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"Free" sex turns out not to be free after all!
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First, there was Free Sex! Remember those self-dramatizing college students and other enthusiasts of the counter culture who proclaimed that their parents were uptight, particularly about sexual matters, marriage just a piece of paper, sex something to be enjoyed with...whomever? Pregnancy was just something to be easily avoided with birth control. Remember "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with"?
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A generation later, though, we found out that Free Sex isn't free. In fact, it came with a pretty high cost- an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) including a new one called- AIDS. One fifth of American adults infected with incurable viral STDs such as herpes, hpv, or hepatis. A 600% increase in genital warts among 18 to 24 year-olds since 1968. Millions of women who are sterile from STDs like gonorrhea and chlamydia. Chlamydia, unknown in the 60s and 70s, now may be the most widespread STD in the U.S.
Out-of-wedlock pregnancies shot through the roof, rising by more than 500%. More than a million children born each year without fathers. AWOL dads linked to every major social problem including higher incidences of: infant mortality, domestic violence, poverty, juvenile crime, violent crime, poor performance in schools.
As years passed we increasingly heard from the sexually liberated not about the joys of a world without rules, but of the emotional costs of uncommitted, free sex. A former sorority social director at Indiana University says, I was pretty bitter toward men my senior year. I didn't trust any of them.
In a Dear Abby letter a 20 something woman tells of her passionate one-week fling with a good-looking man at a vacation resort. Two months later, after finding out that she is pregnant, she finds out that Mr. Goodlooking has no interest in talking with her and hangs up before she is able to tell him that she is carrying his child.
In a rare moment of candor, a boy confesses after four weeks of having sex as often as I wanted, I was tired of her. I didn't see any point in continuing the the relationship... I finally left her, which made me feel even worse, because I could see she was hurting.
And if forbidden fruits are no longer forbidden for adults, the teen market can't be far behind. But in a society which worships youth, many of the young already feel old: A girl in the ninth grade who had sex with many boys the year before says, I already feel so old.
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The emotional costs of casual, short-term sexual relationships hit hard on sexually active teenage girls who have a six times higher risk of attempting suicide than girls who haven't have sex. But even without attempted suicide, free sex has brought a legacy of worry and anxiety. Teens who use to worry about who likes whom now worry do I have an AIDS? or is she pregnant? Then there is the shame, guilt about using someone you didn't really care that much about, the damaged relationships, the inability to trust among the sexually liberated.
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Many wonder, like the Sheryl Crowe song says, if it makes you feel happy, then it can't be bad; if it makes you feel happy, then why do you look so damn sad?
We learned that sex makes you feel good, but it can kill you or make you sterile. We hear that to be happy you need to be sexy. Only losers and nerds are missing out on the fun, but then why do so many sexually active girls try to take their own lives?
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