Author Archives: jtjim

Previously-Chewed Chewing Gum

June 18, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Ugh.  Ick!  It used to freak me out as a teen when I accidentally touched a piece of gum under the table at Bob’s Big Boy restaurant.  Yuck!  Nasty!  It’s been in someone’s mouth.  Saliva, spit, germs…gross!!!!!!!!

Years later, my daughter Jamie is a germ freak.  I’m convinced this came as the result of food inspections by the Department of Health at the Cinnabon shop she worked at.  Fastidious attention to cleanliness was essential to keeping up health standards, and today she insists on bottles of bleach under the kitchen sink and around the house.

It’s even hard to have a family picnic these days.  Double dipping chips…a la Seinfeld…has become a crime punishable by excommunication.  Backwash, from sipping your soda through a straw?  Execution!

Television validates our squeamish fears of getting germs from others.  Jordan Cavanaugh, medical examiner, pries a wad of orange-flavored gum from under the pay phone.  Voila.  DNA analysis, and trace amounts of saliva nail down the culprit.  Case solved!

CSI…crime scene investigators, on their third inspection of the temple where four praying monks were murdered, find gum on a Buddha statue.  Analysis reveals cooking spices in the chewed gum.  Suspect is confronted.  Conviction!  Bam.  Case closed.

Hmmm…DNA on a wad of chewing gum?

At all levels, for the average person, sharing germs…on a wad of chewing gum, by double dip, backwash, or any other fashion…is either gross or criminally dangerous.  But sharing germs of the intimate kind…from sex…well that’s safe…if you ask some “sexperts”…and if not safe…then it’s “safer.”

Safer than what?  Two bites of a Dorito double-dipped in salsa?  Leaving your chewing gum behind after you commit armed burglary?

Grocery stores now offer Sanicarts as you enter the store, wet wipes to sanitize the handle of the shopping cart used by some unknown germ-carrying humanoid before you.  Comedy routines have us laughing at the common effort of many to get out of the bathroom without touching the door handle, touched by so many other sickly people before us.

But sex germs?  No problem.  Sexperts who want to serve up condoms to teenagers chafe at the suggestion that we should establish sexual abstinence until marriage has the expected standard for youth.

Sex germs?  These “sexperts” don’t want to dwell on the negative.  That would be fear-based.  That would be unrealistic…they preach…because kids are going to have sex.  They can’t help it.  Young people cannot control themselves…not now…not ever.

Sex…our children…and sex germs?   These “sexperts” reassure us.  Sex germs?  They’re consensual germs.  That makes it OK.  A person, even if she’s only fourteen, consented to having those germs placed inside, outside, all over and anywhere…by a responsible, mature and caring person…who…

…who…what?

…also consented to being infected by nasty, icky, yucky, gross…germs?

What am I missing here?  Germs are germs.

If chewing on germy, pre-chewed chewing gum…if the thought of this is enough to make us gag…

…then why would any sane person jump into bed with the first consensual babe, and every other consensual babe after that…only to end up sharing germs?

Research-Based Realities

June 11 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

America is in love with research.  Numbers grab our attention, statistics drive our decisions.

We collect numbers on everything.  We know from watching him that Magic Johnson is…well…magic on the basketball court.  But we are sure of it if we can chart his free-throw average.  We believe that Elvis was a music legend.  But we are convinced of it when someone lists his top ten hits and reports the sales revenue generated by his empire.

Fueled by computer technology, researchers have relegated nearly every subject today to binary code and statistical analysis.  Not surprisingly, our beliefs about sex, our sexual behavior, and the consequences of both, have been counted, input into computers, and crunched into numbers that have been sorted, scrutinized, analyzed, reported and debated.

Statistics on sex confirm what the ordinary person knows.  Teen sex is a problem.  We see the problem in our daily lives, but numbers and statistics define the problem.

Numbers and statistics also drive the work to cure the problems resulting from teen sex.  Give us a cure, we are told.  But make sure it is research-based.

This demand for research-based education is great news for abstinence educators.  Research gathered over the past forty years supports the truths taught in abstinence classes around our country.  Consider what research has proven:

  • STDs infect people even when condoms are used consistently and correctly.  Of the 25 common STDs today, several viruses and bacterium live on body areas not covered by a condom, including incurable genital herpes.  This helps to explain why one in six people over the age of 12 are infected with genital herpes.
  • Boys and girls are different.  For some unknown reason, of late, that has been in doubt.  But now we have research that confirms the different attitudes men and women have about sex, love and attachment.  We are different.  Truly.
  • Most men and women have personally experienced the power of sex to create a special bond.  But now we have research and science to explain why.  Oxytocin, released in the blood system during sex, creates an attachment between the lovers…whether or not true love exists.
  • Romantic breakups are hard enough for teens, but the emotional consequences of sex for our youth can be devastating.  We have always known that.  But now research has documented the link between teen sex and teen suicide rates.
  • If oxytocin, emotional stability, and freedom from STDs are not enough to justify abstaining from sex until marriage, we have even more research to motivate us.  A wide range of studies prove that married people are having the most sex and the best sex.  And marriage statistically provides the best outcomes for men, women and children…emotionally, physically and economically.
  • Parents have always felt that teens needed direction.  Research now confirms this.  Studies of brain development show that mature, analytical thought processes aren’t developed until the early to mid-twenties for most youth.  Teens need concrete and direction instruction from adults.
  • Research reported by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy tells us “There is some evidence to suggest that one of the reasons behind these trends is that more teens are taking a cautious attitude toward sex.”  Teens are ready to hear constructive education and receive support in maintaining sexual abstinence.

Abstinence education gives young people the truth about the consequences of teen sex…emotional, physical, social, and financial consequences documented by scientific research.

Research documents that young people are receptive to this information and are using it to choose to abstain from sex outside of marriage.  Best of all, even sexually active teens are choosing to return to sexual abstinence as the best path to health and well-being.

Finally, research proves that parents are the most significant factor in teen choices about sex and that parents support sexual abstinence as the best choice for their teens.  Abstinence education is a foundation of support for parents, providing the scientific and medically accurate facts confirming the wisdom abstinence until marriage.

Research-based education?  Abstinence education leads the way in providing the best message for securing the healthiest outcomes for our youth.  And research proves it.

If They Only Knew

June 4, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

I sit reflecting on a day of rounds in Washington D.C., talking with people who have the power to change what our children learn about sex.  This week, eight meetings with Congressmen and Congresswomen who will vote on funding needed to bring abstinence education to the children we all love.

I have talked with strong supporters of abstinence education.  And with fierce opponents.  In all cases, our talk has been cordial.  I welcome questions and try my best to supply answers, making a list of follow up reports and experts who might answer what I can’t.

Prepared with statistics and testimonials about the positive impact of abstinence education on our youth, I find these fall on the deaf ears of those members of Congress who have been poisoned by rhetoric from Planned Parenthood, NARAL, SIECUS, and the ACLU*. I try my best to convey the truths about abstinence education, but one simple thought is renewed at the end of each appointment…If They Only Knew…

If they only knew, if they sat in abstinence classes taught by the educators I know, if they heard the questions of the students, and the answers that follow, if they knew the hearts of the parents and teachers…if they only knew…there would be no way a conscionable person could deny this education to the children and parents who want it.

If they would sit in a class, hear presentations on the consequences of STDs for a teen…for adults…diseases impacting their lifelong goals and the future marriages and families most of them hope to have…

If they would listen to a lesson on teen pregnancy, the demands it places on everyone involved, the challenges it poses for teens in finishing a high school education, the struggles of a single mother providing for a child the attention and resources that two-parent families have at hand…

If they would participate in classroom activities and discussions where students share their hopes for the future, their dreams for happiness and their plans to make their hopes and dreams a reality…

If they would…then these Congressional policy makers would know why sexual abstinence is the singular message our youth need to hear, a message that points to the path that guarantees that the hopes and dreams of our teens will not be derailed by the consequences of sexual activity.

But they haven’t.  Many of these policy makers haven’t witnessed the realities of the very education they will vote on.  They haven’t seen the eager and thankful reception of abstinence education by teens who know the truth when someone takes the time to present it.

They haven’t…so I invite them.  Please, we would love to have you, our Congressional member, or one of the members of your staff come and visit our classes and see for yourselves.  If you see it, you will know the truth of what is happening in abstinence education, the truth and support given teens in choosing to remain sexually abstinent, securing their healthiest and happiest futures.  Please, we want you to see for yourselves.

There is precious little time for Members of Congress to see the realities of abstinence education before they vote on abstinence funding.  It is painful to think people who oppose abstinence education and vote against it may also be people who have never taken the time to see it in action for themselves.

If they only knew!

A Forest of One Tree

October 23, 2006

No issue this year looms larger than marriage and the fight to define what marriage will be for the next generation.

All sorts of arguments fly through the air.  What is fair?  Who is going to get or lose health insurance?  Who won’t be able to get married?  Who will?  Why should government care who gets married?

There are lots of questions and lots of arguments.  But there is really only one agenda pushing them all.  This is about certifying same-sex marriage as an equivalent to traditional marriage.

Will I get to wear a wedding ring?  Will I get health insurance?  Will my relationship be validated as special by the government?  Why does it matter who or what I am when I get married?

There are lots of questions and lots of arguments.  But they are only branches of the same tree.  Marriage…what’s in this for me?

My, myself and I…will I be allowed to get all the “stuff” that belongs to marriage?

But wait.  Since when did marriage focus on “getting”?  This is a modern invention.

Since when did marriage focus on “me, myself, and I?”  This is a modern concoction.

If this is only about me, and if it’s only about what I get out of it, then I am the only tree in the forest.

This is an odd way to think about a relationship that only survives out of a desire to be a sacrificial servant to another person.  Foundationally, marriage is about giving up my right to be the only tree in the forest.

When we marry, with our attention focused outwards, looking at the other trees in the forest, it is our interest in the future of the forest that lets us see the seedlings just pushing up out of the soil and beginning to grow.  If this is about me, myself, and I…then seedlings don’t matter.

If this is about me, myself, and I, then…when I am gone, the forest will be gone.  But that won’t matter.  Who needs seedlings?  I won’t be around to see it.  And because the forest was only about me anyway, that will be just fine.

At the heart of the heated arguments about marriage, we need to step back from the trees and see the forest.  Are we building a society of individual trees?  Or are we building a society that nurtures seedlings?

Marriage, when properly focused, is about a larger society that flourishes because it nurtures the smaller family society that is raising the next generation.  It is not an arbitrary definition contrived to allow me to qualify for wedding rings and insurance.

Marriage is focused on the sacrificial relationship between a man and a woman for a logical reason.  This is the relationship out of which children are born and raised.  If children don’t flourish under the care of their parents, they will lose… we will all lose.

Government defines marriage and sets it aside as a unique relationship because of its significance for our children…for our future.  Marriage is not a random definition created by legislators.  It is a relationship of importance, a relationship that matters for the sake of the preservation of the forest.

If we are going to build a forest, then our laws best be about what is good for our children.  Marriage matters.  Mothers and fathers united in stable relationships defined by a focus on creating a nurturing environment for their children…this has always been the focus of a society that cares about the future.

Me, myself, and I will never create a seedling.  I may be a very pretty tree.  But I won’t live forever.  And I will never be more than a forest of one tree.

 

 September 3, 2004 – We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

June 13, 2005  – A Recipe for Families

See Archives for past editorials.

 

Technically Speaking

October 9, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

MS Magazine has once again given cover placement to a story about abortion.  Its October 10 issue is a megaphone for women who are announcing, “We Had Abortions.”

Ironically, this new effort to defend abortion points out the failure of the pro-abortion movement during the past thirty years.  As Kathleen Parker points out, past arguments defending American abortion policies have focused on the technical aspects of abortion.

Eleanor Smeal, publisher of MS Magazine, loses no opportunity to point out the obvious to Tucker Carlson.  Technically speaking, she reminds him that abortion is “a medical procedure, that’s obvious.”  She can point to a long list of technical terminology that has been crafted to describe the indescribable.

The litany of techno-talk is, “It’s a woman’s right to choose a medical procedure that removes a small clump of cells from her own body…a simple surgical procedure, the D & E, dilation and evacuation, where the physician extracts the products of conception from the uterus.”  And, technically speaking, they have described abortion.

In a natural progression, much of the dialogue describing the sex that leads to the product of conception that leads to the surgical procedure…all of this talk about sex…has also turned technical since Roe v. Wade.  Sex education, as liberal abortion proponents would have it, is all about technique.

Going into the classroom with boxes of condoms and things to put condoms on, they have reduced sex to technique…ways that children can be taught technically how to have sex and be somewhat, moderately, possibly and hopefully saferrrrrrrrr.

If humans were cars, and if we were installing a muffler on a child car, perhaps we could let these educators get away with it.  But we are not.  And children are not.  Cars, that is.

Cars are things.  Humans are living things.  Living, breathing, hoping, dreaming and loving.  We are not meant to be handled by technoids who describe invasive “procedures” and erotic “actions” with detached language devoid of emotion.

My mind is seared with the memory of a Planned Parenthood educator who demanded allegiance to the language of technique.  Speaking to a friendly National Organization of Women (NOW) audience, she decried the national acceptance of the “medically inaccurate” term partial-birth abortion.  “That’s not what it is!” she declared.  “It’s a D&E.  That’s the accurate medical terminology.  There is no such procedure as partial-birth abortion.”

In the next breathe, she launched into a speech against abstinence education.  “Those programs are terrible…talking about differences between men and women, emotional consequences of sex and promoting marriage.”  Technically speaking, she demanded a return to procedural instructions on how to install a condom on a teen.

Technically speaking, the rationale of the past thirty years is that we only have to perfect the technical aspects of having sex without consequences and then describe that technique in a perfectly technical way.  And it works…as long as you have a heart that is unmoved by a single human tear or the love expressed in a kiss on the cheek.

Why else would MS Magazine, Planned Parenthood, and NOW work so hard to ignore the real pain of people who bought into the false promises of “safe sex”?  Where are the articles describing the experiences of women who refused to be “Silent No More,” the women abused by an abortion industry that hides behind technique?

Already, commentaries responding to the MS Magazine article are pointing out the obvious.  Technique is never well-used to deal with matters of the human heart, the matters of sex…and love…as people have known them since Adam and Eve.

The magazine has invited women to open their hearts.  And as the women describe why they “chose” abortion, readers are asking the many obvious questions that the editors left unasked…and unanswered.

Technically speaking, describing a medical procedure and the events of my life leading up to the surgery, leaves the most important questions unanswered.  How did I close my eyes to the product of conception that could have held my hand and given me a hug?  Where is the man who promised me love and protection?

Great women of courage have told this story.  But you won’t read about it in MS Magazine.

Willing to deal truthfully with what sex and the consequences of sex are, courageous women have humbled themselves to reveal the lies of technical lingo.  They lead important national movements on college campuses, in state legislatures, and in sex education programs.

This, Ms. Smeal, is a story worth telling.  Consider it for your next issue.  Technically speaking, though, I’m not holding my breath. 

 December 26, 2005 –  Small Acts of Courage

June 6, 2005 –  Planned Parenthood’s War Against Choice

  See Archives for past editorials.