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    What is "Red State Sex" Exactly?

    Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2008 8:18 AM | By Melinda Henneberger
    Not sure this is a liberal-vs.-conservative divide exactly, Hanna, or even a religious-vs.-secular one, though that's probably closer to the mark. It's definitely not only in red states that parents would prefer that their kids delay having sex. How to communicate that while also teaching them about birth control—does the one message undercut the other?—is an old, old problem. And because people being people it's not always communicated perfectly or received gladly doesn't mean there's no point in trying.

     

    At a meeting on sex ed in Sunday school at our church last spring, one of the other parents remarked that even those of us who don't believe everything the church teaches about sex want our kids to believe it, and everybody laughed. Only, when it came down to actually talking to my kids, I felt compelled to explain both the church teaching on birth control and why I see it more as an ideal than an absolute. Did I worry about this obviously mixed message? Yes. Do I get the appeal of a more clear-cut approach in either direction? You betcha. But I see risk in punting on either the moral or the practical dimension of sexuality, and in the end, that's a line every parent has to locate for himself. One of my many hopes for Obamamerica is that we will no longer see "red state sex'' as a distinct phenomenon.

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