Dear Friends,

I do apologise for once more bringing bad news to your attention. I’m sure that you must think that I am only interested in “doom and gloom”. But that wouldn’t be true, as those of you who know me better realise.

The reason I write again in negative words is that there are some people with an agenda to “liberate” our children sexually, as the accompanying article illustrates. The study I refer to is being used as the basis for a massive thrust of sex education into our nation’s primary schools. If the content of the trial ready to be run in several South Australian schools is any indication of where this push is headed, we have major objections. In that trial, explicit sexual illustrations and experiments, much of it homosexual, is involved. Enough said!

Here is my article, based on an overview of the study written by the people themselves. Your comments would be appreciated. You are welcome to send the article to your friends also. This subject will also be found in a forthcoming edition of Festival of Light’s “Light” magazine. You can access the study’s by using http://www.google.com “Sex in Australia”

Yours for God’s holiness and love, Geoffrey Bullock.

SEX IN AUSTRALIA

The Australian Study of Health & Relationships, conducted by the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University, Victoria.

Some comments based on the four-page summary of the above study.

1. An Overview

The study was conducted by telephone in 2001-2002. Some 19,307 people aged between 16 and 59 were interviewed. This was made up of 10,173 men and 9,134 women. All were selected randomly Australia-wide and “weighted to reflect the location, age and sex distribution of the 2001 Census.”

There was a 73.1% response. The summary does not indicate whether this represents the 19,307 or whether 19,307 were initially contacted. That one in four people contacted indicated a desire not to participate is significant. It may not mean that these were all conservative people who did not wish to divulge their sex life. But it does mean that the survey cannot be construed to be truly representative of the population’s attitude to sex and sexual relationships.

This is so because the people who answered the survey clearly regarded the subject matter as something to be discussed publicly. Indeed, the summary says the respondents expressed that they were “… not embarrassed by the questions asked.” This is highlighted again by the fact that a quarter of all respondents (37% men & 16% women) had watched X-rated videos, and one in every seven (17% men & 12% women) had visited an Internet sex site.

It also says: “No women cited religious objections … as a reason for not using contraception.” The fact that the many Catholic women who followed the Church’s teachings were not represented in the survey, is indicative of its limitations.

Any survey conducted where the respondents are already biased towards a certain point of view about the subject matter cannot be taken seriously. Therefore, any recommendations the survey makes for future policy action cannot be accepted as representing the true picture.

2. Some Sobering Statistics

Despite the unreliability of the survey, there are some disturbing trends that can be discerned.

(a) The age at which first sexual experience occurs is progressively lowering.

(b) Over three quarters of men and women agreed that premarital sex is acceptable.

(c) 22.6% of women had terminated a pregnancy.

(d) 15.6% of men had paid for sex some time in their lives.

(e) 21.1% of women had been “forced or frightened into unwanted sexual activity”.

(f) 20.2% of men and 16.9% of women had been diagnosed at some time with a sexually transmitted disease.

The reasons for early sexual activity can be found in the concentrated media pursuit of the young over the years since the sixties. Certainly a reversal would occur if the media sought to highlight the problems associated with promiscuity, some of which appear in this survey.

The acceptance of pre-marital sex can also be attributed to the massive media push towards promiscuity. Strangely, three quarters of respondents believed that affairs outside of committed relationships was wrong.

The widespread acceptance of abortion is echoed here. Nearly one in four of the female respondents had an abortion. While this statistic would drop with a correctly assessed survey, it still is far too high.

I find it difficult to believe that nearly one in six Australian men have paid for sex at some time in their lives. While this reflects the bias in the survey, it will certainly be used by those wanting to legalise prostitution.

That one in five women had been coerced into unwanted sexual activity shows the stupidity of promoting promiscuity. It may also account for the high abortion rate.

The survey finds that there is little knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases among the respondents. Strangely, the summary’s Policy Implications section suggests a needed educative emphasis not on the young, but on older people. The only recommendation is to ensure GP’s “are appropriately trained and resourced to effectively diagnose and treat sexually transmissible infections.” We say, tell the young that promiscuity brings these kinds of disasters and encourage them to save sex for marriage.

3. The Survey’s Conclusions

There are several worrying conclusions which the survey summary makes.

(a) “The majority of young people in the final years of school today will have commenced sexual activity, and this highlights the importance of sex education in schools.”

(b) “The declining age at first intercourse … highlights the need to urgently review the teaching of sexuality education in primary school.”

(c) “Few people who had been coerced [into sex] had talked about their experience to others and even fewer to a counsellor, highlighting the need for more widely promoted and accessible services.”

(d) “Given the overwhelming majority of health education and health promotion is focused on heterosexuals, the appropriate representation of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in these activities is long overdue.”

We insist that none of these conclusions are necessary corollaries from the survey. In the case of (a), (b) and (c), the survey assumes several things that must be challenged, viz.:

. That it is desirable for young people to have sexual experiences.

 · That young people will continue to have sexual experiences.

 · That the age at which young people experiment sexually will continue to drop.

 · That sex education will remedy some of the hurtful aspects of the survey results.

 · That sex education is the responsibility of the state through the schooling system.

 · That promotion of counselling services will help people talk fruitfully about their stressful sexual experience.

It is not desirable for young people to experiment sexually. The media promotion of sexual expression and promiscuity in society is largely responsible for the ‘declining age’ phenomenon. If the media switched its promotion to one of sensible restraint, then the age of first sexual expression will no doubt rise.

This propagation of the myth that young people should express themselves sexually at an early age produces a mind-set in many young people that others can be, want to be, and are happy to be, coerced into sexual activity. Such experimentation leads to unnecessary hurts, and can hinder future involvement in sexual activity. It should be taught that sexual awareness can be gained from other than experimental knowledge.

To avoid, or at least limit, the “higher levels of psychosocial distress, smoking, anxiety about sex…” of which the survey summary speaks, an educative emphasis on reducing the expectation of sexual intercourse among young people needs to be cultivated. This must focus on teaching that each person is not an object to be used for one’s sexual expression, but someone to be respected with dignity and care.

Such education will include the health risks associated with sexual intercourse and the failure rate of contraceptives (which the survey illustrates well). It will emphasise that sex is best experienced in a relationship of mutual trust and loving commitment between a man and woman. It will educate with the realisation that parents should be the primary educators of their children.

There is no guarantee that young people will take advantage of counselling services if hurt by a sexual experience. With all these issues, we must ask which is better: prevention or cure? The promotion of better education will limit the need for counselling, because there will be less young people being treated as objects and being forced to ‘have sex’.

In the case of (d), the statement is both misleading and unwarranted. It is misleading in that the promotion of sexual health in the media today covers all aspects of activity. It is unwarranted in that less than 2% of the survey respondents reported in as lesbian, gay or bisexual. Rather, there should be less promotion of the varieties of sexual expression and more promotion of the healthiest context for sexual expression: heterosexual marriage.

Geoffrey Bullock 27th April 2003