I respect your right to think whatever you want. Just understand that I am in control of my own reproductive functions, not you, not Trump, not the Evangelicals who basically want to practice the Christian version Sharia Law, and not even the Supreme Court.
**I DO. **
They have sex because it is an instinct to reproduce. I’m guessing that some animals feel pleasure but that’s not why they do it. Most animals have sex only when the female is in heat/fertile.
While unwanted children are a problem, I would content it is not the worst problem a person can have. Death, brain damage, paralysis, from activities such as football and driving seem to be worse than getting pregnant when you’d rather not. Many people end up quite happy with their children they didn’t want or expect (or so they say). Also, for many people abortion is a viable option of they end up with an unplanned pregnancy. The prevailing attitude when I was younger seemed to be “I will have recreational sex and be relatively careful to avoid pregnancy. If pregnancy results, I will/she will have an abortion and move on.” [I had one girlfriend who was a liberal Catholic, and while she had no qualms about premarital sex, she would never have an abortion. As a result, we didn’t have PIV sex, since no amount of risk was acceptable.]
And everyone I knew as a young adult was screwing like unmarried rabbits, but there wasn’t an unplanned pregnancy among us. None of our kids - those who have been sexual active - have gotten pregnant either. Turns out, when you are on some sort of hormonal birth control and then using condoms to protect against STDs as well, pregnancy is pretty low risk.
Give teens good sex ed, an understanding of consent, self and partner respect, and the means to protect themselves against pregnancy and STDs and no one should really give a damn about when people are having sex and with whom. I’ve always figured someone else’s sex life isn’t any of my business - unless they are having sex with me. (And yes, that includes my own children).
My wife and I waited for marriage. I was 22. For religious reasons. I admit we probably wouldn’t have gotten married so young of we weren’t so damn horny. That’s the only part I regret, getting married so young. Screw anyone with this uncool business. I’ve never shied away from admitting I abstained.
I’ve long said that if you aren’t just as free to say “no” as to say “yes” then you aren’t really free - it should be just as OK to wait until your 20’s to have sex as to have it at 15.
In my mind proper sex education isn’t just about the mechanics, it’s also about deciding if you do or don’t want to have it at a particular time or place or with a particular person.
What? There is no settled opinion that human overpopulation is a realistic problem, it’s mostly a goldilocks zone. Overpopulation is corrected by famine and disease, which humans have largely addressed with agriculture and medicine.
YES I DID, APPROXIMATELY. DID YOU KNOW typing in all caps is frowned upon, and indicates a failure to use logic to persuade, in favor of amplitude? This isn’t a pulpit; shouting indicates a misunderstanding of authority in logical argument.
So it’s not surprising your logic has already been shown faulty.
You claim we have this peer pressure thing because we engage in sex for pleasure. I would counter this peer pressure functions to force individuals to prove their fertility, and to encourage reproduction, as an evolutionary counter in societies where reproduction is ideally postponed into the second and third decades and additionally restricted to a monogamous marriage partner. If you are post-pubescent and non-sexual, you are reasonably considered weird in an evolutionary context.
It’s worth asking if you would advocate peer pressure for homosexuality before marriage, with heterosexual sex encouraged only for married couples planning to have children? This would reduce abortions, without an unrealistic insistence on decade(s) of chastity, and is evident in human culture in history.
Please ask your priest/pastor/rabbi/imam/coven priestess why human females have a menstrual cycle and concealed ovulation.
I’m still scratching my head over this. How exactly has society failed?
Things are pretty damn good and, aside from lunatic politics, getting better.
Why did the laws change? Was that a symptom or a cure?
I don’t want to hijack the thread, but a bit of a digression: what actually IS the point of marriage anymore? I’ve never been one to argue that the left is “destroying” or “redefining” marriage, but if you don’t need to be married to have sex, to live together, to have children together, to own property together, and even if you are married, you can get out of it like getting out of an apartment lease, what real purpose does it serve?
Marriage is a convenient way to designate a next-of-kin for those of us with few family left. Much cheaper than drawing up equivalent documentation with a lawyer. It can simplify some inheritance matters.
Inheritance, yes, also decision-making authority if you’re incapacitated or unavailable.
In polyamory circles, there’s a concept of a “nesting partner,” the person you share a household with and share long-term practical decision-making authority, etc.
A cure. I don’t know about the USA, but I suspect it wasn’t massively different. In France, people would set up situations that would allow divorce. For instance, the husband would rent a room in a hotel for himself and his mistress, and the wife would show up with witnesses so that adultery could be established and divorce pronounced.
Plenty of people were unhappy, or even extremely unhappy with their marriage and wanted out. Being able to got it out of it simply because both wanted it was a progress.
You can’t really expect two 20 yo to know what they really want. Being able to put an end to a mismatched marriage (for sex related reasons or any other reason) is a good thing.
Health insurance.
And my wife and I both wanted a public declaration that we are a permanent couple. That’s marriage. Under different circumstances I may make a different decision.