Author Archives: jtjim

Kiss, Kiss, I Love You

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

September 12, 2005

Sitting in airport lounges for four months, I have been surrounded by human love in action.

Cars driving up to the check-in curbside, trunk lids opening, bags being piled with sweaters…hugs, kisses and more hugs.

Travelers with time on their hands stroll through airport shops filled with scarves, stuffed toys, and boxes of chocolate, a perfect place to grab an offering for family waiting at home.  I missed you.

Mothers and fathers, like families of ducks, lead a trail of small children dragging midget rolling suitcases through the airport.  Blankets are spread on the floor, tired Teddy bears, mussed hair, fussy tears, and sleepy bundles…a mother leans over, I love you.

Tonight as I sit waiting for the boarding call on my final flight home, I snatch time to call those I love.  I leave a short message telephone for my daughter.  I miss her.  Can we meet for lunch when I get home this week? Love you, Mom.

I connect with my son three thousand miles away.  It’s great to hear your voice!  He surprises me with news that he might be able to fly home to visit me in two weeks.  My heart lifts.

My husband is still at work, but I leave a message with my flight number and arrival time.  I close my eyes and see him standing as always just ahead of me, arms extended for both my suitcase and my hug.    It’s been a great trip, but I’m really looking forward to seeing you.  I’ve missed you!

And finally, the call over the speaker comes.  I follow in line down the tunnel to the open plane door, stow my bags and click my seatbelt shut.  Faintly, I hear my husband’s return call on my cell phone.  There’s just enough time before the pilot tells us to turn off all electronic devices.  Yes, I’m finally on my way home.  Can’t wait to see you.  Love you, too!

I close my eyes as the last few people shuffle bags overhead.  Behind me, one seat over, a woman, like me, makes use of the last few minutes before they close the door to call home.  It’s a familiar call.  Hearing her pass along the brief details of flight arrival, the softness in her voice lets you know someone is waiting to welcome her home.   Yes, the plane is on time.  I’ll see you soon.  Kiss, kiss.  Love you.

What does this all have to do with sex and teaching abstinence until marriage?  Nothing.  And everything.

Nothing  —  Kiss, kiss…I love you.  So much love flows through an airport. Strands of love stretching around the globe renewed with simple hugs, short cell phone messages, and postcards carefully written over cups of coffee.  No sex.  But, oh, the magnitude of love offered and accepted.

And everything. —  Abstinence until marriage is a message about the purity of love, a gift we can treasure and share anywhere at anytime with anyone.  Love without sex affirmed as supremely worthy is no small accomplishment in a society that has led young people to believe that, for love to matter, sex must be involved.

Returning home…my eyes hold back tears as I think of once again being able to talk and spend quiet moments with my husband.  It’s been a long summer of trips leaving home.  Hotel rooms.  Rental cars.  Business meetings.  Conferences.

Yet…returning home…month after month, year after year, to be greeted by my husband of thirty years, is a renewal of love unending.  It is a reason to love traveling, if only for the coming home again.

Airports are places where goodbyes build opportunities for reflecting on what makes life worthwhile.  One goodbye, a hug and a kiss, and love held pure over thousands of miles and hundreds of days because it lives in the heart.  A truth about love worth remembering…and teaching.

 

April 11, 2005 – Why I Teach Abstinence

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Succeeding at Failure

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

September 5, 2005

Timken High School in Canton, Ohio, has succeeded in setting a new record.  Sixty-five of the girls attending Timken are pregnant.

This record is matched by another startling local statistic.  According to the Canton Health Department, out of 586 babies born through July at local hospitals, 104 of the babies had mothers between the ages of 11 and 19.

Nationally, last week, radio and television talking heads picked up this story and ran with it.  Outrageous, they shouted.  Outrageous!  What a dismal record of failure!

Failure?  Really?

Think about it.  Timken girls and boys have succeeded at one thing.  They have succeeded in absorbing the messages of modern American culture and incorporating those messages into their lives.

Reality television validates casual sex between “consenting” guys and gals.  So Timken guys and gals consented.

Popular entertainment idols jump in and out of bed so fast that we lose count.  So Timken teens played like they are stars of the silver screen.

“Sexperts” insist that teens are incapable of resisting sexual temptations.  So Timken teens didn’t.

“Sexucators” go into classrooms and use false promises of “protection” and “safe sex” to downplay the true failure rates of condoms.  Sex is fun, not risky.  So Timken teens reach for promises of good times.

Rap and sports heroes brag about the number of women they conquer…and leave.  So Timken males fade into the background as the girls are counted by statisticians.

And sadly, American culture runs away from defining marriage as an expected standard for raising children.  So Timken teens will be unmarried parents.

If you consider what we are teaching our children, it appears that Timken teens have simply excelled at learning what they have been taught.  They are not alone.

Stella is a pregnant teen who doesn’t attend Timken.  She and her boyfriend were really “serious.”  So they had sex.  Now he’s gone and Stella is pregnant.

Sure, her feelings are hurt at being dumped by her boyfriend.  But Stella likes being pregnant.  She looks forward to being a mother and having a baby to hold.  And maybe, just maybe, her boyfriend will come back.

Next week, Stella’s friends and family are throwing her a baby shower.  Her aunt has brought over a baby bed and stroller.  And everyone is getting excited, anticipating her approaching due date.

Statisticians will count Stella as an unfortunate unwed pregnant teen.  But in the real world where Stella lives, she is making a family using the pattern she has been given.

She had sex because she was serious with her boyfriend.  And she is having a baby because she is pregnant.  Stella has grown up in a world where babies enter our lives as casually as new cars and prom dresses.

If you talk with Stella and her friends…and I suspect the young girls of Timken high…they have the same eternal dream of women going back thousands of years.  They long to be mothers and raise children.   And they are.

They have learned what “sexucators” have been teaching.  Babies are no longer the expected product of a married couple committed to each other for life.  Marriage, sex, love, infatuation, fun, babies and families…all of it is up for grabs…depending on the mood of the day and the luck of the dice.

Is it failure when 65 girls at Timken High School are pregnant?  Not if they have succeeded in learning what we have been teaching them.

 

October 29, 2004 – Food for the Brain

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Planning to Have an Emergency

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

August 29, 2005

It is called emergency contraception.  By any other name, Roget’s Thesaurus calls it a crisis, a highly volatile, dangerous situation requiring immediate remedial action.

We’re all familiar with emergencies.  The water pipe that breaks and floods the house…

…the car brakes that fail, sending you sailing through the intersection right under a red light…

…the flames erupting from the skillet on the stove, burning oil popping onto wood cabinets and kitchen curtains…

…the category four hurricane bearing down on your coastal home…

…the tight chest pains making you collapse onto the snow bank you’ve been shoveling…

…all of them…dangerous situations requiring immediate remedial action.

It used to be called emergency contraception for a good reason.  It implied that thoughtful, careful people were going about their lives, following prudent actions, taking care to avoid emergencies…when all of a sudden…an emergency happened…totally out of the blue…unexpected…unanticipated…and outside of our control.

Emergency contraception?  Where is the emergency?

The campaign to provide emergency contraception over the counter to all women, and the girls who would one day be women, belies the very essence of its name.  The Morning After…in the light of day, with both feet on the ground, when it comes to mind that we had an emergency last night…there’s a better remedy for this type of emergency than taking a little pill

The remedy for the morning after is engaging the brain on the night before.  Yet, the biggest fans of emergency contraception are those who oppose abstinence education, who reject the idea that children should learn sex is best inside marriage.

Repackaging “the morning after pill” as emergency contraception is a public relations game of the first order.  Sheila, the director of a pregnancy clinic, attests to this.  As the media blitz first put emergency contraception on the front page, calls to her clinic skyrocketed…calls from men.  Over three-fourths of the questions for Sheila about using the “emergency” pill came from men.

Like professional hucksters, proponents for over-the-counter access to emergency contraception point to the married woman whose birth control failed.  They point to rape victims.  Yet for these emergencies, we can create effective access to emergency contraception.  It doesn’t require putting this pill in easy reach of teen girls.

Truth is, if you think you might be planning to have an emergency, there’s a better way.  Plan to not have an emergency.  Plan sex for the right time and with the right person.  The Centers for Disease Control says the healthiest time for sex should be in a lifelong, monogamous, faithful relationship.  Mom and dad call it marriage.

Plan B, for emergencies, works best when we know what a real emergency is.  And anyone who wants to give us a plan for emergencies owes us the best plan of all…a plan for avoiding them.  Plan A.  Abstinence until marriage.

 

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

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One Stop Shopping

This week, experts around the nation are convening in Washington, D.C. to review grant proposals submitted for federal abstinence education funding.  There are still many misconceptions about what students learn in abstinence programs.  This week’s column is dedicated to a consideration of what we teach our students and how we teach it.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

August 8, 2005

Comprehensive sex education…it’s being sold all over America.  The best thing about comprehensive sex education, we parents are told, is that it teaches our children everything.   That’s right…everything.

It teaches children how to say no…and then it teaches them that they can pleasure each other with mutual masturbation.

It teaches children how to say no…and then it teaches them how to put on a condom.

It teaches children to ask their parents…and then it hands them the address to the nearest clinic where they can get birth control and abortions without telling their parents.

It teaches children that some people save sex until marriage…and then it teaches children that marriage isn’t for everyone.

What is the true message comprehensive sex education gives our teens?  This is only clear when put into context with a real child.

In my first interview with an expert who had been teaching comprehensive sex education for over thirteen years, I came to the end of the hour totally perplexed.  “Safe sex”, perfect use, neutral values, healthy attitudes?  In a moment of frustration, I asked this expert about “my Daughter Debbie.”  What if “Daughter Debbie” sat in on your sex education class?

It’s a simple question, and I have tagged it the Ultimate Test Question for all sex education programs.  If you want to know what all the fancy talk and clever rationales mean, just ask someone about “your own Daughter Debbie.”

13-year-old Daughter Debbie

OK, so, what do you really teach?

What if my 13-year-old Daughter Debbie sat through all of your lessons on sex education and came to you as you were packing to leave with this question:

My boyfriend is at the high school.  He’s 16, and we’ve been talking about having sex.  It seems like if we use a condom we’ll be safe.  I’ve talked it over with some of my friends, and they’re already having sex.  We’re mature.  We know what we’re doing.  Everyone says if we use a condom that we’ll be safe.  I’m thinking I’m going to go ahead…What do you think?

In every interview with every adult who teaches comprehensive sex education, I have concluded with this question.  Not one of these adults would express any opinion to Debbie in answering her question.

At best, several said they would do a quick re-run of all the lessons and options presented.  They might encourage her to talk with “someone she trusts.”  I suggested that Debbie had chosen them as a trustworthy person.  They said she needed someone else.  I mentioned her boyfriend and her girlfriends.  Well…they paused.  And silence set in.

Thinking perhaps I had caught them off-guard, I suggested a possible response:  “As gently and quietly as possible, what if you told Debbie that ultimately she would have to make up her own mind, but that since she had asked you, you would have to say you would not recommend having sex at this point in her life.  Could you tell her that?”

“No,” came the quick reply each time.  “We don’t teach values.”

Most of these educators had been in “the business” for more than ten years.

Consider this additional fact concerning Daughter Debbie.  At 13, she and her sixteen year-old-boyfriend are considering the kind of sex called statutory rape in many states.

Can we really call it conscionable sex education to deny her the wisdom of our counsel—especially when she asks us?  “No, Debbie, I do not believe it is wise for you to begin having sex with your boyfriend.  Can I offer you some help in dealing with this problem?”

One stop shopping that sells children anything they want at any time in their lives is the core of the problem with sex education in America.  If we fail to place a value on sex, if we fail to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate, if we fail to make value judgments, then we have no reason to be surprised when our children become pregnant and infected with STDs.

One stop shopping…educators who give our children a free pass to do whatever they want when they feel they are ready to do whatever they want…and educators who give them the tools to do it…are they part of the solution…or part of the problem?

One stop shopping…if we tell Daughter Debbie that she can buy anything in the store whenever she wants and that we will write the check for her…then we shouldn’t be surprised if she buys sex with her boyfriend.

 

One Stop Shopping was first printed April 16, 2004

See Archives for more past editorials.

Signs of Life

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

August 1, 2005

On the one hand, mankind has been engaged in an eternal quest for the explanation of human existence…where did we come from?  And this debate eventually gets reduced to the basic test…looking for signs of life in the primordial soup.

Where did the first living cell come from, the building block of life?  In the 1950s, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago was busy researching early earth.  Bringing together the work of several scientists, Stanley Miller created a chamber with only hydrogen, water, methane, and ammonia to simulate the possible atmosphere of the first earth.

To speed up “geologic time,” Miller boiled the water.  Then, instead of exposing the mix to ultraviolet light, he used an electric discharge to simulate lightning. After just a week, Miller had a residue of compounds. He analyzed them and the results were electrifying: Organic compounds had been formed, most notably some of the “building blocks of life,” amino acids.

Miller’s experiment and his small collection of amino acids were instantly heralded as the first evolutionary sign of life.  At the same time, other scientists were beginning to break into the DNA code to unravel the chemical design of life.

Their claims of support for evolution have not gone unchallenged.  One of the most striking discussions on the possible origins of life is Michael Behe’s book, Darwin’s Black Box.  A biochemist at Lehigh University, Behe explains complex chemical concepts in plain English, disputing the probability of evolution by chance.

Miller and Behe are two of the many experts at the center of raging debates about human life.  Amazon posts 477 reviews from Behe’s readers alone. On the one hand, peering millions of years into the past, we are feverishly seeking the first sign of life.

On the other hand, with evidence in front of us in the here and now of the most perfectly designed living beings, we are engaged in another feverish battle to ignore signs of life.

Delivering the decision of the Supreme Court in 1973, Justice Blackmun recorded the history of “attitudinal change” regarding the “potentiality of human life.”  For the Pythagoreans, “the embryo was animate from the moment of conception, and abortion meant destruction of a living being.”  In other words, they saw signs of life.  And for Blackmun, this was evidence of their backward thinking and inflexible dogma.

As a modern Intellectual, Justice Blackmun wrestled with “the raw edges of human existence,” looking for signs of life.  But this was hard for him because of the distraction of pollution.  Pollution?  Yes, pollution…it’s right there in Blackmun’s decision.  The Supreme Court can’t find signs of life because of pollution, even as Stanley Miller claimed signs of life in theoretical primordial soup?

For Justice Blackmun, the science of life was not a concrete matter based on fact.  It was a problem with “racial overtones,” complicated, fraught with emotion and subject to “attitudinal change.”  For Stanley Miller, either it was an amino acid, or it wasn’t.  Attitude and emotion had nothing to do with signs of life.

In 1973, Blackmun struggled to find even “the potentiality of human life.”  In 2000, Justice Breyer evaluated a pile of evidence demonstrating more than life’s “potentiality” and declared for the court… “We don’t care.”

Reading through the Court Decision of Stenberg v. Carhart, a truly civilized human must cringe at the signs of life described.  Clinical details of the doctor’s procedure describe  instrumental disarticulation or dismemberment of the fetus or the collapse of fetal parts to facilitate evacuation from the uterus.  The Court writes of problems in the dismemberment of life that can result in a ‘free floating’ fetal head that can be difficult for a physician to grasp and remove.

On the one hand, thousands of the brightest minds in science are intent on defending the evidence of life implied in a simple amino acid.  On the other hand, hundreds of the most educated minds in America are intent on denying absolute signs of life inside the womb.

Has the best of human intellect and the purest of the human spirit reduced us to this level?  Pushing aside the facts, we find signs of life when we want to?

Supreme Court Decision:  Stenberg v. Carhart

Decision Issued June 28, 2000

http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html

December 10, 2004:  The Best Part of Snuggling