Sex and paradox.

ON SUNDAY NIGHT the CBS program 60 Minutes devoted attention to the problem of teenage pregnancies. The narrator, Ed Bradley, stressed that although the program featured black promiscuity, the rise in teenage pregnancies among whites was very nearly as startling as among blacks. The protagonist of the documentary was a bright and articulate woman in her thirties who looked a little like Lena Horne. She and a black doctor had a well-developed thesis. It was as follows: a) Promiscuous teenage sexual activity in the United States is no greater than in Europe. b) We have many more teenage pregnancies than in Europe, however, because we are a "prudish" society. c) Evidence of our prudishness is the difficulty local school boards have in instituting sex-education programs, which are opposed by many parents. d) These programs are absolutely necessary becase of the failure of parents to undertake such teaching at home.

It all sounds very neat, notwithstanding that the camera goes on to show children who a) have taken the sex courses, but nevertheless b) have borne, and continue to bear, children. But what strikes the viewer most is the sudden switch in the orthodox line of liberal argumentation.

Whenever the subject of religion comes up, whether we are talking about a common prayer recited in the schools, or the discussion and treatment of religion more seriously than merely as an opening ceremony, the First Amendment rampart-watchers rise to declaim that religion is a matter for the home. It is never asked whether, in fact, children are receiving religious instruction at home. But with respect to sex, the moment you get pregnancies or venereal disease, it is quickly inferred that desirable sexual habits are not taught at home, and therefore it is the responsibility of the public schools to teach sex.

You may ask: Why does it not follow, then, that it becomes the function of the public schools to teach religion?

Ah, the rejoinder is anticipated, because, don't you see, public problems are the result of casual sex habits: Last year it cost the public $17 billion to look after illegitimate children.

But there is of course an appropriate counter-rejoinder. It is that instruction in religion diminishes promiscuous sexual activity. If a child is taught to believe that premarital sex is "wrong," and if the conscience is cultivated and trained, among other things by invocations of divine sanction, then illicit sexual activity is by no means eliminated, but it is reasonable to suppose that it diminishes. If a conscience does develop among young people, then they will ask themselves not merely utilitarian questions (is sex fun?) (answer: yes), but also corollary questions (is sex without regard to other factors okay?) (answer: no). It is impossible to deny, however, secular the spirit of the age, that the activation of the conscience by religion is an important factor in the development of character. Why should a society concerned with the sexual explosion not be asking itself these questions, and exploring the absence of religious training in the schools and its possible relationship to abandoned moral sanctions?

It is difficult to take seriously the notion that the problem focused on is the result of the "prudishness" of our society. In the first place, it is hard to think of a society as "prudish" in which Penthouse and Hustler and Screw are available at the local newsstand, in which the local movie theater specializes in R-rated films and the local kiosk rents out X-rated films for a dollar a night, and rock 'n' roll lyrics urge instant capitulation to the libido.

But then, also, what is it that has caused a rise in illegitimate children by a factor of 600 per cent during the past twenty years? Our slide toward prudishness? The opposite, of course, is clear as the nose on the face of Pinocchio. During the past twenty years, we have had a) diminished religious training in the schools, thanks to the Supreme Court; b) a sharp increase in federal care for dependent children, thanks to Congress; and c) a sharp rise in the availability of sex-oriented material, in song, in movies, on television, in books and magazines, thanks to our entrepreneurs. The notion that a 13-year-old girl deep in street wisdom can't learn that the ingestion of a pill suffices to prevent pregnancy, or that a boy can't master the intricacies of a condom without elaborate instruction at school, is as laughable as the proposition that you need classroom instruction in order to teach children how to smoke cigarettes or drink beer.

Our thought leaders have got a lot of paradoxes to face.