Teen Masturbation Every Day Keeps Real Sex Away, Claims British Government

A local branch of British government in Northern England recently circulated a new pamphlet to parents, teenagers, teachers and other youth workers. Entitled "Pleasure," the pamphlet recommends that every teenager should masturbate to orgasm every day in order to delay having sex with someone else.

Now, I'm no prude. We all know people of pretty much any age over ten usually discover masturbation at some time or another. Even the Bible doesn't directly address the issue of masturbation. But British parents were not warned or asked for consent before this pamphlet was distributed. This conflicted with parental teaching in the home and displayed lack of respect for families' culture and religious traditions. According to ABC News and the Huffington Post, many within the U.K. community are up in arms.

Plus, there are abundant statistics that prove the last 30 years' theories of teaching more to kids about sex in schoolroom settings has only raised their curiosity instead of keeping it at bay. Kids have become more likely, not less, to experiment with all kinds of sex.

In 1989, Adams High School in Commerce City, Colorado became the first school in the United States to distribute free condoms on campus. Within three years, the birth rate among girls at Adams increased to 31 percent above the national average, which at that time was 58.1 births per 1,000 students.

By 1986, a poll for Planned Parenthood by Louis Harris and Associates states: "The truth is, Planned Parenthood's sex education programs have backfired, actually increasing teen pregnancies...teens who have taken comprehensive sex education courses have a fifty percent higher rate of sexual activity than their "unenlightened" peers."

Planned Parenthood's Family Planning Perspectives further reported that adolescents who have previously taken a sex ed course are "somewhat more likely" than those who have not to initiate sexual activity at ages 15 and 16.

Hooking up with other kids for all types of casual sex - called "friends with benefits" - did not become a known formal phenomenon until the mid 1990's (and especially since President Clinton announced that oral sex isn't sex). See my previous article on Hooking Up and the increase in diseases like HPV and HIV here.

Unfortunately, our sex education systems here in the U.S. and in the U.K. are both based on research by Alfred Kinsey, who "discovered" that even babies can have orgasms and children are sexual beings. The way he got this "information" is morally and legally questionable. Yet, he is sex education's hero.

Possible negative effects from early and regular masturbation:

1. Limits satisfaction with other partners: According to current information on the WebMD website, constant masturbation can limit a person's ability to achieve satisfaction with another sexual partner. In auto-eroticism (self-pleasuring), a person often learns to stimulate themselves in ways their future partners do not measure up to. WebMD also sites research that states young men who masturbate regularly, who have high levels of male hormones, may be more prone to prostate cancer, but the risk lowers in older men.

2. Can become an obsession:Medhelp.org displays questions from people seeking help for depression due to an inability to discontinue obsessive masturbation.

For those who believe in the Bible, all this could give good credence to the many verses in both the Old and New Testament about avoiding lustful temptations and saving oneself for marriage.

Sources:

-"U.K. Government Encourages Teen Masturbation?" Cornelia Treptow, ABC News London, 7/14/09, http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/Story?id=8072314&page=1.

-"Orgasm a Day Campaign Directed at British Schoolchildren Sparks Controversy," Huffington Post 7/12/09, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/12/ogasm-a-day-campaign-dire_n_230221.html.

-Adams High School statistics: "Condom Distribution Increases Birth Rate," Voice for the unborn, October/December 1992, p. 6.

-Poll for Planned Parenthood by Louis Harris and Associates, American Teens Speak: Sex, Myths, TV, and Birth Control, 1986, Lou Harris Project No. 864012.

-William Marsiglio and Frank L. Mott, "The Impact of Sex Education on Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use and Premarital Pregnancy Among American Teenagers," Planned Parenthood's Family Planning Perspectives, July/August 1986, p. 151.

-The Connection: Abortion, Permissive Sex Instruction, and Family Planning: What the Pro-Abortion Experts Say and What the Pro-Life and other Experts Say, Life Research Institute. January 2000 Revision, www.geocities.com/kekogut/promiscuity/connect.pdf.

-"Masturbation: 5 Things You Didn't Know," David Freeman, WebMD 4/14/09, http://men.webmd.com/features/masturbation-5-things-you-didnt-know?page=2.

-MedHelp Depression Community, http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Depression/masturbation/show/364828.