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By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS, Associated Press Writer 50 minutes ago
ATHENS, Greece – A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world’s gay women.
ADVERTISEMENTThree islanders from Lesbos — home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women — have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.
One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, “insults the identity” of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.
“My sister can’t say she is a Lesbian,” said Dimitris Lambrou. “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos,” he said.
The three plaintiffs are seeking to have the group barred from using “lesbian” in its name and filed a lawsuit on April 10. The other two plaintiffs are women.
Also called Mytilene, after its capital, Lesbos is famed as the birthplace of Sappho. The island is a favored holiday destination for gay women, particularly the lyric poet’s reputed home town of Eressos.
“This is not an aggressive act against gay women,” Lambrou said. “Let them visit Lesbos and get married and whatever they like. We just want (the group) to remove the word lesbian from their title.”
He said the plaintiffs targeted the group because it is the only officially registered gay group in Greece to use the word lesbian in its name. The case will be heard in an Athens court on June 10.
Sappho lived from the late 7th to the early 6th century B.C. and is considered one of the greatest poets of antiquity. Many of her poems, written in the first person and intended to be accompanied by music, contain passionate references to love for other women.
Lambrou said the word lesbian has only been linked with gay women in the past few decades. “But we have been Lesbians for thousands of years,” said Lambrou, who publishes a small magazine on ancient Greek religion and technology that frequently criticizes the Christian Church.
Very little is known of Sappho’s life. According to some ancient accounts, she was an aristocrat who married a rich merchant and had a daughter with him. One tradition says that she killed herself by jumping off a cliff over an unhappy love affair.
Lambrou says Sappho was not gay. “But even if we assume she was, how can 250,000 people of Lesbian descent — including women — be considered homosexual?”
The Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece could not be reached for comment.
EDITOR: Lovers of comedy can count on the Novato Follies to keep us all rolling in the aisles.
Not content with a performance in which they lambasted the North Coast Rail Authority for not repairing a bridge after having sued to prevent the NCRA from repairing anything, the Novato troubadours outdid themselves.
Tom MacDonald and Bernie Meyers were nominated by Marin County Supervisor and former Novato City Councilwomen Judy Arnold, and appointed by the Marin Board of Supervisors, as Marin’s two NCRA board members.
Both MacDonald and Meyers oppose NCRA’s state-mandated mission to restore and develop the publicly owned Northwestern Pacific Railroad.
MacDonald and Meyers argue that as board members they should be present in closed sessions when NCRA directors discuss strategy for defending NCRA against the Novato lawsuit, a suit that Arnold and the Marin supervisors support. After all, isn’t the plaintiff always allowed to sit in on the defendant’s meetings with counsel?
Not in a hundred years could the Marx Brothers have matched this, or even come close. They would be seething with envy, as would Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges and, of course, the Keystone Cops.
LIONEL GAMBILL
Novato
Walter Strakosch
Article Launched: 04/28/2008 12:12:15 AM PDTLet’s be clear: The rail line has been there 125 years and was operating until 2001. The freight service then was temporarily shut down but never abandoned (important point). Because some investors believe the line again can be viable, and have money to put it into operating condition, it will carry freight again.
The track is owned by SMART (a public agency) north to Healdsburg (which by law must provide trackage rights to the North Coast Rail Authority) and by NCRA beyond. Arnold’s column states “This illustrates one of the many ways SMART is connected at the ‘hip’ to NCRA.” He infers a vote for SMART will make freight operations more intrusive on residents, citing noise, engine pollution, delays at grade crossings – you name it.
If the planned November sales tax vote fails, SMART probably would step out of the picture and the NCRA can operate when it pleases – and after the hard time Novato and Arnold have given it, it could just do that. That means freight over the old track without “quiet zones” and at anytime. Freight trains operate over thousands of miles of track at all hours, and if Novato were allowed to control train times, why wouldn’t other towns? It’s not realistic.
However,
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if SMART passes it will replace its old track with new ties, ballast and wielded rail, significantly diminishing sound from the rail vehicles. SMART also will help local governments convert existing sensitive crossings into quiet zones (no train horns). NCRA has no requirement to do this. SMART also will control the entire dispatch (freight and passenger) and, I expect, be considerate of Novato and other cities on these issuesAnother black hole issue that Arnold brings up is pollution.
That becomes a non issue thanks to the self-propelled rail cars that SMART will use. Starting in 2011, new rules require the use of ultra-low emission diesel engines. It has been shown that the “exhaust” particle levels of these engines is even lower than the particle levels in the air entering these engines. Combined with ultra-low sulfur diesel, that will make the SMART train an extremely clean vehicle. Wouldn’t 200 people in rail cars, rather than in autos, be a significant environmental plus?
With the commitment by NCRA to use a similar type of technology, air quality doesn’t seem to be the issue that Arnold makes of it. Perhaps the Marin Citizens for Effective Transportation should redirect its efforts at getting more smog-belching tractor-trailer trucks off Highway 101 – such as those freight service may replace – but it appears that is not what his group is about.
We hear constantly from SMART naysayers about grade-crossing delays when trains pass. With SMART that could be 30 to 45 seconds. At a traffic light you stop from one to three minutes, but that seems OK. A two-car SMART train carrying 200 people, which may take that many cars off the roads, however, is not OK to naysayers. Go figure.
Another issue is the possibility of impeding emergency vehicles. We have thousands of rail crossings in this country and I have yet to hear this brought up as a “life-and-death issue.” The rail car pass-by is brief, and freight in the foreseeable future of six daily trains, is also a relatively small impact.
Yes, a vote for SMART, with the North Coast Rail Authority as a participating partner, will be a vote for a more fluid and vibrant North Bay. Bet on it.
Walter Strakosch of Mill Valley is a member of Friends of SMART. He had a 40-year career in transportation.
Another run for your lives issue. Noise. The amazing thing is highway 101, and all the streets, etc don’t seem to make any noise at all. Truck horns, even the ones using locomotive horns, doesn’t matter. Since SMART/NCRA won’t solve 101 traffic, forget it. Since solar won’t solve our energy problem in any significant way, forget it.
We need to quit thinking there will be any magic bullet that will solve our problems. Instead, by using multiple solutions, we can make things livable.
Think of it like wind energy, pessimists will tell you the wind doesn’t always blow. The optimists will find a solution. The solutions is although one wind turbine may not be generating power all the time, by adding a large number of turbines over our nation, the average power stabilizes. Same with Solar.
Now with noise, quiet zones can be implemented lowering the volume, and coverage. The rails can be welded, reducing joint noise. The ballast can be improved, to reduce the amount of noise transfered. 2nd it is amazing the amount of noise humans can ignore.
Published: Thursday, Apr 24, 2008
EDITOR: I attended the March 29 SMART train debate and take strong exception with Alfred Bulf’s conclusions (letter published in your April 17 edition). It’s fine for him to praise SMART. He lives in Sacramento and won’t have to bear the horrendous cost of those trains.
What cost? Far greater than the half-billion dollar price tag will be the noise that train air horns inflict on Sonoma County residents and property owners.
SMART plans 28 daily trains. NCRA plans 16 freight trains (both are their numbers). Saying “yes” to SMART pushes many of those freight trains into nighttime runs. That’s 44 trains a day — almost one every half hour — all day and all night. Each train must, by federal law, blast its air horn three times approaching each of the 61 road crossing in Sonoma County. That’s over 7,000 air horn blasts each day — almost 300 each and every hour, and each at between 120 and 144 decibels, about the same deafening screech as being 25 meters from a jet engine at full blast.
The train line runs straight up the densely populated spine of our county where this racket will have the greatest impact. At 120 feet, the train horn will be as loud as having a chain saw fired up four feet from your ear. At three-eighths of a mile, train horns are as loud as having a telephone dial tone on high jammed against your ear. Not offensive in the afternoon, but unacceptable at 2 a.m. At three-fourths of a mile, sound engineers say that the horn blasts will still be loud enough to disturb sleep for most people.
Check it out on a map. There are well over 100,000 of us (including many in Petaluma) living along that corridor and who will suffer from this noise assault so that 1,850 Sonoma County residents (that number comes from SMART’s own projections) can ride a train instead of taking Golden Gate Transit buses that are already available, quiet and running along the same corridor that SMART will use.
Even worse, SMART asks us to swallow its devastating racket when, by its own forecasts, SMART will not significantly reduce 101 commuter traffic jams. Three freight trains a day (pre-2000 levels) was fine. The never-ending din of 44 trains is not — especially when it won’t solve 101 traffic. And that is the bottom line.
Kendall Haven, Fulton
A Humboldt Bay Region Trail segment from Arcata along the peninsula to the jetty is being envisioned for the Samoa Peninsula community, according to a news release.
A trail visioning process is scheduled for Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Manila Community Center at 1611 Peninsula Drive.
Experts in issues pertaining to trail planning will present information and answer questions and the results will assist in the development of the Humboldt Bay Region Trail and the California Coastal Trail.
For more information, phone Nancy Ihara at 707-442-1676 or e-mail the group at safepathscoalition@yahoo.com.
ODDS & ENDS: The Marin County Planning Commission soon will consider approving an environmental impact report that keeps North Novato’s Redwood Landfill open until 2024. While no one likes garbage dumps, the reality is that the North Bay generates huge amounts of waste and it must go somewhere. That “somewhere” is just north of Novato along Highway 101 adjacent to the Petaluma River. If Marin doesn’t want a dump, it has two choices: either ship the stuff out of the area by the now-unused Northwestern Pacific Railroad or cut back on waste. The latter goal, while ideal, is unlikely in a still growing region. That leaves either running garbage-loaded freight trains through Novato or keeping the dump.
Columnist Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley shares his views on local politics every Sunday in the IJ. His e-mail address is spotswood@comcast.net
#1 suggestion to save money, quit spending money on lawsuits to block stuff that will actually help people.
John Dugan
Article Launched: 04/25/2008 11:30:01 PM PDT“Dark clouds” hang over Novato’s city treasury, a top official said Friday.
City Manager Dan Keen gave a gloomy financial forecast, saying the outlook is bleak amid financial turmoil and plummeting home sales.
Real estate tax revenue that fuels city coffers has been curbed by declining home sales. In addition, Novato has posted the most properties in various states of foreclosure trouble in Marin. Novato also tops the list of homeowners asking the county to reduce property taxes in light of declining real estate values.
Keen said a nearly 6 percent drop in sales tax revenue from last year is among a number of Novato’s growing budget woes, adding the city will close the 2007-08 fiscal year in July with a deficit of more than $1 million.
Estimates from staff indicate that deficit could grow to $4 million by 2011-12.
“That deficit is significant, but it’s not going to kill us,” Keen said to an audience of about 50 people gathered at the Hilltop Cafe for a “state of the city” forum sponsored by the Novato Chamber of Commerce. “What’s alarming is the signs for the future.
“Looking forward, we see some very dark clouds.”
The city budget crunch is not directly related to Novato’s strong retail business, said Keen, but the fortunes of the two soon will be tied closely. Plans to renovate the Mall at Northgate in San Rafael and create almost 3 million square feet of retail shopping in Petaluma could draw significant sales tax money out of Novato, he said.
Novato
is expected to begin planning its own major retail renovations in the north Redwood Highway area this fall.“I don’t think the business community realizes the effect these new shopping options could have on Novato,” Novato Chamber of Commerce chief Coy Smith said. If San Rafael and Petaluma “continue to move forward quickly and we don’t, it could be an issue.”
Novato officials had projected about $6.4 million in sales tax revenue this year, which they hoped would balance out the slowdown in property tax revenue. Instead, sales tax revenue fell to $5.9 million, while secured property taxes merely met expectations. A loss of $500,000 in property transfer taxes leaves Novato operating at a deficit.
City officials are projecting $5.9 million in sales tax revenue again next year, but Keen said another dip is possible.
The Redwood Highway corridor has been discussed as an area ripe for development. Keen said the area could provide a huge boost to the city’s sales tax revenue.
“Whatever comes here, whether it’s housing, retail or both, (residents) need to agree on what we want to see here,” Keen said.
“I think what’s going on in the economy right now is going to affect businesses more than the city budget,” Smith said. “Any businesses we know of right now that are struggling (are) directly related to the economy. That affects sales tax for the city, but it’s a much bigger problem for the businesses themselves.”
Despite the gloomy outlook, Keen did note progress in the city’s development projects. The new Whole Foods Market downtown is set to open within the year, and Hamilton Marketplace construction will take less than a year to finish.
The Costco at Vintage Oaks has almost finished its renovation at a cost the company usually spends to construct new stores from the ground up.
Two long-vacant buildings in the heart of downtown – a former office building at 999 Grant Ave. on the corner of Redwood Boulevard, and the old Pini Hardware site at Grant and Second Street – have both been sold, and plans involving new tenants are in the works. The building at 999 Grant will be razed to make way for a new retail store.
Seems the voices for reopening the railroad is growing louder, as the price of fuel increases. It would reduce prices $3.00 per hundredweight, by saving $10.00 to $12.00 per ton of feed. Yet Judy Arnold doesn’t see how the savings could be done.
Rob Rogers
Article Launched: 04/26/2008 10:41:48 PM PDT“The price of feed is going to stay high as long as we use corn as an energy source,” said Dominic Grossi, president of the Marin Farm Bureau, who said the nation’s demand for ethanol is driving up the price of corn and putting the pinch on dairy farmers.
“We’re already at a break-even level,” said Grossi, a fourth-generation dairy rancher in Novato. “If milk drops and feed goes even higher, we’ll be in a position where we’ll be losing money rapidly.”
About 55 percent of Marin’s agricultural income – more than $27 million in 2006 – comes from the county’s 28 dairies. Marin produces about 200 million fluid pounds of milk each year, and about half of that milk is consumed in the Bay Area, according to the University of California Cooperative Extension in Novato.
Dairy farmers had been enjoying a banner year, fueled by overseas demand for American milk.
“Over the last 20 years, the price of milk has averaged between $12 and $13″ per hundred pounds, said Leslie “Bees” Butler, a dairy economist at UC Davis. “Last year, that price started to increase up to $20. For many dairy producers, that has been a lifesaver, allowing them to catch up and expand after prices were in the dumps for 2005-06.”
Yet the conditions that led to those high prices – surging demand for milk in China and India, drought curbing dairies in Australia and New Zealand and a weak U.S.
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dollar – couldn’t last for long, Butler said.“The dairy industries in China and India will start to expand because of the incredible growth in those areas,” Butler said. “The high price on the world market is going away. It’s not going to go up again.”
At the same time, prices for corn and other cattle feed are going through the roof, fueled by the nation’s love affair with biofuels. The cost of corn gluten feed rose from $51.90 per ton in March 2004 to $117.19 in March 2007; corn gluten meal rose from $240.50 to $561.88 in the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“The federal government subsidized corn going into ethanol, which was a bad, bad decision for the environment, hasn’t lowered the price of gas and practically doubled the price of dairy, corn flakes and anything else that’s made out of grain,” said Point Reyes rancher Bob Giacomini.
In the past, farmers like Giacomini and Grossi have turned to alternative feeds such as alfalfa, soybeans and dried distillers’ grains, a by-product of the ethanol creation process. But the unprecedented demand for corn has driven up the prices of other feeds as well.
“You would think the price of distillers’ grains would drop now because there’s so much ethanol in production,” Grossi said. “But it hasn’t. I think we’re all dealing with expensive feed right now.”
Another alternative – going organic – is no longer the guaranteed moneymaker it once was.
“Two years ago, the premiums for organic milk were almost twice what they were for conventional production,” said Ellen Rilla, director of the UC Cooperative Extension in Novato. “That’s really dropped. And there’s also a cost in terms of production.”
Giacomini, who raises both traditional and organic dairy herds, said he expects organic milk to hold its price better in the long run.
“When we first went organic, which was about a year ago in January, we were getting almost twice as much for organic as we were for our conventional milk,” Giacomini said. “In a little less than a year, that spread was down to where we were only getting $4 or $5 more per hundredweight (100 pounds), and with the extra expense of organic, it wasn’t making it worthwhile. Now, with the price of conventional going down and the price of organic holding, it’s totally different again.”
Because they typically sign year-to-year contracts with a distributor, organic dairies aren’t subject to the same month-to-month price fluctuations that affect conventional producers, Butler said. At the same time, the rising cost of feed is having the same impact on organic ranchers.
“A lot of farmers are really finding it difficult to find decent organic feed and make the whole thing work,” Butler said.
Instead, local dairies are laboring to turn a profit by transforming their milk into cheese or yogurt.
“Because we’re selling our own product direct to the consumer, we can set our own price,” said Giacomini, whose Farmstead Cheese Co. has gained a reputation for its Point Reyes Original Blue Cheese. “If we’re just selling milk, the state sets the price. We have no control whatsoever.”
Sales of hand-crafted cheese and yogurt have continued to rise for the past five years, with local producers like Cowgirl Creamery of Point Reyes Station and Marin French Cheese looking to expand operations.
“If you can hitch your wagon to some kind of dairy product that is value-added, like cheese, yogurt or ice cream, you’ll do better,” Rilla said. “Of course, some ranchers don’t want to be producer, marketer and distributor. They want to specialize in production.”
One factor that would reduce the price of feed would be the return of freight rail service to Marin County. Grossi believes bringing feed in by train could reduce the cost of producing milk in Marin by $3 per hundredweight.
“Part of our expensive feed costs is the additional cost we pay in Marin and Sonoma compared to dairymen in the Central Valley,” Grossi said. “It costs an additional $10 to $12 per ton to get it trucked over here instead of bringing it over on rail. I’m hoping our supervisors and the Novato City Council will change their minds, because this is one of the largest issues facing Marin County dairymen.”
The North Coast Railroad Authority plans to revive freight service from Sonoma County south through Novato to Napa County. Novato has objected to the prospect of up to 32 trains per week passing through the town, filing suit in September 2007.
“I am very sympathetic to (dairy farmers’) struggle to keep their head above water economically,” said Supervisor Judy Arnold, who represents Novato. “But someone has yet to explain to me the economics of bringing grain from the Central Valley to Novato on a rail line that runs north to south. I don’t understand where the savings comes from.”
Rilla, who has studied North Bay dairy operations for two decades, believes Marin’s farmers will weather the storm.
“In 1988, we had about 60 dairy farms – almost double the amount of operations we have now, which is 29, including two goat dairies,” Rilla said. “A lot of people have gone into something like beef or just gone out of business. So I think what you have left is the hardiest of the hardy.
“They’ve figured out lots of different ways to make it work.”
Giacomini agrees.
“Going organic is one way. Another is getting into specialty foods, such as we are with the cheese,” Giacomini said. “Another is doing alternative things on the farm – people are opening bed-and-breakfasts, or growing grapes and doing wine tasting. It’s a time in our lives when we’ve got to think of doing things other than traditional farming.
“We’re giving the consumer a lot of choices she or he did not have 20 years ago,” Giacomini added. “But it all boils down to profitability. It’s nice to keep the grass green and cows on the hills for customers and tourists.
“But to do that, we have to be profitable.”
By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Sat Apr 26, 4:12 PM ET
His liver, ravaged by hepatitis C, is failing. Without a new one, his doctors tell him, he will be dead in days.
But Garon’s been refused a spot on the transplant list, largely because he has used marijuana, even though it was legally approved for medical reasons.
“I’m not angry, I’m not mad, I’m just confused,” said Garon, lying in his hospital bed a few minutes after a doctor told him the hospital transplant committee’s decision Thursday.
With the scarcity of donated organs, transplant committees like the one at the University of Washington Medical Center use tough standards, including whether the candidate has other serious health problems or is likely to drink or do drugs.
And with cases like Garon’s, they also have to consider — as a dozen states now have medical marijuana laws — if using dope with a doctor’s blessing should be held against a dying patient in need of a transplant.
Most transplant centers struggle with the how to deal with people who have used marijuana, said Dr. Robert Sade, director of the Institute of Human Values in Health Care at the Medical University of South Carolina.
“Marijuana, unlike alcohol, has no direct effect on the liver. It is however a concern … in that it’s a potential indicator of an addictive personality,” Sade said.
The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates.
At some, people who use “illicit substances” — including medical marijuana, even in states that allow it — are automatically rejected. At others, such as the UCLA Medical Center, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months. Marijuana is illegal under federal law.
Garon believes he got hepatitis by sharing needles with “speed freaks” as a teenager. In recent years, he said, pot has been the only drug he’s used. In December, he was arrested for growing marijuana.
Garon, who has been hospitalized or in hospice care for two months straight, said he turned to the university hospital after Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center told him he needed six months of abstinence.
The university also denied him, but said it would reconsider if he enrolled in a 60-day drug-treatment program. This week, at the urging of Garon’s lawyer, the university’s transplant team reconsidered anyway, but it stuck to its decision.
Dr. Brad Roter, the Seattle physician who authorized Garon’s pot use for nausea, abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.
That’s typically the case, said Peggy Stewart, a clinical social worker on the liver transplant team at UCLA who has researched the issue. “There needs to be some kind of national eligibility criteria,” she said.
The patients “are trusting their physician to do the right thing. The physician prescribes marijuana, they take the marijuana, and they are shocked that this is now the end result,” she said.
No one tracks how many patients are denied transplants over medical marijuana use.
Pro-marijuana groups have cited a handful of cases, including at least two patient deaths, in Oregon and California, since the mid-to-late 1990s, when states began adopting medical marijuana laws.
Many doctors agree that using marijuana — smoking it, especially — is out of the question post-transplant.
The drugs patients take to help their bodies accept a new organ increase the risk of aspergillosis, a frequently fatal infection caused by a common mold found in marijuana and tobacco.
But there’s little information on whether using marijuana is a problem before the transplant, said Dr. Emily Blumberg, an infectious disease specialist who works with transplant patients at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital.
Further complicating matters, Blumberg said, is that some insurers require proof of abstinence, such as drug tests, before they’ll agree to pay for transplants.
Dr. Jorge Reyes, a liver transplant surgeon at the UW Medical Center, said that while medical marijuana use isn’t in itself a sign of substance abuse, it must be evaluated in the context of each patient.
“The concern is that patients who have been using it will not be able to stop,” Reyes said.
Dale Gieringer, state coordinator for the California chapter of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, scoffed at that notion.
“Everyone agrees that marijuana is the least habit-forming of all the recreational drugs, including alcohol,” Gieringer said. “And unlike a lot of prescription medications, it’s nontoxic to the liver.”
Reyes and other UW officials declined to discuss Garon’s case.
But Reyes said that in addition to medical concerns, transplant committees — which often include surgeons, social workers, and nutritionists — must evaluate whether patients have the support and psychiatric health to cope with a complex post-operative regimen for the rest of their lives.
Garon, the lead singer for Nearly Dan, a Steely Dan cover-band, remains charged with manufacturing weed. He insists he was following the state law, which limits patients to a “60-day supply” but doesn’t define that amount.
“He’s just a fantastic musician, and he’s a great guy,” said his girlfriend, Leisa Bueno. “I wish there was something we could do legally. … I’m going to miss him terribly if he passes.”
___
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Filed under: Uncategorized
By Janice Shaw Crouse
Friday, April 25, 2008It’s not news to anybody these days — not if they watch any television or glance at the covers of the magazines lining the checkout counters at the grocery stores — that we live in a sex-saturated society where supposedly the majority of young people are “doing it,” more often than not without “benefit of marriage.” The “Playboy philosophy” is trumpeted by a thousand voices that glamorize casual sex, while most of the shrinking mainline churches present pitifully watered-down messages about morality that confuse rather than clarify. Academic institutions, particularly the women’s studies programs, promote the idea that marriage is optional and young people are advised to “just do it!” The secular mantra, heard from middle school on up, is that sex will make you popular and happy; it’s great recreation that is free and fun.
There is a mountain of media out there promoting a phony philosophy about the joys of casual, risky sexual experimentation; one need look no further than the junk advice featured in magazines like Cosmopolitan to see just how pernicious it is. Even the “Dear Abby” column in many daily newspapers spreads the expectation of sexual activity even for the youngest of our teens. This assault will not be neutralized until a brigade of those who know better find their voices to convince today’s Sex in the City generation of young women that only discipline and restraint — it is having an attitude that says, “I won’t mess up my tomorrows by fooling around today” — will open the gateway to achieving their dreams and ambitions.
Well, the time for some straight talk about casual sex is long overdue. Every young person needs to know the following three truths:
Truth #1: Casual sex impairs the ability to establish a lasting emotion bond. When natural human emotional responses are repeatedly denied, the person is hardened and the capacity to bond is weakened. Dr. Donald Joy published groundbreaking research in the early 80s and has updated it periodically in the intervening years. He chronicles the ways that intimacy produces bonding. His research indicates that human beings respond to sexual intercourse by bonding, and they are driven to make that bond permanent and exclusive.
Dr. Joy reported on the work of a researcher at a hospital clinic in Detroit who worked with 1,000 couples for 10 years studying their marital problems and recording their sexual histories. He concluded that sexual intercourse is constructive only within marriage. His evidence is overwhelming that one or the other of the partners in casual sex (usually the girl or woman) experiences immediate emotional pain even in the absence of acknowledged injury. The experience of casual sexual intimacy produces memories that can contaminate future relationships and create lingering problems later on, when the person eventually marries. When the married couples in his research had problems, he said, “The pain in the marriages was rooted in their promiscuity.”
Truth #2: Casual sex leaves young people alone and lonely. Counselors tell us that sexually active girls are three times more likely to be depressed than their abstinent peers. Among the boys, sexually active ones are depressed twice as often. Sexually active teens are more likely than their abstinent counterparts to attempt suicide (girls 15 percent to five percent and boys six percent to one percent). But the most telling fact is that the majority of teenagers, 72 percent of the girls and 55 percent of the boys, acknowledge regret over early sexual activity and wish that they had waited longer to have sex. So much for the cultural mantra that “sex is no big deal!”
On another front, replacing marriage with casual sex is especially harmful to young women’s long-term well-being. The marriage rate in the United States has dropped by nearly 50 percent since 1970. In 1940, less than eight percent of all households consisted of people living alone; now more than a quarter do. The number of unmarried couples living together temporarily in the U.S. is 10 times as large today as in 1970.
Truth #3: The so-called “sexual revolution” has produced dramatic increases in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Sadly, 65 percent of STDs appear in young people under age 25, and fully 20 percent of all AIDS cases are among college-aged young people. In the U.S., over 15 million new cases of STDs appear annually, a number that is triple what it was six years ago. Having three or more sexual partners in a lifetime increases a woman’s odds of cervical cancer by 15 times.
The National Center for Health Statistics analyzed data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and found two startling facts. Among young women who used contraception at first intercourse, the probability of giving birth at each age is roughly half that of those who did not use contraception. Further, the probability of a sexually active female giving birth approximately doubles between 18-20 years of age whether the young woman uses contraception at first intercourse or not.
A young person’s choices about sex reveal his or her attitudes about others. Is sexual activity merely fun and games? No. Treating sex as something casual can never actually make it a casual matter. The Scriptures raise the age old question, “Can a man take fire to his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?” (Proverbs 6:27, NKJV)
Sexual intercourse can be an intense and pleasurable experience, but it is more — much more. Sexual intimacy triggers the strongest and deepest, most exhilarating passions in life. Its purpose is to bond a man and a woman into “one flesh” in the deepest intimacy that human beings can share. Further, sex is designed to both create life and build a strong relationship to protect and provide for that life. Little wonder that the Creator fashioned the means of creating life in such a way that it is one of the most awesome forces in our lives and then linked it to marriage so as to signify to us, “Priceless. Handle with great care.”
It is impossible to ignore or dictate to nature. Young people need to choose carefully. Sex can never be free; choices always have consequences. We cannot expect young people to act responsibly when adults — whose thinking is sometimes clouded by their rationalization of their own hurtful and toxic sexual experimentation — are irresponsible by not providing the best possible information to encourage self-discipline and self-control, which are the surest keys to young peoples’ long-term well-being.
Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, the think tank for Concerned Women for America, is a recognized authority on domestic issues, the United Nations, cultural and women’s concerns.
