Ryan ChartrandI am writing in response to guest commentator William Harman’s article on sex education and policies (“New sex education, policies needed,” April 5). His views are completely unfounded. It is not the responsibility of the “elders of the society” to ensure that young people have sex safely.
In fact, it is quite the opposite. It is best to encourage and teach the young not to have pre-marital sex in the first place.
The problems he writes about (teen pregnancy, the AIDS/HIV epidemic, etc.) are results of this lack of abstinence education. These issues would not exist in the first place if we fixed the root of the problems, not the offshoots of them. And in response to his plea to the Catholic Church, or any church, to “change its policies,” the only way this could be accomplished is if God were to change his “policies.”
Churches don’t just make up arbitrary rules to ensure the discontent and unsatisfactory sexual lives of its members, but instead they follow the laws put forth by God that are meant to protect and bless his children.
Furthermore, I don’t believe that aborting “any and all pregnancy that cannot be taken care of properly” would save any of the “many innocent lives” that Harman so vehemently writes of – it would end them. And while Harman is correct when he writes that not every one can be born into an “ideal” family, should that not be our goal? There is no easy solution to this problem, but it is certainly not the new sex education programs and policies that Harman proposes.
Caitlin Page
History freshman