Sidney McGill - HEALTHY SEX 101
WHEN THE previous article 'Taking a second look at teaching sex' was published I was eager to find out what my seasoned friend thought. So I called her to hear my fate: 'I like it,' she said, 'but it's too philosophical.' The transaction between us should be clearer to the reader by now. My friend is a renowned retired English teacher and I am just her remedial student taking extra lessons. I fear I may have to resort to a few sweet Julie mangoes to help my case. A passing grade doesn't come easy for me.
Government agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGO's) are teaching safe sex by educating the populace to use a condom or abstain from having sex. The primary goal is to give up-to-date information to young people who have become sexually active in order to prevent the physical consequences of unprotected sex such as unwanted pregnancies, HIV/AIDS and other STIs. The agencies take a realist view 'people are having sex so give them the means to protect themselves.' The view however oversimplifies the problem and does not stress when people should have sex or address the emotional and spiritual damage that is more likely to occur when sex is practised outside of its context with or without protection.
People have sex for many reasons. For some it is to ease depression and anxiety, for others it is to sure up a floundering ego, still others it is emotional dependence mistaken for love, but for a few it is the genuine expression of unconditional love proven over a long period of time. On the plus side, the realist's view demystifies sex, showing it as just another human activity. Sex for the realist therefore could be a profound human experience or simply just for fun. The agencies teach young people that 'they may not be ready for sex as they think they are, for as the sexually experienced often discover, sex is not easy to keep as just fun' (Stanley Hauerwas).
Families and the Church in particular, hold a romantic view -- 'the binding commitment between a loving (heterosexual) couple is the primary reason for sexual involvement'. The committed relationship is exclusive, protecting the couple from sexually transmitted diseases, providing a synergy necessary for developing emotional and spiritual intimacy and economic stability. The context, which is ideally called a marriage, should be a safe haven and socio-economic platform for procreation to occur.
The marriage is protected by a legal covenant and enforced by the expectations of the couple themselves, their relatives and friends. The marriage covenant (fence) keeps the nuclear family contained, which is useful especially when another alternative seems more attractive at the time it takes more than love for the relationship to survive during rocky times. The problem with the romantic view though is that it does not consider what to do with those persons who are incapable of sustaining intimate relationships but need opportunities for sexual expression.
The answer to this problem is to raise children to become healthy, loving partners capable of surviving and flourishing in long-lasting loving relationships. The State and the Church must meet to determine a political agenda that correlates sexual ethic, marriage and having children as essential prerequisites to building the Jamaican socio-economic ideal. A vision that arrests our hearts, becoming an adaptive challenge led by respected bipartisan leaders. A vision that is achievable within five generations. For only then can we offer our children a vision and an enterprise that might make the disciplining of sex as interesting as it is gratifying.
Dr. Sidney McGill is a Marriage and Family Therapist and Executive Director of the Family Counselling Centre
of Jamaica, St. Ann.
