MORE HOT TEEN SEX! And at The National Review (Online), too. Does WFB know about this?

Jonah Goldberg has not just one, but two responses to the Charles Oliver posts that I mentioned earlier. But I think people are talking past each other, at least in part.

At the core of Jonah’s response to Charles seems to be the importance of marriage — or at least the importance of acknowledging the importance of marriage. Well, that’s fine, I guess. But if teen sex is particularly bad, it must be bad for one of two reasons: because it is inherently bad, or because it’s bad in its consequences.

If teen sex is inherently bad, then it’s hard to see how marriage makes it better. (One might object to it as premarital sex, but he explicitly disclaims that he’s getting on a soapbox about that). If it’s bad only in its consequences then things that ameliorate those consequences, like contraception, safe sex, etc. also ameliorate its badness.

And consequences have to be measured both ways: good and bad. Teens do all sorts of things that are dangerous to their bodies or emotions, like play sports (one girl in my neighborhood blew out a knee ligament, which will have lifelong painful consequences, playing soccer at the age of 15) and we weigh those risks against the pleasure the sports bring and the life lessons that they teach. Is it so absurd to argue that the same reasoning might apply? If it doesn’t, it must be because there’s something about sex, beyond the consequences, that makes us think about it differently.

I don’t regret any of the sex that I had as a teenager, though none of it happened when I was, say, 13. (Being around a campus during the early 1970s, I had some opportunities with older women at that age, but as exciting as that sounds in the abstract it struck me as a bit too creepy at the time, and I don’t regret not having sex then, either.)

So maybe it’s important to wait until you’re ready. But you won’t teach teens to wait until they’re ready by launching unaimed broadsides against the assumed evil of teen sex, and by acting as if teen sex is unnatural or aberrant. It’s not. Teenagers have been having sex since the beginning of time. Their bodies are ready for it, and it’s absurd to tell them to “just say no.” Instead they need to be taught the judgment and sense of self-worth that will enable them to do what is right for them.

I notice that Jonah didn’t respond to the Shakespeare point, though.