Clinton Tells Youths Sex Is Not a ‘Sport’

Declaring that sex is not “sport” but a “solemn responsibility,” President Clinton on Thursday entreated a group of junior high school students in a crime-ridden neighborhood to avoid mistakes that could cast a shadow over the rest of their lives.

Returning to the theme of family values, the President told Kramer Junior High School students in southeast Washington to delay child-bearing until after marriage and to make a firm commitment to family.

The family is “the most wonderful institution in society,” he told a student who asked how to “restore family values.” And, he said, “there’s no such thing as a family where fights never occur, where differences never happen, where some days you think it wouldn’t be easier to quit than go on.”

As he has during a number of talks to adults, Clinton stressed to the teen-agers that they must take responsibility for their lives.

“We can’t live your life for you,” he said. “I’ll try to keep up my end of the deal, and I want you to keep up yours. . . . You have to say: ‘I’m going to make the most of my life.’ ”

Clinton has been steadily expanding his emphasis on family values and personal responsibility--and winning plaudits from liberal and conservative audiences for doing so.

In last week’s State of the Union Address, Clinton spoke of the need for the nation’s disadvantaged to help themselves, even as the government takes steps on their behalf.

The junior high school chosen for Thursday’s presidential visit was attended by several members of the Secret Service and by a White House photographer. Last Christmas, the White House Secret Service detail “adopted” the school as part of a national mentoring program.

The school has some of the city’s lowest scores in math and reading, and many of its children go home at night to single-parent families.

Earlier Thursday, Clinton attended the National Prayer Breakfast, where Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa called for an end to government-condoned abortion.

“Abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love one another,” she said.

Clinton, an abortion-rights supporter, has said the procedure should be legal but rare.

In his comments to the students, Clinton urged the school’s girls to put off child-bearing.

Young women “have to decide: ‘I’m not going to have a baby until I’m married, I’m not going to bring a baby into the world I can’t take care of and I’m not going to turn around and walk away when I do it. I’m going to take responsibility for what I do,’ ” he said.

He also had a warning for young men who carelessly father children, then abandon them: “It’s something you pay for for the rest of your life,” he said. “You carry that in the back of your head: Somewhere out there there’s some kid you didn’t take care of who’s in terrible shape because of something you didn’t do.

“This is not a sport, this is a solemn responsibility,” he added.

Asked how the federal government is working to end the AIDS epidemic, Clinton cited his plan to increase spending to fight the disease, even while some government agencies are seeing their budgets slashed.

But he again emphasized individual responsibility.

“Right now, the only thing we know that works with regards to AIDS is not to get it,” he said.

Discussing his program to impose national standards on schools, Clinton stressed that even amid the harsh circumstances of their lives, the students need to look beyond gratification of the moment.

“Every day you have to decide whether the future is what happens to you 30 minutes from now or what happens to you 10 or 20 years from now,” he said.

Asked how to fight gangs, Clinton observed that most people want to belong to groups that make them feel good and that even schools are gangs, in a sense. Thus, the goal should be to coax young people away from violent gangs into “more positive” groups, he said.

The President also fielded questions from the students on anti-crime efforts, the information superhighway, the Clean Water Act and federal budget cuts.