Teen-Agers and Premarital Sex

As usual, Cal Thomas pontificates from his Liberty Federation’s ivory tower with his Neanderthal “if they play, let them pay!” mentality. Who gave him a special revelation from on high to decide when sexual activity is premature? But since he asks, “Why not tell teen-agers to avoid premarital sex?” I will answer his question.

The unfortunate choice of the term “premarital” implies, of course, that sex within the context of legal marriage is the only licit outlet for this urgent drive. Is a sexually active 40-year-old single woman or bachelor still engaging in premarital sex? In their book, “Human Sexual Response,” Masters and Johnson state that 50% of all American marriages have some sort of sexual dysfunction and that in the majority of those cases, the sexual dysfunction is due to religious orthodoxy. Therefore, the answer to your question, Cal Thomas, is that your up-tight, judgmental, repressive and self-righteously moralistic code has been tried and found woefully wanting.

In addition, you dispense generous amounts of anxiety-producing guilt and shame by arguing that: (1) sex education is a secular humanist plot to infect American youth with godless communism and to undermine traditional family values; (2) termination of an unwanted pregnancy is murder; (3) cohabitation, even in the form of trial marriage, is living in sin; (4) sexual self-relief is self-abuse and self-pollution; and (5) AIDS is God’s own plague to punish gays for their sexual perversion.

But then what else can we expect from a former chief media spokesperson for what used to be called “The Moral Majority”? I think a popular bumper sticker says it all: “The Moral Majority Is Neither!”

BEN EDWARD AKERLEY

San Diego