This Week in Sex: Condoms vs. Jesus

Philadelphia comes under fire for giving condoms to kids as young as eleven

I should start by saying that when talk turns to the whole “condoms vs. Jesus” debate, I come down very firmly on the side of birth control. That said, even I was a little squeamish at the idea of giving condoms to eleven-year olds. Teens are one thing, but eleven? That’s very young.

Or so I thought, until I read that, in the population under discussion, about thirty-percent of kids said they’d had sex — by the sixth grade! Apparently, in Philadelphia, junior-high kids are skipping class to have orgies and getting up to all sorts of sexual shenanigans I didn’t even understand until halfway through college. And yet, despite evidence that contraception and education are the most effective ways to combat such a problem, hands continue to be wrung and funding continues to be cut. On the Rachel Maddow Show this week, Bill Maher suggested that conservatives need to figure out the difference between "spending" and "investing." I think spending the money to keep sixth graders from having kids falls into the latter category.