ABSTINENCE
From Paul Harvey News
and Comment
Purposely
I yield the floor for three minutes today to Robert Layton. The
experience he relates is his own.
“I got a notice from
my 13 years old sons school announcing a parents meeting to review
the new course on sexuality. Parents were invited to examine the
curriculum and to participate in an actual lesson. When I got to the
school I was surprised to see only about a dozen parents there.
Waiting
for the presentation I thumbed through page after page of instruction
about the prevention of pregnancy, or disease but I saw only a
passing reference to abstinence.
So when
the teacher arrived with the school nurse and asked if there were any
questions I raised my hand and I asked why abstinence was not a
pertinent part of the material.
Mr.
Harvey what happened next was shocking; laughter and I mean a great
deal of laughter. Somebody said in the 1990’s there is no such
thing as abstinence. The teacher and the nurse said nothing I was
drowning in embarrassment my mind had gone blank I could think of
nothing to say. I sat in silence for 20 minutes as the course was
explained, and other parents seemed to like the course.
Suddenly
I heard the teacher say doughnuts in the back, and we were all
invited to put on name tags, which were along side the doughnuts, and
then we could mingle with the other parents.
Everybody
moved to the back and while they affixed name tags and began shaking
hands I sat alone, deep in thought, ashamed that I had not been able
to encourage a serious discussion of abstinence.
I
uttered a silence prayer for guidance.
The
teacher came over and politely invited me to join the others and
enjoy the doughnuts. I said no thank you and the teacher said well
don’t you want to wear a name tag the others would like to know
who you are; and I said well I doubt that. I’ll just wait here. When
class was called back to order the teacher thanked everyone for
putting on the name tags and said that now we would receive the same
lesson that our children would be given.
She said
everyone peel off our name tag and look on the back. The teacher had
said on one of the tags I drew a tiny flower. Now whose name tag
includes the flower? A man
raised his hand. The teacher said, Now that flower represents
disease. Do you recall sir with whom you shook hands; and he pointed
to two people. The teacher said very good.
Now the
handshake in this case is intimacy, so the two people with whom you
had contact now have the disease. Well
there was laughter and joking among the parents until the teacher
asked, with whom did the two of you shake hands?
Well now
she had made her point, and this she said is how to show students how
quickly disease is spread. Since all had shaken hands all had the
disease. It was
then that a still small voice told me to speak up. I rose from my
chair I apologized for any upset I might have caused earlier; I
congratulated the teacher on an excellent lesson, which certainly
should impress young people.
But
might I add one small point I said, not all of us were infected. One
of us… abstained.”
Scary reality
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