If my history books are right, the 1960s were a lot like today, except instead of civil liberties violations to protect us from terrorists, it was to protect us from communists. Of course, there’s a whole blog post (that I’m pretty certain I’ve already written) right there. My point isn’t civil liberties. It’s communism.

On of the great intellectual blows to communism — and I very much agree with this critique — is that communism requires too many people to change their natures in order to work. It’s much like asking an electron to behave like a proton so your model of the universe will work. If your physical or economic model doesn’t fit observable behaviours, the model is wrong, not the behaviours.

Communism always ultimately fails because people are selfish and people want power. So you have an entire population of demotivated people and a thin crust of dictators running the show.

Abstinence-only education fails, I think, for the same reason. Teenagers have sex. This is the behaviour history tells us to expect. No matter how spiritual the society, no matter how strict the rule set, teenagers have sex.

This is not to say abstinence is a bad thing. It’s a very good thing. Premarital sex is damaging, out of context, and no matter how it feels at the time, can produce a lot of hurt. Not to mention scripture speaks out against premarital sexual experiences on multiple occasions.

Yet even among those who know better, this is a problem. You can change from courtship to dating and back but it still happens. Perhaps the only way to prevent this is to arrange marriages, but I’m sure even then, teenagers will be having sex.

Should we be distributing condoms and birth control to twelve-year-olds? I don’t know. I don’t think so. That comes too close to condoning that behaviour.

Morality aside, the reality is that abstinence-only sex education as a model fails because it needs too many people to change too radically in order to work. It doesn’t work. It never has. It never will.

The question really becomes… what to do instead?