Puritans, wake up!
This isn't the 17th century!

There are two ideas that have implanted themselves in our culture as a result of our Puritan heritage that have made millions of people absolutely miserable. One is the "Protestant work ethic," or the idea that we should be working every waking minute. The other is the idea that sex is a bad thing, a necessary evil tolerated only for the purpose of procreation. I'll focus on the latter here; see No Leisure Allowed? for the former.

I don't think Puritans ever really went away. They don't call themselves Puritans anymore, of course. They just call themselves Christians (this isn't to say that all Christians are Puritans, but some of them definitely are). People talk about those with puritanical beliefs and refer to puritans in a general sense. The word is in the vocabulary. There just isn't an organized group that meets and calls themselves Puritans. But their beliefs never really went away.

For generations Americans have been taught, consciously or not, that sex is a bad thing. I think that's really sad. People have been taught that sex is dirty or that it's wrong. How many people have been psychologically damaged? Sex is not bad or dirty or wrong.

When I was in fifth grade I had a sex education class. But it wasn't sex education at all. It was only about reproduction and what we should expect when we got our periods. And there were body parts they just completely left out. Apparently somebody decided they were irrelevant. Nobody told me I had a clitoris. Somehow the diagram with all the labeled parts just left that one off (someone thought it wasn't relevant?!). It wasn't very informative about reproduction either. They never explained how the sperm got in the uterus. And people wonder why American students don't do so well in science.

American students are intentionally kept stupid. I've read that other school districts had better sex ed programs than mine. I went to a particularly conservative school district. Other districts had better programs, more comprehensive programs. They had classes in later grades as well, covering more material (mine just had the one class). But since that time, they've all gone downhill. While at one time most were teaching about condom use to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, now almost all teach "abstinence only" because that's the only way they can get federal funding, even though they know the students will have sex, only now they won't use condoms, so by forcing everyone to teach "abstinence only" sex ed classes, the Puritans who control the purse strings guarantee that the rate of STD's will rise.

The thing I don't understand about these Puritans who insist on "abstinence only," they say the students don't need to learn about contraception because they shouldn't be having sex until marriage. Ok, say they don't have sex until they're married. Well, most married people use contraception. Where are they going to learn about it? Or did I just figure out the Puritans' little secret, what they don't want anyone to know? They don't want anyone to use contraception at all. Even married people. They really mean "abstinence only." They really think sex is for procreation only. They think you shouldn't have sex unless you want to have a baby. Even if you're married. That's what they believed in the 17th century. I think they still do. So they think even if you're married, if you don't want a baby, you shouldn't ever have sex? Ever?

I think it's time for these people to go back to the 17th century.