Sex ed (and congratulations on the headline)

William Saletan at Slate has a detailed look at the recent (apparently reliable) sex survey that showed (amongst other things) something of a resurgence in virginity in young Americans.

But, as with some of his previous articles, he seems most interested in what the survey shows about, ahem, the prevalence of anal sex. Hence the title for this current article: Impure Lesbians of Sodom.

Whoever came up with that deserves some type of award.

As I'm more interested in the idea that people should treat sex seriously, I'll just extract the part about the (somewhat surprising) increase in youngsters not having sex:

In the 2002 NSFG survey, 22 percent of men and women between the ages of 15 and 24 said they had never had sexual contact with another person. But in the latest NSFG survey, taken from 2006 to 2008, that number increased to 27 percent of men and 29 percent of women (Table 7, Page 38). In the broader age pool, the trend is diluted but still shows up: Among people ages 15-44, the percentage reporting zero lifetime opposite sex partners increased by two points among men (Table 4, Page 35) and three points among women (Table 3, Page 34). (In case you're wondering, no, there was no shift in reported homosexuality that would account for this increase.) The percentage of men ages 15-44 who reported only one lifetime female partner also increased by two to three points. So if you thought sexual mores were moving inexorably in the direction of more, earlier, and kinkier activity, think again. Virginity can return, and apparently, it has.

Pro abstinence sex education groups in America claim that this vindicates their position:

Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association that these numbers are a positive change from 2002 when only 46% of boys and 49% of girls reported no sexual contact and she says the report challenges the wisdom of the recent federal funding cuts to abstinence education.

“One hundred sixty-nine abstinence education programs lost funding and over 1 million students lost access to the very programs that can support and encourage the positive trends represented by this data,” she told LifeNews.com. “If we are serious about decreasing teen sexual activity, we need to use the data to instruct public policy.”

But, as I've noted before, the wildly detailed and open type of sex education in Holland seems to lead to low teenage pregnancy rates and delayed start of sexual activity very effectively too. And America has a huge issue with single motherhood at any age, which is perhaps the much bigger issue to focus on in the long run.

Sex education, and encouraging good social attitudes and outcomes for families at any age, is obviously a complicated field.