MORALITY POLICE www.TheCitizensWhoCare.org Dom Petrucelli Accuses Web Master of Missing Morality Pastor Dom Petrucelli's letter in The Curry Coastal Pilot on "Web master missing morality" seems to be saying that disseminating fear-based, medically inaccurate information as Dr. Dobson did, has a higher level of morality than exposing the truth. He takes me to task for putting "out information with no concern as to what is done with it..." This is exactly how I reacted to Dr. Dobson's article full of fear-tactics and medically inaccurate information because I felt, since I did have hundreds of pages of information on what the actual reality is from the teaching of abstinence-only, it was my moral responsibility to expose those falsities because I was concerned what our children would do with it. This approach assumes that personal freedom must be restricted in order to promote virtue. I believe the opposite is true. The freedom of individuals to choose, is the prerequisite of morality. A coerced "choice" does not reflect virtue, only compliance. In other words, you cannot force a person to be moral; you can only make them conform. True morality requires freedom and cannot exist without it. Without freedom there is no morality. Only social control. As parents we provide sex education for our children. Each mother and father teaches his children about sex through attitudes, behavior and verbal comments. Sex education is a lifelong process. Children get their first feelings about sex from their parents who are the most important people in the child's life. What are your feelings about sexuality? Is sex a topic for scorn and dirty jokes? Is sex a topic to be avoided altogether? Is sex so secret or private or frightening that you can't talk about it? Some adults feel this way. Then they convey to their children the feeling that sex is bad and these children are unaware that human sexuality is a normal part of human personality and can provide some of life's most enriching experiences. Powerful sexual feelings cannot be ignored. The reality is that if parents refuse to relate healthy information about sex, children are going to find it elsewhere. Sexuality is the important aspect of human personality which enables each person to function as a male or female or transsexual person. It includes far more than physical sex! Important considerations about sexuality are psychological, social and moral in addition to physical concerns. Providing appropriate words and factual information is an important beginning. Boys and girls want to know about their bodies and about everything which touches their lives. Everything interests them. Adequate information enables them to expand their world appropriately as they grow and mature. This is true of sexuality as with other areas of life. Parents are the best teachers. Only after a person accepts his own body and sexuality comfortably can he function as a wise decision-maker. As we help our children build self-esteem we are enabling them to function in healthy and mature ways. Society influences sexual behavior and presents children with conflicting ideas. For example, some adults can't or won't answer children's simple questions about sex, but these same adults may laugh at dirty jokes. Some adults enjoy films, magazines and books dealing with explicit sexual experiences, but turn to therapists and counselors for help with their personal lives. It is reported that more than half of American marriages are sexually troubled. Adults may behave in one way but expect from their children quite different behavior. This is unrealistic. Parents who want their children to live successfully with others work to help children understand themselves and society's contradictions. Our society has a soaring VD rate and a rising birth rate among teens, and yet refuses to permit meaningful sex education programs in most schools. Parents, schools, and religious organizations will do well to work together responsibly to help young people. A major concern for most parents is moral conduct. Morality refers to standards incorporated into a person's own value system. Parents, religious groups, schools and peers influence the values any individual chooses. Learning to make responsible decisions and wise choices about sexual behavior as well as all other behavior - depends on the individual's own values. Parents have a major responsibility to help their children understand why some behavior is preferable to other behavior. Religious groups share the responsibility for the youngsters who participate in their activities. Schools - which have contact with virtually all young people - help students learn how to choose among alternatives in all areas of life. In a democratic society, various views are presented and discussed. Personal values can be strengthened or discarded when weighed against other possibilities. Here the parent's role in helping the child and young person build values is vital. You have been teaching your children your values since they were born. A lecture or threat in adolescence does not teach values. Each person incorporates into himself ideas from many sources. Within this framework, what is called a 'value system' develops. You help your children by seeing that they have information on which to make their decisions and choose their behavior. You help by your example. You help by consideration for your child. You help by exploring the future with your child: education, job opportunities, hopes for a future family. Meaningful goals are important. Knowing that you care about them can help. Your children want to make wise choices. Trust becomes an important ingredient in the parent-adolescent relationship. When you have done your best, you must let go and encourage independence. Trusted teens usually want to live up to your standards. Your constant questioning (nagging) and overreacting to any undesirable behavior will undermine the mutual trust and respect which you and your children want. Breaking away from family ties is difficult for the maturing youngster - and not always easy for the parent, either. It is best done gradually beginning in childhood and continuing to increase throughout adolescence. The greatest gift you can give your child is unconditional love and the possibility to be himself. Being the web master of the largest web site in the world on men's issues that gets over 100,000 hits daily, I receive lots of information on research that has been done and substantiated. I couldn't verify Pastor Petrucelli's claim that the CDC web site says "abstinence is 100% effective in preventing STD." It was Dr. Dobson who said that. Pastor Petrucelli rewords part of my sentence "that teenagers may go ahead and have sex anyway." cutting out the first part of the sentence and the end of the sentence. The whole sentence reads "If teens are taught that no sex is safe sex, they'll have sex anyway without knowing the safer thing to do." Some adolescent health professionals believe that although the revelation of early oral sex has been shocking, it has had the positive effect of forcing a dialogue with adolescents about the full meaning of sexuality and of the importance of defining sex not as a single act, but as a whole range of behaviors. The continued lack of adult guidance about what sex really means contributes to the desensitized, "body-part" sex talk. It's valuable to teach adolescents how to identify bad or abusive relationships but there is still much work to be done to help them with intimacy and how to recognize healthy relationships. Educators who endorse comprehensive sexuality education support giving adolescents the criteria they need to decide when to abstain and when to participate across the full continuum of sexual behaviors. There is something greatly lacking when teens don't realize that you can get HIV by having cunnilingus, fellatio or analingus. Where is the morality in keeping this information from them? A Columbia University study shows that of those signing the "virginity pledge, 88% will have had premarital sex." He says that it is not. His reason, "that teenagers may go ahead and have sex anyway." They're already breaking their pledge as I outlined in The Forum article. So, if the reality is that most of them break their pledge and have premarital sex, why ignore it and continue to keep important safety information from them. The government's program allows conversation about contraceptives but only the failure rate. Yet they don't apply the same standard when talking about abstinence-only education. And, this Administration plans to spend $127,000,000 this year to continue this kind of abstinence-only education. Pastor Petrucelli did clarified a point I was trying to make. For abstinence to be 100% safe, all sexuality from cunnilingus, fellatio, analingus, coitus and even petting must be abstained from - 100% of the time. Unfortunately, since Dr. Dobson and others "strenuously object to the campaign to get young people to have "protected sex", pledge breakers use condoms less and have STD rates as high if not higher than those who didn't make the pledge. Should we shame them or help them. Should teens who get pregnant be stone or should we help them as much as possible and provide their peers with accurate information about sex so that they can avoid such pitfalls. The reality is that, according to a Columbia University study, 88% of those who sign the "virginity pledge" will eventually have premarital sex. Since there is no evidence to support the view that telling children "the facts of life" promotes sexual experimenting, factual information helps children make wise decisions. Abstinence education that omits useful information becomes dangerous. Finally, Pastor Petrucelli said he read my web site and without providing examples, claims that I "...most certainly do not advocate morality." For those who would like to get a sense of my moral stance, check out the campaigns we have exposed over the past six years. Like Dior's campaign to pre-teens for a fragrance called Addict 2 or Wal-Mart selling junior intimates (panties) using the brand-name "No Boundaries" or Fred Meyer carrying products saying "Boys are Stupid - Throw Rocks at Them" or "Stupid Factory Where Boys are Made." Maybe I don't possess his morals. And, he may not possess some of mine. I just don't want our youth to suffer because of it. Gordon Clay, Brookings  Pastor Dom Petrucelli's letter: "Web master missing morality" - The Curry Coastal Pilot, 2/15/06 Again you run a public forum from Gordon Clay. This man is not an expert on sexually transmitted disease, he is only a Web master who gathers information and puts it out for people to read. He also contradicts himself many times. The CDC Web site he quotes says that Abstinence is 100 percent effective in preventing STD. He says that it is not. His reason, "that teenagers may go ahead and have sex anyway." Perhaps Mr. Clay is not fluent in the English language. You either abstain or you don't. You do not abstain on Mondays and have sex the rest of the week. Abstinence is the staying away from any, repeat any, type of sex until a young person finds that right partner to spend the rest of their life with in marriage. What a concept. "Until death do us part." Not live together, not experiment with alternate forms of sex, and not try several partners. This is called morality. Something no longer taught in schools today. I have read your Web site, Mr. Clay, and you most certaihnly do not advocate morality. This is what is needed among our young people today, morality, and responsibility, not a Web master who puts out information with no concern as to what is done with it and no information on the morality needed to use the information responsibly. Dom Petrucelli, Brookings.  Related Issues: Abstinance Failure ©2007-2011, www.TheCitizensWhoCare.org/brookings/moralitypolice.html