sex and religion.

i came upon this article on the blog maintained by my neighbor, esteemed athens food critic hillary b. it discusses the differences in perceptions/attitudes toward sex among teenagers of various religious belief systems. just a couple snippets:

During the campaign, the media has largely respected calls to treat Bristol Palin’s pregnancy as a private matter. But the reactions to it have exposed a cultural rift that mirrors America’s dominant political divide. Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion....

....only half of sexually active teen-agers who say that they seek guidance from God or the Scriptures when making a tough decision report using contraception every time. By contrast, sixty-nine per cent of sexually active youth who say that they most often follow the counsel of a parent or another trusted adult consistently use protection.

it's a cool article/topic. and not simply because i feel like it validates my views on sex ed, etc. big cat and i have discuss some of this before, the fact that if college/travel/"career" aren't really in your vision of your future (or just seem hopelessly out of reach), then having a kid at 18 isn't necessarily screwing up. it feels really foreign to say that, but it's true. anyway, i think this is fascinating stuff. also note the first paragraph on page 3, hits pretty close to home.