Mass Media: Guilty as Sexually Charged

Re “Going Past ‘Just Say No,’” editorial, April 29: When a society expects its children to behave in a certain way, they behave that way. I submit that our society doesn’t expect its children to become sexually active prior to marriage; the problem, however, is that the entertainment media push it and--as they have free rein in this country, with virtually no checks and balances--our children have gradually come to adopt premarital sexual activity as that which our society wishes for them.

You conclude that abstinence-only training “may be doing nothing to cut teenage pregnancies.” Another conclusion that makes a whole lot more sense to me: The numbers are better than they would have been without the abstinence-only message that is now being offered.

Parents slept in separate beds and four-letter words were unheard of on television and in the movies 50 years ago when I was a kid. So it was not hard to promote abstinence-only in conversations in the home in those days. Today it’s extraordinarily difficult because the media have taken advantage of our free society and legal system to turn things around 180 degrees. We are not the better for it. Your editorial has now become another small part of a very large problem. You have an opportunity to rethink it and become part of the solution.

John Bowen

Coronado