Boys as young as 12 will be allowed to pick up free condoms without their parents' knowledge by showing a plastic ‘condom card’ issued to them when they receive safe sex advice.
A C-card – condom card – is a part of the new taxpayer-funded scheme that will let boys pick up packs of condoms from football grounds, barber shops and health centres. Condoms will be distributed at places where young boys congregate, to spare them the embarrassment of visiting sexual health clinics or GPs’ surgeries, facing a shop assistant at a chemist’s counter or visiting other public places. They will be able to purchase condoms by showing the card issued to them after they have attended safe-sex lessons.
The plan is being drawn up by the Brook Advisory Service, a UK organization that promotes contraception to teenagers, and the Department for Children, Schools and Families under the Government’s plan to extend the scheme nationally. A spokesman for the Department said: 'The Government's teenage pregnancy strategy is focused on encouraging young people to delay early sex but to practise safe sex as and when they do become sexually active.
'Research has shown that young men are more likely to use condoms if they have easier access to them at places like youth centres and further education colleges.'
However, family campaigners have criticised the move as sending the wrong message to impressionable teenage boys and encouraging under-age sex.
Josephine Quintavalle, founder of Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE), a pressure group, said:
‘We are just facilitating and encouraging sexuality without any deeper understanding of the emotional side of relationships.
‘We used to talk about recreational sex among 18-year-olds – now it is 13-year-olds.’
In a recent scandal involving teenage pregnancy, Chantelle Steadman, 15, of Hailsham, East Sussex, gave birth to a daughter. It was initially thought that the father of the baby was Alfie Patten, 12 at the time of conception. However, it later transpired that the real father was Tyler Barker, 15.
The last figures from the Office for National Statistics showed there were 41.9 conceptions per 1,000 15 to 17 year olds in 2007 – up from 40.9 the year before.
In 2008, Professor of psychiatry Philip G. Ney, who taught in five universities in different parts of Canada, Hong Kong and New Zealand, gave a brief opinion on sex education and use of condoms:
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There is no particular need for "sex education". For many centuries there was no sex education yet children were conceived and their parents enjoyed the process. Discovery of each other and what is pleasant in bed, on the wedding night and thereafter is an important part of the exciting and unique pleasure that bonds the couple.
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Sex education inhibits pair bonding. To educate young people about something that comes naturally robs them of the spontaneity and joy of sex that is vitally important for pair bonding and thus family stability.
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The more sex education, the more sexual self consciousness. There is substantial evidence that the more sex education, especially on technique, the more the couple is sexually inhibited. The greater the emphasis on sexual performance, the less communication and interpersonal intimacy there is.
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The more sex education, the more sexual activity. It is quite conclusive now, that the more sex education, the more sexual activity and all the problems that go with that. The introduction of sex education is well correlated with the increase in abortion, STDs and boy-girl interpersonal problems. Good education gives people the desire to try it out or learn more experientially. Paradoxically in that respect, the current sex education is good education but has the wrong results.
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The earlier the sex education, the younger children explore sex and try various sexual techniques. Present evidence makes it possible to also conclude that the earlier the sex education, the earlier the sexual behaviour. Thus sexual education is sexual titillation.
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In preventing disease and pregnancy, sex education has been a failure. Sex education has had the opposite effect in preventing young people from engaging in ‘risky sexual behaviour’.
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The idea of ‘safe sex’ has failed. Frightening children with the dangers of ‘unprotected sex’, drugs, fast driving, alcohol etc for many children has the paradoxical effect of increasing their interest in trying it. This is mostly due to the high number of abortion survivors, (in Canada about 50% in the less than 40yrs group) who have existential guilt and flirt with death.
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The reliance on condoms has been dangerously misleading. There are sexually transmitted diseases, for example, Human Papilloma Virus for which condoms offer no protection. The most effective use of the best condoms offers 87% protection from lethal HIV, transmitted by anal intercourse. Condom use has failed particularly in Africa. Condom use creates the false impression of safety, thus encouraging sex, when there is a 13% (at least) chance of dying as a result.
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There is nothing in sex education that cannot be part of a more effective general health education. Everything of value in sex education can be integrated with the necessary knowledge of how the body and mind work. We found that by using the young person's curiosity and letting them discover how their heart, lungs etc. work, gives them a natural desire to protect something very precious; their body and mind.
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The sex industry profits from sex education. There is an enormous sex industry that financially profits from natural biological drives and makes billions on fashions, condoms, contraceptives etc. It is understandable they contribute to the sex problems.
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Any kind of sexual behaviour or orientation can be conditioned. Any sexual behaviour that results in an orgasm will become conditioned (addictive) whether or not it is hetero, homo, auto, porno or zoo sexual.
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Sex education creates mind absorbing conflicts and preoccupations. Exposing children to sexual titillation (sex education) creates conflicts and preoccupations that interfere with their mental health, education and personal development.
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Sex education tends to result in mental images that interfere with the appreciation of nature and art.
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No sex education teaches the beauty and hazards of pair bonding. To my knowledge there is no sex education program that informs kids about inadvertent pair bonding. Humans are made one flesh through sex. Thus many kinds of sexual behaviour that creates lifelong pair bonds. These interfere with the intimacy and durability of a later committed marriage. Statistics indicate that the more ‘premarital’ sex the more extramarital sex.
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Many kinds of sex education including ‘chastity’ education leave a young person with the impression that any kind of sex except vaginal intercourse is okay when it is not.
(See http://www.messengers2.com/articles/parenting/sex_education.htm)
The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6446355.ece
Daily Telegraph
Daily Mail