from work, you’re not put into an online-accessible database, nor are you forbidden from living within 1,000 yards of a bank.  We do, however, have a sex offender database, Megan’s Law, Amber Alerts, laws that restrict where sexual offenders can live, and so much more.  Why?  The answer is simple:  fear.  We fear that our children will be harmed and we will do just about anything to make sure that feeling goes away, no matter how many people we hurt in the process.  Politicians know this and happily use this both against ourselves and against each other - after all, if you’re running against a politician, do you want to be the sane one talking about preserving freedom of speech and balancing the need to protect our children with the need for a free and open communication medium, or do you want to be tough on crime?  Do you want to talk about balancing the need to prevent exposure to harmful chemicals versus the damage that would be caused to children by inflicting the legal system against their families, or do you want to be tough on toxins and big tobacco corporations?  As Frank Herbert once put it, “fear is the mind-killer”.  He wasn’t kidding.

UPDATE: It’s a bad day to be a sex offender, that’s for sure.  From Slashdot:

“Privacy advocates are questioning an aggressive Georgia law set to take effect Thursday that would require sex offenders to hand over Internet passwords, screen names and e-mail addresses. Georgia joins a small band of states complying with guidelines in a 2006 federal law requiring authorities to track Internet addresses of sex offenders, but it is among the first to take the extra step of forcing its 16,000 offenders to turn in their passwords as well.”

From the news article:

State Sen. Cecil Staton, who wrote the bill, said the measure is designed to keep the Internet safe for children. Authorities could use the passwords and other information to make sure offenders aren’t stalking children online or chatting with them about off-limits topics.

Staton said although the measure may violate the privacy of sex offenders, the need to protect children “outweighs a lot of the rights of these individuals.“

There it is, folks.  The need to protect children is more important than the Bill of Rights and due process.  The need to keep the Internet “safe for children”, even though it isn’t, never was, and never will be justifies any abuse we choose to heap on those who were committed as sexual offenders.

I want to be clear about something here:  I don’t have any pity for sexual offenders.  What they did is incredibly heinous.  That said, we are setting an extremely poor precedent here.  If we don’t believe they can be trusted to conform to society’s legal norms of sexual behavior, why are we letting them out of prison?  If it’s due to some sort of mental illness, why aren’t we putting them in asylums?  Either they’re in or they’re out.  Otherwise, we’re setting ourselves up for all kinds of circumnavigations of the Bill of Rights.  How long will it be until we come up with another class of crimes that, even after their sentencing is completed, will lead to lifelong probation with severely reduced rights?  After all, if smoking is harmful to children, couldn’t we just as easily justify tracking all credit card purchases of smokers to “protect the children”?  Cigarettes are addictive, after all - we can’t be too careful.  They might relapse at any moment.

Strawmen aside, we need to make a decision:  If we believe that somebody shouldn’t be trusted in public around children and shouldn’t be trusted online, they shouldn’t be put in a position where they could be around children or online. That means increasing the terms of incarceration or possibly labeling them “criminally insane” and locking them up in a psychiatric ward somewhere.  It does not mean we pretend that our Constitution doesn’t apply to them - the instant we start doing that is the instant we decide it’s okay to do that to others, and that’s not a precedent I can get behind.

Cars and Sex

I’m taking a quick detour from my Stuff Nerds Like series today.  I’ll jump right back in tomorrow, though.  In the meantime, I had something vaguely similar to an epiphany:

Imagine if we taught teenagers about driving the same way we teach teenagers about sex.

With most things in life, parents can be quite specific, providing exacting advice, personal anecdotes, and anything else you can possibly think of to, so the theory goes, help their teenagers learn from their mistakes.  Sex, on the other hand, is almost always a different story, which got me thinking - how well would it work if we taught teenagers how to drive if we used the same methods we use to teach them about sex?

For example, you might have the religious folk:
Driving before car ownership is a sin!  Part of the experience of owning a car is learning how to drive it!  Read the manual!  Seat belts are against God’s will!  Stop playing with your keys or you’ll go blind!

Then, there’s the “safe driving” talk…
I want to talk to you about something… when I was young, I was with my first car, and I wasn’t a safe driver.  I ended up flying through the windshield, which is how I got these disfiguring scars on my face that you see today.  When you first drive, always make sure to use protection.  Always use a seat belt.

Of course, no discussion would be complete without actually describing what driving is, exactly…
When a man falls in love with a car, he wants to take it driving.  Driving, son, is when a man inserts his key into the ignition.  This should only be with a car you own, or at least a car that you plan on having a lasting relationship with.  Never, ever, drive your friends’ cars.  Nothing ruins a friendship faster than that.  Some people rent or lease cars, either for pleasure or to satisfy their driving needs… I’m not for that, but I know some people that have done it.  The cars are usually broken down and dirty.  I don’t recommend doing that.  Also, don’t get involved with convertibles… they’re all fun and games when the sun’s up, but the minute the weather turns sour, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.  I hope this advice serves you well.

At no point, however, would the parent ever mention how to actually drive a car. Consequently, would anyone be surprised if, given this sort of “information”, if the first thing that every teenager did upon trying to drive a car was turn the ignition (probably accidentally) and watch it lunge into a wall or a tree or something?  Would it be surprising if some teenagers never figured out how to properly drive a car?  It would take years of trial and error, going through many unpleasant experiences with many cars, chatting with friends about the mechanics, before most people would ever have what we could now consider a basic competency behind the wheel.  Heck, it would take weeks before most teenagers would figure out what the wheel does, or why it’s important to touch it from time to time.

Just something to think about.

Sounds Too Ridiculous To Be True?

That’s probably because it is:

GLOUCESTER, Mass. — The city’s mayor said Monday there is no evidence a group of young girls made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together, seeking to dispel an explosive theory put forth by the high school principal.

“Any planned blood-oath bond to become pregnant - there is absolutely no evidence of,” Mayor Carolyn Kirk said Monday after a closed-door meeting with city, school and health leaders.

That’s right - the same story that I and so many others dealt with recently is probably a hoax, all perpetrated by someone who wanted to make a point about teenage pregnancy.

There’s an old and often repeated saying that I’ve heard time and again:

Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by stupidity.

In short, it’s possible that the girls had a pact before they got pregnant in some sort of Lifetime Channel-style American Pie-esque virginity pact.  It’s also entirely possible that a lot of the girls got pregnant at roughly the same time (intentionally or otherwise) and one or two of their friends might have been disappointed that they couldn’t join in the “fun”.  Of course, the end result is the same, but, without the story of the pact, there wouldn’t be anywhere near the kind of media speculation that we’re seeing today.

Now, are pregnancy rates at that school higher than usual?  Sure:

Kirk cited privacy concerns in refusing to answer many questions about the 17 girls who became pregnant this school year - more than quadruple the number who generally become pregnant as the school.

The key fact to keep in mind, though, is that, when 17 is quadruple the number who generally become pregnant in a year, that means that the normal number is no more than four, which is a pretty small number, unless this particular high school has ten students per grade or something.  That would be like me saying that I got drunk twice as much this month as normal without detailing how many times I get drunk a month.  If I only get drunk once a month, getting drunk twice as much isn’t a sign of a burgeoning drinking problem.  On the other hand, if I’m normally drunk ten times a month, well, that’s a different story - that means I’m now getting drunk 2/3 of the month.

In short, the signal-to-noise ratio on this story is off, and the latest on this story is only helping to drive that point home.

Fine - I’ll Touch On It

I heard about this a while ago when it first came out on MSNBC, but, after Rachel’s article on it, I think I’ve finally figured out what I want to say about it.

Back story:  Some teenagers in Massachussets thought it would be cool to have a “pregnancy pact”.  At least one of them slept with a homeless guy to make it happen.  They were largely successful, created a nice little media storm, and generally made asses of themselves.

Way to go.

Naturally, the supposed problems are all over the place.  They’re being oversexualized.  It’s all Paris Hilton’s fault.  The Spears family makes being a slut look so gosh darned cute. Their parents didn’t teach them sense.  The community thinks they need access to birth control (I’m with Rachel on this one:  Pregnancy Pact + Birth Control = You’re kidding, right?).  The list goes on and on and on.

They’re all wrong.

Look, I’m sure there are some cultural factors at play here.  However, oversexualized teenagers were around when I was a teenager, and that was ten years ago.  I mean, does anybody remember The Crush?  Heck, every single Nightmare on Elm Street movie started with a couple of teenagers getting frisky.  Teenagers have been sexualized since, oh, I don’t know, puberty. Besides, we didn’t see this sort of thing happening when Britney Spears was still in her prime.  Oh, I know, teenage stars weren’t always this slutty, but, let’s get real here - before we had open sluts to lust after, everyone just went after Farrah Fawcett or something.  Point being, it really doesn’t take much for teenagers to feel frisky and decide it’s okay to act on that.

Friskiness, however, is not what this is about.  Girls don’t have babies when they’re feeling frisky - oh sure, they’ll do things that lead to having babies, but they’re not going to intentionally impregnate themselves.  This is something very different.

The trouble is that the girls had absolutely zero concept of what responsibility over a living thing entails.  Consequently, they thought, being the usual strain of narcissistic bitch that most teenage girls are, that this new being that would take over their lives in under nine months would exist merely for their personal amusement.  This could have been solved any number of ways:

1. Buy a dog and make them take care of it.
2. Tell them to get a job.  Then start cutting off their food supply until they make rent.
3. Give them a little sibling so they can see how much work a small child is - this kept me celibate through high school, by the way.  Thanks, Mom.
4. Make them babysit obnoxious family members.
5. Buy them a dildo so they can stop thinking with their dick-equivalents.  I’m betting that, if female masturbation was encouraged, fewer teenage girls would feel the need to entertain the sloppy desires of teenage boys.  I could be wrong, though.

Look, nobody - that’s right, nobody - that has direct experience with children says, “Boy, I should go lose my virginity to that homeless guy so I can have one of those.”  I guarantee you that, even if your daughter watches nothing but Tila Tequila reruns and the porn you leave in the DVD player, nothing will keep her legs shut faster than having to deal with the consequences through someone else’s child.  If, after being around a child, your daughter says, “Boy, I want one of those,” what you should conclude is that she clearly hasn’t spent enough time around them.  The solution to this is to give them night duty over an infant, make sure they lose desired freedoms while you use them as your personal babysitting slaves, that sort of thing.  Make it inconvenient to take care of the children (y’know, like real ones) and they’ll pull their heads out of their vaginas before you can say, “Stop letting your teenage daughter live with college-age boys, Mrs. Spears!“  Yeah.

That’s a David Colborne Guarantee.  You can take these to the bank.

The Stupid Is Stupifying

Let’s throw down some kid-themed stupidity today, shall we?

Where to start… high-heeled shoes for babies (because it’s never too early to become a sodomizing whore!), or the latest exercise in overkill inspired by brainless zero-tolerance policies?  Let’s go with…

High heeled shoes for tots!

U.S. designers have launched a range of high heeled shoes designed specifically for babies.

The tiny stilettos, called Heelarious, are intended for babies up to six months and come in hot pink, black and leopard print.

You want pictures?  Of course you want pictures.  You’re a sick pervert that way, aren’t you?  Yes you are.

Yep.  I was just telling the ESO last night, “Hey, honey, you know what I was thinking?  Girls don’t look like hookers soon enough in life.  I mean, three, maybe four years old… anybody can do that.  I mean, they’re almost old enough to start experimenting with their bodies at that point and actually vaguely realize what’s sort of going on.  We need to step it up a notch.  We need to get them at birth.”  Real conversation, I swear!  I mean, if “No means no”, then the solution is to find someone that can’t say no…

(That, folks, is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most disturbing paragraphs I have ever written.  Moving on…)

Meanwhile, in Oregon City…

OREGON CITY, Ore. - An Oregon City fourth grader missed her last day of school Friday because she shared a lip cream with two classmates.

[...]

She found a medicated, over the counter, lip cream called “abreva” in her desk. It’s a cold sore medication and can numb up an area.

A classmate asked her what it was and wanted Madison to share. She did and the classmate put some on her lips then passed it to a friend. Madison says a short time later the two classmates didn’t feel well and told the teacher.

OMGTHEYREDOINGDRUGSEVERYBODYPANIC!!!

District Superintendent Roger Rada defends the move.

“We’re there to protect the kids,” said Rada.

Because, if you stop and think about it, nothing protects kids quite as well as suspending them for sharing medicated lip cream.  I mean, you know what other dangerous medicated lip creams exist out there?  That’s right - I’m talking about this:

Dear sweet Jesus, we must protect our precious snowflakes from the evils of medicated lip cream, lest they start doing lines of the shit or something!  I mean, they might start, y’know, having less chapped lips if this continues!

Look, I kind of get what they’re going after here - they don’t want children sharing their medication.  Fine.  I get that and totally understand that - some kids have different allergies than others and the last thing you want is for your kid to take a medication from a friend that knocks them into a hospital or a morgue.  Totally understandable.  That said, suspension? On the last day of school?  Am I the only one thinking that’s a little overkill?  I’m thinking someone tapped into the rush of power over the little ‘uns and decided to give them a bit o’ th’ what for.

Speaking of sleep…

Ah, the joys of parental stupidity… like agreeing to give your toddler Ritalin:

TODDLERS as young as two are being diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed drugs including Ritalin.

Figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph reveal 311 children in NSW aged five and under depend on controversial medication, including 58 four-year-olds and 13 three-year-olds.

Health Department figures show that, nationally, doctors have prescribed ADHD drugs to five toddlers aged only two, despite possible side effects.

The mother of one four-year-old who has been on Ritalin since the age of three said she knew there could be long-term effects but the change in her son’s behaviour was worth the risk.

“At first I was hoping he didn’t have ADHD and I didn’t want to put him on medication but I thought I should give it a go and there has been a big improvement,” the single mother of two told The Daily Telegraph.

I bet. If I were to start spiking my son’s food with vodka, he’d probably calm down and stop launching himself off of monkey bars to the detriment of his elbow. Then again, he’d also be a five year old zombie child that, if I died his hair blond, would be a perfect double for one of those “Village of the Damned” children.

Notice to all parents: Children are crazy. They like to run, jump, swim, and otherwise drain every ounce of energy from your being. That’s normal. They will probably also severely injure themselves in the process. That’s also normal. Get over it and stop doping your children. If you can’t handle that, stop waiting ’til you’re 40 to have children. Simple, no? Have children while you still have the energy to have them, instead of waiting until you feel you’ve accomplished your career goals first, most of which you could probably accomplish with a child anyways. It’s not that complicated, and it’s not like you were going to retire at 60 anyways. Hell, I don’t see any compelling reason why I can’t do my job well into my 70s, nor do I see any compelling reason why I wouldn’t want to - I mean, yeah, vacations are fun and all, but that’s where becoming an “independent contractor” could come into play.

Gah. How would you even tell the difference between a “hyperactive” two-year-old and a normal two-year-old? I’d be more worried if any two-year-old in my care wasn’t hyperactive, y’know?

I found their pimp

Army of Dog and Rachel Lucas both touched on Beyonce’s new line of whore-chic children’s wear. Since bringing that up is completely and utterly meaningless without the pic, well… here it is:

Rachel’s thoughts?

Malkin has the full ad. Be prepared to be blown away by the wholesome cuteness of 4-year-olds looking like they’re in need of pimps.

They don’t need pimps - they already have one. I have proof right here (H/T Fazed):

LAKE PARK, Fla. — A 7-year-old boy who took his grandmother’s car on a joyride last month has been taken for a mental health evaluation after he allegedly beat her up inside a South Florida Wal-Mart, WPBF News 25 reported.

Latarian Milton told WPBF on April 28 that he took his grandmother’s Dodge Durango on a joyride because he was mad at his mother and because he enjoyed doing “bad things.”“I wanted to do it because it’s fun. It’s fun to do bad things,” Milton said. “I wanted to do hood-rat stuff for my friend.”

Of course, our pimp search would be highly incomplete without an accompanying picture, right?

He was last heard uttering, “Give me my fitty cent, bitch, otherwise I’m gonna have to do to you what I done did to my grandma!“

If it’s shaped like a gun, you must spoil the fun

Ah, the joys of zero-tolerance in the schools, as illustrated by the latest in the Reno Gazette-Journal:

A third-grader who was shot Thursday with a pellet gun at Grace Warner Elementary School underscores the danger of the nonlethal guns among teens and adolescents, officials said.

Two students were taken into custody after the incident between 8:30 and 9 a.m. before classes at the northwest Reno campus, Washoe County School District spokesman Steve Mulvenon said.

A boy brought the Airsoft pistol to school and he and a female classmate were playing with it on the school grounds, Mulvenon said. The girl accidentally pulled the trigger, and the round pellet struck a third-grader, Mulvenon said.

“Fortunately, she was not injured,” Mulvenon said. “It raised a welt, as those things do.”

The girl’s mother came to school, looked at the injury, decided the girl was fine and the student was returned to the classroom, Mulvenon said.

School police took the two arrested to the Jan Evans Juvenile Justice Center. Mulvenon did not know what charges they might be facing.

That’s right - a child brings a pellet gun, accidentally shoots another child, leaves a welt that doesn’t even concern the parent, and the two children involved get arrested.  Why?  Well, it’s a pellet gun, after all, so it’s vitally important that we suspend all reason and thought, ignore the true severity of the issue, and call the police, who, in turn, shall similarly suspend all reason and thought and lock the children up.  Why?  Oh, that’s easy - two words:

Zero tolerance.

I remember when a “zero tolerance” platform was put into my high school - this was around 1996, I believe, which seems to coincide with when most other school districts jumped on this bandwagon.  The idea, as most everyone is aware by now, was that, since drugs, violence, and weapons were serious problems in some schools, it was vitally important that all schools escalate these issues to law enforcement so that they could be nipped in the bud.  Since the “zero tolerance” policies were written by educators and politicians, two groups that are well-versed in the needs of children in a school environment and how to meet them through legislation, the resulting policies were both fair and flexible, providing school administrators with the support they needed to reclaim their schools.

Who am I kidding?

Like any “zero tolerance” policy in any other school district, the end result was neither fair nor flexible - more than anything, it gave administrators and teachers the legal cover they needed to abdicate all responsibility and thought from their jobs.  Suddenly, instead of taking into account things like context and circumstance, it was far more important to make sure that teenage girls were locked up for bringing ibuprofen to school (it’s a drug!), teenage boys were locked up for getting in fights (violence!), and so on.  Then, someone got the bright idea that these policies should apply across the entire school district - after all, everybody knows that rules designed to scare the living shit out of high school kids are completely and totally appropriate in an elementary school setting.  In short, in the name of security, we’ve effectively banished our children to prison from the ages of 5 to 18… but, at least we’ll feel safe, knowing that, so long as these policies are in place, we’ll never have to worry about pellet guns or OTC painkillers getting near our precious little snowflakes.

Uh… who doesn’t?

From the BBC:  Europeans Get Drunk To ‘Have Sex’

Young adults in Europe deliberately binge on drink and drugs to improve their sex lives, research suggests.

The UK has one of the worst reputations for binge drinking and underage sex but there are striking similarities between countries, a study found.

A third of 16 to 35-year-old men and 23% of women questioned said they drank to increase their chance of sex.

[...]

Young people were also more at risk of unsafe sex while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, the study found.

The researchers said although it was well known that use of alcohol and drugs was linked to risky sexual behaviour, this study showed many young people were “strategically” binge drinking or abusing drugs to improve their sex lives.

Wait… so people are binge drinking and abusing drugs to intentionally improve their sex lives?  That… that can’t be!  That’s impossible!

In other news, the sky is blue, the sun is yellow, and Captain Obvious has left the building.  I mean, c’mon… why else would anybody put their bodies through most of that crap?  Let’s see here… I could stay sober, retaining the ability to walk, stand, and carry out a conversation, or I could get blitz-ass drunk and lose all of those things.  Sounds like fun!  Wait, no… no it doesn’t.  But, hey, if that girl over there does it too… that just might make it worth it… y’know, in a “she’s legally unable to consent and you stand a greater than zero chance of ending the week in jail” sort of way.  But, hey, at least I’ll get some!  Cool!

One thing that cracks me up is that the UK has one of the worst reputations for such things.  This might seem surprising at first, at least until you remember what the average Brit looks like:

Boy…

Meets girl…

Yeah, I’m going to need some gin & tonics right about now.

Drain bamage

Worried about your child’s cranium? Is your precious mini-snowflake randomly bumping his or her head into doors, walls, and random pieces of furniture? Do you think that all this repeated bumping and thrashing of their heads will lead to autism, witchcraft, and use of contraceptives? Well, Gizmodo has the product for you!

According to the DTI, there a 500,000 reports of child head injuries each year. What do you do?

Meet the Thudguard, a helmet specifically designed to make sure your little Einstein doesn’t damage their brain along the way to learning how to walk and run. It’s targeted at kids aged from 7 months to 2-years old.

Oh, the link has pictures, all right. That much I assure you of.

(NOTE: Sorry about the easy swipe against the fundies today, but I’m just not feeling particularly creative right now. I’ll come up with some good ol’ fashioned liberal bashing here later tonight.)

Reality is a pragmatic bitch

Since all the cool bloggers cuss, I’m going to try to ramp it up a little bit myself…

Yesterday, Supreme Overlord and Excessive Provider of Dog Snacks posted a rather interesting entry on the nature of reality, teenagers, and sex education:

I have a whole post drafted up about abortion, but it’s mostly about adults, so I’ll post it later. Plus, it seems to me that all the things I have to say in that post can only follow what I have to say in this post; otherwise, the subject of this post would be a big empty question mark in the other one.

Okay. Let’s do this. The catalyst for this discussion is something Barack Obama has said:

“This is an example where good people can disagree,” the Illinois senator said. “The question then is, are there areas that we can agree to that everybody can get behind? We can all agree that we want to reduce teen pregnancies. We can all agree that we want to make sure that adoption is a viable option.”

The exchange appeared to be prompted by Obama’s earlier comments that he does not favor abstinence-only education, but rather comprehensive sexual education that includes information on abstinence and birth control.

“Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at age 16, so it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.”

A lot of conservatives are going to hate him really hard for that statement. They’re going to say he’s an asshole for equating a baby with “punishment”, and so on. I understand this reaction, but I also think that his overarching point is exactly right. Stick with me here.

She then provides a rather lengthy explanation of why she agrees with this stance - teenagers have hormones, they don’t have perfect self-control, they tend to ignore authority figures after a while, etc. Read the whole thing. I wouldn’t do justice to it if I tried to give little snippets of it.

I’m going to say right here and now that I agree with her overall point. That’s not what I’m going to write about today. Instead, I’m going to discuss the comments provided by her readers. She’s already done that, too, but I’m going in a slightly different direction.

The debate in her comments section, and, in fact, the general cultural debate on this falls under two categories:

- Children have a pre-natal right to exist, but, until they turn 18, they have no rights; they should only have a series of privileges provided and vetted by their parent or guardian.
- Children do not have an intrinsic pre-natal right to existence, but, upon birth, they have certain inalienable rights that are independent of their parents’ wishes or desires and are supported by the society at large.

The first position is traditionally the “conservative” view. The second position is traditionally the “liberal” view. What’s interesting about them is that both positions are compromises between maximizing the freedom of the parent and maximizing the freedom of the child. On the conservative side, after conception, the parent does not get to choose whether to be a parent - it’s assumed that, by engaging in acts that could potentially lead to conception, the parents have already made that choice. However, upon conception, that child is yours to do with basically as you please, upon the sole conditions that you don’t kill or physically abuse your child. On the liberal side, the parent has the right to decide, even after conception, whether or not they truly wish to be a parent, but, upon making that choice, the parent must abide by the rights and values that society enforces upon them regarding the upbringing of their child.

I’m somewhat conflicted on this, as I’m sure quite a few people are. On the one hand, a parent should have the right to raise their child as they see fit. On the other hand, should the child be punished because he or she happens to have parents that decide to teach the child that, say, Jews are evil, or willfully lead them to ignorance about the world? This is an issue that they’re facing in Europe right now - there are tons of parents from Middle Eastern countries that are raising their children to believe that Western values are inherently evil and against Allah’s way. Amusingly, many of the conservatives that would normally preach about “parents’ rights” would be the first to say that the state should intervene. Even more comical is that many liberals are the first to preach “parents’ rights” when dealing with Muslim fundamentalists but are also the first to subvert the rights of fundamentalist Christian parents. The hypocrisy is blinding.

I believe in consistency - what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Either we declare that parents have complete, total, and absolute control over what information and values their children are instilled with, or we declare that society needs some say on what information and values are passed on to children. Unfortunately, there are no good “libertarian” solutions to this problem - we’re either going to screw the child or the parents. There is no way we can provide both groups with complete freedom on this. We need to decide where the line should be drawn.

One big issue that I have with the conservative stance relates to personal responsibility. In order to have responsibility, you have to have free will - you can’t take responsibility for a choice if you’re never given choices to freely make. To illustrate this, consider the following scenario:

A man, wife, and child are taken hostage by a terrorist. The terrorist approaches the man and tells him to pick who dies - the wife, or the child. If the man does not pick either of them, the terrorist will kill both the wife and the child.

No matter who the man picks, is the man required to take responsibility for the death of either the wife or the child? Of course not - the man does not have free will. The terrorist is the one who made the choice to kill at least one of those people, and is also the one who made the choice to require the man to pick who should be killed. It is the terrorist that has genuine free will in this case, not the man.

This brings me to teenagers under the conservative system. Under the conservative system, teenagers, being children, do not have any rights - any “rights” that their parents may deign to give them may also be taken away at a moment’s notice. Consequently, they’re not really “rights” - rights are inalienable and cannot be removed by anybody. This is why I stated earlier that children only have a series of privileges. Consequently, these children do not have free will - they are not allowed to freely make choices regarding their life. Their parents make those choices for them. This becomes a bit sticky, however, when you start talking about teenage pregnancy. According to the conservative viewpoint, it is the teenager’s parents that ultimately get to choose whether that teenager is going to become a parent or not. It is true that the teenager gets to decide whether to have sex or not, but it’s a heavily restricted choice - unlike adults, who may choose to educate themselves about contraceptives and use them as they see fit, the teenager is at the mercy of the parent.

There are a couple of problems with this arrangement:

1. Can a teenager bestow privileges upon a child that the teenager itself does not have? Since the teenager has no rights, how can it confer any privileges upon its own child?

2. Who has responsibility for the new child - the teenager or the teenager’s parents? The teenager does have a choice whether to engage in sex or not, but it’s a false choice, with purposefully incomplete information and with most of the possible options intentionally disabled. This is functionally similar to “letting” a teenager drive a car, but teaching them that driving a car leads to car accidents and intentionally cutting their brake lines. The person responsible for the inevitable crash isn’t necessarily the teenager - it’s the person who decided the teenager shouldn’t be allowed to use the brakes.

In short, conservatively-minded parents try to teach their teenagers about personal responsibility by effectively denying them the ability to ever claim personal responsibility. You cannot be held responsible for something which you have no control over, and you certainly cannot be held responsible for something when you have absolutely zero control over the consequences or your available reactions to said consequences.

Consequently, I believe we either need to do one of two things:

1. If society decides that parents have complete and total control over their children and what information is provided to them, we must recognize that parents must have complete and total responsibility over the actions of their children. Consequently, all legal actions and punishments must be borne by the parents, not the child. In the case of teenage pregnancy, for example, it would be the parents of the father that would be responsible for providing child support, not the father himself.

OR…

2. Acknowledge that children have certain inalienable rights, including the right to do what they will with their body, and must therefore bear responsibility for their actions. However, all children must have equal opportunity to acquiring information that would help them make informed choices, and all children must have equal opportunity and access to the tools available and required to act on that choice. In the case of our topic today, that would mean that children must have access to acquire contraceptives (albeit not necessarily for free), information about contraceptives, and access and information about the current post-conception alternatives available to adults (keeping the child, adoption, and abortion).

So, which is it going to be?

And people wonder why alternative medicine is so popular…

Via Instapundit, I found this rather disturbing article about doctors interrogating children about the habits of their parents.

One thing I will point out is that this was an editorial, so I’m not sure how accurate this really is. Honestly, a lot of this article seems to be detailing some of the more excessive behaviors of a small group of doctors that view themselves as social vigilantes. That said, being a doctor ranks up there with clergy as far as trust goes and, just as when a clergyman violates the inherent trust of their position, when a doctor does so it’s very alarming. Doctors are given intimate details of our lives so that they can best treat us. When they start using that information against us, especially going through our children to do so, it’s very disheartening. Unfortunately, as more of these stories percolate, it’s only going to make their jobs more difficult and discourage more parents from giving their children decent medical care. After all, if you know that taking your child to the doctor could lead to them being quizzed about your lifestyle, why take the chance that your lifestyle would be acceptable in your doctor’s eyes?

Monday thoughts

Let’s start with something nice and fluffy… I’m, of course, referring to Vanessa Hudgens. Now, I just want to start by pointing out that watching the Disney Channel, even with my four-year-old son, ranks up there with watching BYU-TV as one of the cornerstones of my own personal vision of the seventh circle of hell. Watching a Disney Channel show about high school students making a musical, on the other hand, would undoubtedly transcend that, leading to a serious psychotic episode on the part of yours truly, especially since:

1. I hate musicals.
2. I hated high school and can’t stand teenagers.
3. I hate theater people. Seriously, they’re annoying.
4. Did I mention that I can’t stand the Disney Channel?

So, until Vanessa decided it’d be a good idea to expose herself in front of her boyfriend who, in turn, decided it’d be a good idea to share those pictures with 2,000,000 of his closest friends on the Internet, I didn’t even know “High School Musical” existed. In hindsight, I could’ve lived another 80 years without that knowledge and lived a much happier, more fulfilling existence, but I digress. What kills me about this incident is that, since they’re on a show targeted towards ‘tweens (has a stupider word for pre-teens and teens been created? I think not), they’re basically required to pretend they have no sex life.

Dear America: People over 18 have sex. In fact, many people under 18 have sex, too.

I understand where the problem is, don’t get me wrong. Parents get squeamish about sex in this country, and somewhat understandably so. Nobody wants to be a parent of a teenager that comes up to you and says, “Mom, Dad… uh… how do I put this… so, I had sex with this girl and I’m now a father.” The answer to this problem for a lot of people is abstinence education, which, in theory, is a great concept - if you want to stop teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, don’t have sex. Sounds great. There are a few problems, though:

1. You have to start abstinence education at a very early age - if you don’t start pushing it until 14, it’s way too late. Come to think of it, this holds true for traditional sex ed, too.
2. There has to be support from the parents. If your parents are sleeping around before marriage, well, why wouldn’t you?
3. It’s very difficult to do abstinence education without pushing a religious agenda.

I want to expand on #3 here. If I came up to you and offered you two choices:

1. Don’t have sex. There’s no chance for sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancy. It will take some work, though - your body will be fighting you every step of the way.
2. Have sex but use protection. Condoms give you 97% protection against unwanted pregnancy when used correctly, and is also highly effective against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. If a woman uses the pill, unwanted pregnancy rates go down to less than 1% if used consistently. So, as long as you’re using the tools available properly, there’s a 1 in 20 chance that something will go wrong while you satisfy your urges.

What are you going to choose? Tell a teenager that, if they have sex with protection, they have, at most, a 5% of having something bad happen if they do everything properly, do you really think they’re going to not have sex? These are the same people that, at least when I was going to high school, saw nothing wrong with taking ordinary passenger cars on dirt roads and doing over 60 MPH. Risk assessment is not their strong suit. Denying them information about protection isn’t going to work, either - what’s going to happen then is, at some point, they’ll have a friend that has sex unprotected and nothing bad happens. Having unprotected sex doesn’t immediately give you AIDS and pregnancy 100% of the time, at least in the short term. All it takes is for a teenager to have one friend that got lucky before they’ll decide that maybe they’ll get lucky too - nothing bad happened to my friend, so why would anything bad happen to me?

So, where does religion factor in all of this?

Since teens don’t respond to risk assessment, and, if you deny them information that tells them how to responsibly do what they desperately want to do anyways, they’re just going to make up their own information, you have to come up with another way to encourage them to make the choice you want them to make. There are only two ways to pull that off:

1. Public shame. Nothing keeps a woman’s legs shut faster than telling her that all of her friends will shun her if she has sex with someone. This worked with great effect in the 1950s.
2. Make up an all-seeing deity that will send them to hell if they stray. Think “Santa Claus”, only with a backbone.

Guess where religion comes in? That’s right - you get an all-seeing deity (God) and, in the “right” circumstances, public shame for free!

Oy.

For better or worse, some teenagers are going to have sex. If you really want to do something about it, here’s all you need to do:

1. Encourage the most nerdy and anti-social behaviors you can come up with at an early age. Get them involved in Linux vs. FreeBSD threads on Slashdot as soon as possible. Take them to renaissance fairs, but make sure to cut them off at 13 so they don’t take advantage of the relatively permissive atmosphere. Get them involved in role-playing games. Buy them a WoW subscription. Give them a book on regular expressions. Buy their clothes at thrift stores. You get the idea. Nothing is guaranteed to keep a kid from having sex before their 21st birthday better than being a complete nose-picking, booger eating, Slashdot flaming nerd.
2. If #1 is completely unacceptable to you, give them enough information to have sex with relative safety. Make it clear that it’s not 100% and that, ideally, they shouldn’t do it at all, but if they really, really must, at least be halfway intelligent about it.

Wow… this post went all over the place. I apologize. I’ll try to have a coherent thought before I post in the future.

Declining Christianity in Youth

This should come as no surprise to anyone, but Christianity has been declining in the US (just as it has in Europe) over the past 10+ years, especially among younger Americans. People’s viewpoints differ on both the cause and effect of this. Many blame TV, changing morals, and kids’ parents for not taking them to church. I think these factors probably play into this. Personally, though, I have a different suspicion:

Remember when Christianity was normal?

Think about Christianity among kids today. Most kids are indifferent about religion, which isn’t unusual, but the ones that are into Christianity are really into Christianity. Remember WWJD? How about CTR? Let’s also not forget Bible camps, youth retreats… long story short, it’s very possible to be extremely nerdy about Christianity. Being nerdy is fun, don’t get me wrong - as a former band geek and as a current IT guy, I’m all about nerdy. However, nerdy isn’t popular. Being nerdy means being an outsider and means that what you do will frequently be met with disdain since you’re not following the herd. Consequently, a lot of things that indifferent students might not be entirely against are suddenly “verboten” because the “nerds” are doing them. I’m talking about RPGs, many computer games, certain TV shows… and probably Christianity.

Unfortunately, Christianity’s response to “our numbers are declining” is to further exclude Christianity from the mainstream and let the extremists hijack it for their own agendas. Suddenly, evolution is a problem, cervical cancer vaccines will lead to promiscuity, and there’s also the occasional crackpot that throws down the “dinosaur bones were planted by Satan” routine. Why would any normal kid (or person) want anything to do with a group of people that is even loosely affiliated with any of this?

If you take a look at Christianity’s decline, I’m willing to bet it pretty closely parallels the rise of the “Moral Majority” (Southern-style evangelical/political movement) - the instant the extremists started getting more of a voice is the instant a lot of marginal Christians started signing off and just declaring themselves Agnostic or Deistic. If Christianity plans on remaining a relevant part of American political and social life, it will need to take back its voice from the 700 Club and play up the fact that many Christians are quite moderate.

DISCLAIMER: I am an Atheist and am quite proud of that fact. I respect the rights of others to practice and believe whatever they want to believe on so long as they respect my right to do the same.