Some Thoughts about Drunk Driving and Unprotected Sex (Which Will be Less Racy Than it Sounds)

I took a speech class in college. What was remarkable about this particular class was that it was the single most conservative assemblage of people that I was ever a part of. At Texas A&M. Where, by my junior year, I spent most of my social time at church and/or with people I knew from church. (Sure, it was a Methodist church, but still.)

For example, we were routinely assigned impromptu one-minutes speeches. I remember responding to the prompts "What is your favorite book?" and "What would be your dream job?" In a class of about fifteen people, eight or nine people gave their speeches about the Bible and being a missionary, respectively. (Mine were Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant and writer for TV Guide, if you're curious.)

But this is really just background information. My actual point is about a speech given by one of my classmates and a serious case of esprit d'escalier it gave me. His speech was about abstinence-only education--he was for it, as you may have surmised from the background information.

His main simile was that sex education that includes information about all the risks that sex entails but also information about how to minimize risks with birth control would be like telling kids that drunk driving is bad, but if you're going to drive drunk, you should only drink X amount, or you should do Y and Z to make the drunk driving marginally safer.

Now, what I wish responded in the debate portion of the class that followed is this: that's a bad simile. Drunk driving is a much weaker metaphor for sex than plain old drinking alcohol is. Drinking and sex are similar in that they are both dangerous if done irresponsibly and/or by people who are too young to handle the experience. However, both are entirely appropriate in particular situations. For example, sex is for constructing babies, a glass of wine with dinner is for fending off heart disease (or whatever. Wine is gross). Responsible adults, who kids in school will hopefully grow up to be, will someday in all probability engage in both of those behaviors and it will be totally fine.

Furthermore, lots of teens will engage in those behaviors no matter what you tell them. They should be educated about how to avoid the worst consequences of them. That's why there is drunk driving education. If we were all going to pretend that the only way to avoid the evils of drinking is to never ever ever drink at all (the way that abstinence-only education programs pretend that the only way to avoid the evils of sex is to never ever ever have sex at all), then why do we hammer home "Don't Drink and Drive"?

Things are a lot different now than there were in 2005, when I actually wanted to make this point, but I feel a little better now anyway.