Let's look at sex education in Italy

As our previous story on the young girl who was taught at school that sex at her age was normal and is now pregnant shows, governments fool themselves into thinking that mandatory sex education is effective. All it does is increase teenage sexual behaviour, ensuring that more teenagers will become pregnant and either abort their babies (courtesy of the State) or become single mothers, dependant on the State for welfare.

The bizarre thing is that those who believe in sex education cannot see this outcome as being directly caused by the sex education itself and instead call for more sex education at younger and younger ages, because that'll solve the problem, right??

Last month I came across a story on an Italian professor criticising the New York's mandatory sex education. This piece was published in the Vatican newspaper and contrasted the situation in Italy with those countries in West that believe sex education of children is vital.

"It is not clear why public institutions in the West continue to have such magical trust in the effectiveness of sex education," especially when young people in those countries continue to have precocious, unprotected sex, leading to an increase of disease, pregnancy and abortion, she said.

In Italy, where there is no mandatory sex ed in school, there is a low risk of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease among the young, she said.

"This is thanks to the family, to the loving vigilance of parents over their children, to the fact that kids are not left to themselves with a box of contraceptives as the only defense against their passions and mistakes," she said.

"It is also thanks to the Catholic Church, which continues to teach that sexual relations are much more than some kind of pleasurable exercise to be practiced in an unbridled and risk-free way," Scaraffia wrote.

For the Catholic Church, she said, sexual activity is an important part of human and spiritual maturity and properly belongs only to marriage and the formation of a family.

"The church teaches respect for one's own body, which means giving importance and weight to the acts that are done with it, not just taking into consideration the possibility of enjoyment or narcissistic gratification," Scaraffia wrote.

Human sexuality is not just another subject to be studied in school, "setting out a few dangers it would be best to avoid," she said.

The real problem is not that young people do not understand what sex is or how to avoid pregnancy and disease; the real problem is the "breakdown of the first institution of moral education, the family," she said.

All the type of stuff that people in a liberal sexual environment where it's normal to get drunk and sleep with whoever, just don't want to hear.

Related link: Vatican newspaper says mandatory sex ed programs don't work
~ Catholic News Service