Author Archives: jtjim

Starting With the Back Page

August 28, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Two and a half inches, the letters on the top of the front page reach out and grab passers-bys on the college campus. NEW TIMES.

Although it proclaims its Times as NEW, the paper is actually over 35 years old, a living legacy from the Age of Aquarius when I used to grab copies on my way to Psychology 101 on the campus of Arizona State University.  Back then, the cultish paper made its name as a counter-cultural option to the staid, traditional big city newspapers like The Arizona Republic.

Now, just one more cultural mainstay, the New Times holds onto its liberal traditions while setting standards of journalistic excellence envied by the mainstream press.  This week, the cover story is about a Phoenix cathedral built by nationally-known Pentecostal preacher Neal Frisby.

Sarah Fenske’s story on the stunning Capstone Cathedral belies the newspaper’s reputation as a stronghold for liberal politics. From page 14 to page 33, Ms. Fenske details a 30-year history of family, fortune and religion, with the thoughtful journalistic judgment needed to tease out truth from interviews with a series of rivals in religious conflict, fueled by family strife and hidden in sealed court documents.

It’s the kind of story that might earn Ms. Fenske a well-deserved award.  The NEW TIMES boasts its share of coveted awards in journalism won through the years.

Still, respectability is married to the avant-garde.  This is the Back 2 School issue.  A special pull-out section targets the nearly 60,000 students who inhabit the 700 acre Tempe campus of Arizona State University.  College coeds are told to “forget all that ‘The Wall is Your Canvas’ crap.”  Dry erase boards on dorm room doors are clearly “childish and unattractive and frankly very 1967.”  Opposite the article, an ad by Vince Lentini screams from the top, “Make Sure Your Stuff is Insured!”

Under Vince, a female beauty is tightly laced up in a red bustier.  Holding a slice of watermelon, she winks at the reader.  Bold font tells you It’s Just Sooo…Juicy!  Only a careful reader who can tear away from the buxom beauty will be able to tell that this is an add for Juicy Jav’s flavored rolling paper available at “your local Convience [sic] Store or Smoke Shop.”

Triangles is “your one-stop bikini shop.”  One page over, an apparently serious article on Higher Education quickly launches into its real topic…reading, writing, and (hic!) drinking games.

The article’s intro makes it plain.  “Some people actually attend college to learn something, to ensure their future and advance their eventual careers.  For the rest of us, college is all about cocktail hour.  Here, then, are lesson plans for the serious-minded drinker: a primer to the hottest drinking games being played on campus this semester.”

Games called Movie Star, A**hole, Name Game, Fuzzy Duck, and Quarters rely on hooch, rotgut, filthy language, scotch, wine and tequila.  Make sure you have a couple of college coeds.  Victory comes when the winner, depending on the ‘game’ ends up vomiting, passing out, or barfing.  Winners in the Name Game are announced the following day, depending on who has “the worst hangover.”

Appropriately, burlesque lingerie is advertised on the facing page…with a dancer discount!  Turn the page, and the full page Bud Light ad seems incredibly tame, two brown bottles… splashes of icy cold water…Always Worth It.

If one makes it through 140 pages of the New Times, they may not be sober enough to read the back page.  But will they care?

After all, there are no buxom beauties, and all of the 85 adds on the back page are written in small font.  Marijuana Lawyer, sympathetic expert trial attorney, Cocaine Anonymous.  STOP Foreclosure!  Don’t WAIT!  WITHDRAWAL…FREE DETOX…FROM ANY ADDICTION.  Bankruptcy 4Less.  $200…and more… 

Paternity and Infidelity Testing…30% discount with this ad.  HIV 10 Minutes♦$69.  STD Doctor-Viagra-Cialis-Levitra.  Criminal & DUI…Little or $0 Down.  Vehicle Cash Loan.  All Accidents & Serious Injury. 

The times are not really new.  And neither are the consequences of bad choices.

If your student is entering college this year, it might be worth getting a copy of the college newspaper to read with your precious child.  Just remember to start reading from the back page.

 

September 5, 2005  – The Gift of Fear

August 27, 2004  – Is Your Child Ready for School?

 See Archives for past editorials.

Worst-Case Scenario

August 21, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

This is the time of year when students head off to school.  From kindergarten through college, anxious parents wave goodbye to their children as they relinquish the ever watchful parent control and trust the fate of their children to outside forces.

The newspaper reporter called me.  She was writing a story to help parents of college students…to give them help and reassurance.  How could parents guide young men and women in dealing with the sexual pressures of the college campus?

We spoke about the precautions, the sex talks, the fears, and the boundaries.  We considered the coed dorms, the student health centers, the drinking, the parties.  And we strategized.  Parents had tools to open dialogue with their students, even if these college freshmen were breaking loose from the day-to-day oversight that had guided their first 18 years of life.

Hopes were balanced with fears.  Precautions were checked with risks.  Good and bad possibilities were in a battle for influence over their students.  The obvious question had to be asked.

“Yes, parents can do a lot,” the reporter said.  “But what happens, in the worst-case scenario?”

The worst case scenario.  Her words spoke volumes to me.  After ten years of working in the field of preventing adolescent sex, I was fully aware of the worst case scenario.  Like the mythical head of Medusa, it was a simple phrase that erupts into many tentacles of bad consequences.

Worst case scenario?  Was the reporter thinking of the student who calls mom and dad to tell them they tested positive for AIDS?

Perhaps the reporter was thinking of the one in five adults who are now infected with genital herpes.  Even with a lifelong prescription for Famvir, this infection will control the lives of millions of people with regular outbreaks that can only be treated, not cured.

Maybe the reporter, as I have, has spoken with ob-gyns who have treated women as young as eighteen for cervical cancer.  A new vaccine Gardasil has been introduced to the market that prevents HPV infections, a sexually transmitted disease (STD) responsible for over 97 percent of cervical cancer.  What do parents tell their  daughters?

Or maybe the reporter had personal experience with someone close to them who had undergone an abortion in college.  My own friend was overcome with regret and depression, amplified by the boyfriend who “loved” her during sex and promptly abandoned her after the abortion he wanted.

These stories are just the tip of the iceberg.  So many stories of worst case scenarios, personalized to the individual who has to live out the scenario.  I am friends with a pregnancy counselor who prevented a post-abortion suicide.  I attended the trial of an abortion doctor who walked away from a woman patient and let her bleed to death.

Speaking with the reporter, an unexpected pause let a flood of worst case scenarios fill my mind.  I told the reporter, “I’m trying to figure out what would actually be the worst-case scenario.”

She joined me in brief silence.  “Gee, I guess there are a number of possibilities, aren’t there?”

Of course, I knew from experience that the worst case she most likely had been referring to was a phone call from college, “Mom, I’m pregnant.”  But considering this question and the many people I know who have dealt with this scenario, I could see only life and hope.

“I am old enough,” I told her, “to remember the college housing for married students and families.  Children and marriage at one time were not hostile barriers to future happiness.  Maybe discipline and patience were required.   But life was big enough for it all.”

One dear friend gave birth to her unplanned baby and chose adoption to bless the lives of a mother and father who could only wait for her generous gift.  Today, she is much more at peace with her “scenario” than those I have spoken to who regret their hasty abortion decisions made under pressure and isolation.

When did babies become the enemy?  When did they define the “worst-case scenario” for American culture?

As our children leave home, and as we continue to parent them from afar, perhaps the best gift we can give them is an understanding of the wonderful joys that come from sex that produces life.

Four years in college is a slice of their life, a time when they set the stage for their future…not just careers…but lives as mothers, fathers, parents.  The best-case scenario is a dream they can catch, if we take the time to build it.

Our fears and our hopes both have the ability to capture our mind.  Which will it be for our children?  The best-case scenario…or the worst?

 

July 11, 2005 – Medically Accurate Cowards

April 2, 2004 –  Sex Education: Spinning the Truth

 See Archives for past editorials.

Hey, Everybody, Let’s Give Up!

August 7, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Fifteen people sat around the conference table. Fourteen were educators teaching junior and senior high students about sexual abstinence until marriage. One person, Mr. Boss Man, at the head of the table, was a state leader in charge of setting the educational focus for programs in the public schools.

Fourteen voices told about the high school students who wanted educators to return to their classrooms next year. These students, even the juniors and seniors, want to hear the truth about sex. They want to receive encouragement to be abstinent as a way of fulfilling their personal goals and securing their good health.

At the conference table, from the front of the room, Mr. Boss Man with his one voice answered fourteen. “Isn’t that too late? Aren’t they already having sex?”

He might as well have said, “Hey, everybody, let’s give up!”

Maybe Mr. Boss Man hadn’t heard that over 50 percent of high school students persevere under considerable pressure from a society that pushes sex at every turn. These students haven’t given up. They are sexually abstinent.

Mr. Boss Man’s name isn’t important. He is not alone. He is only one of many community and national leaders who are heading the parade to give in to failure.

Yes, they concede. Sexual abstinence until marriage would indeed prevent untold negative personal and social consequences of adolescent sex. But before they can take one deep breath, they raise their flags of failure and begin chanting.

On the left, they cry, “Teens can’t be abstinent. They can’t, they can’t. Rah, rah, shish boom bant!”

On the right, they answer back. “Teens don’t need to be abstinent. Sex is natural. Rah, rah, bish boom pow!”

Imagine. What if this mentality had ruled the coaching staff for the San Francisco 49ers? From 1979 to 1992, they were led by one of the top quarterbacks of all time. Joe Montana earned the nicknames “Joe Cool” and “Comeback Kid” due to his ability to rally his teams from late game deficits, including 31 fourth quarter comebacks.

Montana made his career proving that losing is not inevitable … no matter how many minutes … or seconds … are left in the game. His comeback from a 28-point halftime deficit to a 38-35 overtime victory against the New Orleans Saints still stands (as of 2006) as the most points ever overcome to win a regular season NFL game. It was the first of Montana’s 26 fourth-quarter comebacks with the 49ers.

Imagine. Montana could have had a coach tell him, “Relax. You’re losing. Don’t worry. Save your energy. We’ll try again next week.” But he didn’t. Winning was the point of playing the game. And he played until the last second on the clock.

Imagine, instead, the coaches of the losers, the teams that played against Montana, the Saints, Bengals, Lions, and Dolphins … maybe they should have saved all the blood, sweat, and tears of coming in second. If they had known the 49ers would come back and win, maybe they would have given up earlier in the game and saved a lot of strained muscles and broken bones.

Imagine if Mr. Boss Man coached football with the same confidence he coaches teenagers. “Chance are you’re gonna lose. Give up now.”

Give up does not make winning teams in football. And it does not build winning lives for people either. In the famous Oak School experiment, Harvard professor Robert Rosenthal’s research into the “Pygmalion phenomenon” showed the impact on students of a teacher’s expectations.

“Simply put,” as reported in The National Teaching and Learning Forum, “when teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do; when teachers do not have such expectations, performance and growth are not so encouraged and may in fact be discouraged in a variety of ways.”

Regarding our youth and sex, success is closer at hand than what many would have us believe. Parents want their children to understand the benefits … the physical, emotional, social, educational, and economic benefits … of saving sex for marriage.

Students increasingly want to be encouraged to succeed in their relational and educational goals by adults who help them maintain their commitment to sexual abstinence.

For those adolescents aged 12-19 who have had sex, 63 percent of them wished they had waited. They are prime candidates for hearing that they can return to a sexually abstinent lifestyle. Change is possible.

And for all of these parents and students, there are many dedicated educators who are able to undergird these personal desires and goals with medically accurate information and lessons that build student confidence and give students the skills to maintain their personal commitment to abstinence until marriage.

The parade is ready. They are ready to march. The only thing holding them back from success is Mr. Boss Man and his fellow leaders at the front.

“Sure, we can start marching toward success,” the leaders tell the group. “But why bother? You’re never going to make it.”

 

September 5, 2005 – Succeeding at Failure

 See Archives for past editorials.

Curing a Disease that Wasn’t

July 17, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

A bright, bold sweater hangs from the thrift store rack.  Beautiful on the hanger, a telltale loose strand of yarn hangs from the hem just under the last bottom bright gold button.  At $5.00, the bargain tempts the unwary.

But for those who take time to look, inspecting the spot where the yarn dangles, a trail of empty loops signals a sweater coming undone.  One stitch at a time, six inches of hem have disappeared.  Scissors have snipped the evidence.  But a slow tug pulls another inch of knitted loops off the hem.

Like sweaters, stories can unravel.  Consider the recent development of a vaccine for the human papillomavirus virus.

Loudly heralded by many liberal groups such as Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women, if you believe the pretty story they are knitting with haste, you might believe they have been on the frontlines of the battle to protect women from cervical cancer.

But the facts tell a different story. The facts speak to a long campaign of deceit promoted by pro-sex groups over the past ten years to pretend that there was no disease to cure that a little latex couldn’t prevent. Looking carefully at the edges where truth has been snipped, it is possible to tug at a loose fact and find a story just one second of truth away from unraveling.

Loose Thread No. One

The first word I heard of human papillomavirus (HPV) six years ago was at a meeting of abstinence educators.  HPV was one of over twenty five sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) that abstinence educators were teaching in their medically accurate sex education classes.

Where was Planned Parenthood back then?  They were constructing a vicious and medically inaccurate campaign aimed at destruction of abstinence education.  What was Planned Parenthood saying about human papillomavirus (HPV) back then?  They called the mention of HPV a scare tactic of radical right-wing fanatics.

According to Planned Parenthood and NOW, HPV was just one of many sexual kill-joys that conservatives used to deprive adolescents of their “right” to express their “natural” sexual urges with wholesome activities such as oral sex with dental dams and outercourse.  Once infected and threatened with possible cervical cancer, the “cure” of choice promoted by these groups was a pap smear…a belated opportunity to tell a woman she has cancer caused by a politically conservative virus.

Loose Thread No. Two

Where was The National Organization for Women (NOW) back then when cervical cancer was killing more women annually than HIV?  Linking arms with Planned Parenthood for more medically inaccurate sound-bites, NOW decried the fear-based claims of conservative religious fanatics.  Cervical cancer killing women?  If so, NOW took no steps to alert women to the connection between HPV and cervical cancer.  Worse still, NOW put duct tape on the lips of anyone bold enough to mention HPV.

As recently as 2004, at their conference held in Las Vegas, NOW leadership rejected an opportunity to educate women about HPV.  Asked to support a resolution for Cervical Cancer Education, NOW leadership quickly pulled the resolution off the table and into the back room, where “privately,” the NOW Board promptly banished this call for an educational effort to tell women about HPV and its link to cervical cancer.

Loose Thread No. Three

The first time I heard condoms do not prevent infection from HPV was six years ago, a medically accurate fact taught by an abstinence educator.  The second, third, fourth, and fifth times I heard the medically accurate truths about condoms and their failure to provide anything at all like “safe sex” were at medical conferences hosted by agencies supporting abstinence education as a reasonable and necessary health response to the STD epidemic.

As far back as 2001, a comprehensive, medically accurate review of all research on condoms published by the National Institute of Health/Centers for Disease Control (NIH/CDC) revealed the paucity of evidence supporting condoms as “protection” against the many STDs of this epidemic.  The information in this report explains why one in five people today over the age of twelve is now infected with genital herpes.  It also explains why condoms do not prevent infections by HPV leading to cervical cancer.

Where were Planned Parenthood and NOW back then?  Putting more duct tape on their lips.  Wagging their fingers at the terrible, awful, big, bad conservatives who insisted on relating these medically accurate facts to the need for abstinence sex education programs.  Waiting for a cure for a disease they didn’t want to discuss.

And now…when there is a vaccine to prevent the disease that “doesn’t exist”…suddenly members of Planned Parenthood and NOW are willing to talk about HPV…the “conservative virus” that didn’t really matter…back then.

We’re all grateful for a vaccine that will prevent cervical cancer.  But some of us have been fighting the cause of women’s health and prevention of cervical cancer for the past ten years.  Others, sadly, have been carrying briefcases filled with duct tape.

 

July 11, 2005 –  Medically Accurate Cowards

April 2, 2004 – Sex Education: Spinning the Truth

See Archives for past editorials.

How Young Is Too Young?

July 10, 2004

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

I think she still holds it against me. As a teen today, it’s absolutely ludicrous to think that my niece Katie needs to hold my hand while crossing the street.

But way back when, when Katie was just three, our battle of wills produced fierce tears.  On a shopping trip, I, her aunt, was entrusted with her safety.  All was going well…until the moment I grabbed Katie’s hand before we crossed the busy parking lot in front of the store.

Katie, jerked her hand away from me.  Hearing a car’s motor on the left, I reached out to catch her hand again.  It took us a full minute to establish that she was going to hold my hand as we crossed the street.  And, if today she still holds it against me, I must confess…I’m not sorry for insisting on winning the battle.

Life is like that.  One minute we’re too young to be entrusted with a task.  And then we aren’t.

Life is like that.  One minute we’re held back.  And then, crossing the line in the sand, we are suddenly old enough to be trusted with new responsibilities.  It’s a simple principle.  And yet, it’s a principle some want us to ignore in the most significant area of life for American teens today.

Today, we are embroiled in a national debate about how to handle sexual behavior related to teens and adolescents.  In a surprising upheaval of logic, there are “sexperts” who cannot find any line in the sand at all to dictate a time when sex is absolutely, unequivocally and irrevocably inappropriate for young people.

Instead, these “sexperts” have declared this the “Age of Consent.”  If you can get or give consent, then you are old enough to have sex.

Ignoring the health implications for teens who are sexually active, these “sexperts” wag their fingers in the face of abstinence educators, rejecting any attempt to set a line in the sand.  Who is “ready” for sex, you ask?  Anyone who “consents” to have sex, they answer.

Embracing the philosophy of Kinsey, all sex is good sex…if you can dream it up, if you can manage to perform it, and if it is consensual…then it is good sex.

Like all ideas, pushing to the extreme, we eventually must come to terms with the insanity of insane ideas.  Consider the case of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).  According to Wikipedia, it is “a New York City and San Francisco-based unincorporated organization that opposes the use of age as the sole criterion for deciding whether minors can legally engage in sexual relations.

“NAMBLA defends what it asserts to be the right of minors to explore their sexuality on a much freer basis. It has resolved to ‘end the oppression of men and boys who have freely chosen mutually consenting relationships.’”

Checking out the NAMBLA website, disturbing evidence exists of adults promoting sex between grown men and young boys.  You can order a newly revised copy of Boys Speak Out on Man/Boy Love, promoted with a picture of a grown man dancing with a boy barely taller than his elbows.  Chapters include “It Shouldn’t Be a Crime to Make Love,” written by Bryan, age twelve and a half.  An interview with Thijs, age eleven, declares “I’m Not Going To Be Kept Away from Him.”  How about it, “Sexperts?”  Is consent considered justification for this type of adult/child sex?

Or what about a 2002 book written by Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex?  Widely promoted as a book to challenge “widespread anxieties” about pedophilia, Ms. Levine was toasted by national media and given every opportunity to convince Americans that science supports positive benefits for sex between adults and children.

Publisher University of Minnesota Press called Levine’s book “a radical, refreshing, and long overdue reassessment of how we think and act about children’s and teens’ sexuality.”  James Kincaid, author of “Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting,” called it “a crusading book that is also kind, a very rare phenomenon, and it comes down always on the side of trusting not only our kids and their pleasures but our own.”

Taking up the banner of “consensual sex,” most recently the Journal of Adolescent Health stated that “…there are no scientific data suggesting that consensual sex between adolescents is harmful.”  Seeking to justify their assertion, they pointed to the “many positive mental health consequences” of adolescent sex.

Finally, and most sadly, the Centers of Disease Control has now joined in the chorus of “sexperts” protecting sex for adolescents.  At their 2006 National STD Prevention Conference in Jacksonville, Florida, the CDC had a chance to draw a line in the sand.  And they failed.

At the CDC conference, standing before a crowd of national experts on STDs, Dr. Patricia Sulak sought to find common ground between the “sexperts” and abstinence educators.  Surely, she challenged them, we can agree on this one thing.  Can’t we agree on an age too young for sex?

NO! the room erupted in unison.  After all, this is the age of consent.  If sex is consensual, that’s good enough for them.  If you are wondering what the CDC has to say about this…so am I.

How about it, CDC?  How young is too young when it comes to children and sex?

 

July 11, 2005 – Medically Accurate Cowards

November 19, 2004 – Kinsey: Brave New World?

See Archives for past editorials.