Forgiveness, pride, and diaper duty

I'm no prude, in the least, or naive about kids and sex. I work with kids who brag regularly about their sexual activity.

But even I think this is bad news.

"Orgasm a Day" Campaign Directed at British Schoolchildren Sparks Controversy

"A National Health Service leaflet is advising school pupils that they have a 'right' to an enjoyable sex life and that regular intercourse can be good for their cardiovascular health...

...Alongside the slogan 'an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away', it says: 'Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes' physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?'"

Kids are having sex. That is a fact. I work with many kids who are having sex at far too young an age to be responsible for all of its consequences. And a generation of children born to teenage parents is one of the unfortunate consequences from that fact.

But another fact is that kids are not ready for the consequences of sex and need to wait, I believe, until they are adults who can be responsible for their choices. And even then, they should be using reliable protection until they are ready for pregnancy and child rearing in their lives.

I can be wrong on this question, as on any and every question. I frequently am. It's my trademark. I'm beginning to believe it was my given birth name.

But, by my lights, there is nothing mutually exclusive between advocating abstinence for kids as the best option while maintaining some realism that many kids will still have sex and need to know about protection from diseases and pregnancy when that is the case.

The problem in our public discourse is that we polarize questions like this one, and most questions, out of religious, ideological, and whatever sanctimony we can get our hands on and we undermine a more thoughtful, reasonable, realistic, compassionate, good-humored discussion, in my humble, not-so-genius-funny-particularly-dashing-or-otherwise opinion.

We treat our neighbors like our enemies instead of our friends and partners in raising healthy children and in tackling a thousand other priorities because we strangely and inexplicably believe that because we have strong emotions on any particular question that this must signal that we are right and those who disagree are wrong, and that those who agree are our friends and those who disagree are our enemies. It is a bizarre and dysfunctional sanctimony borne of an obsession with power and what we, generally wrongly, believe we can do with it if we only had enough of it. It is now and always has been the most serious weakness in the human race. It is called pride in religious circles. And there is a reason that it is the most deadly sin.

Lord Acton was right. Power does indeed corrupt. All of us. Not some of us. Not theocrats. Not despots. Not totalitarians. Not Nazis. Not Communists. Not kings. Not queens. Not liberals. Not conservatives.

All of us.

Because the context of that bit of wisdom is that power leads people to believe that they can never be wrong - "papal infallibility," in the case of Pope Pius IX and the subject of Acton's criticism with that observation - so proud do they become in its exercise.

We have often just chosen to ignore his advice for much of our history in the democratic world. Thankfully Baron de Montesquieu inspired a separation of powers that has been adopted in one form or another in most liberal democracies that has helped blunt the most serious consequences of this obsession. And thankfully we have chosen to teach our children the more genuinely liberal values inspired by the likes of Voltaire, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, Mary Wolstonecraft, Mark Twain, Harper Lee, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and all the rest, that have taught us to trust our consciences and voice our thoughts openly and honestly and engage one another with respect for differences and appreciation for our common humanity. And, in the case of Twain, to laugh at ourselves. As often as possible.

The consequence our pride has on our public discourse is that it breeds cynicism and suspicion among people who should otherwise be neighbors and friends working through difficult matters of the heart and mind as best they can. And giving themselves and one another plenty of slack to screw those matters up while we learn together.

Whether you are a Christian or not, there is no mistake that the heart of the wisdom of Jesus of Nazareth was love, compassion, and forgiveness. Many of his followers try to wrap his teachings around their own uglier impulses, as do the adherents of almost any religion, ideology, or belief system. It is the most common and most self-deceptive of religious and ideological practices. It happens in almost every circle of the like-minded. It is also responsible for most of the harm we do to one another. I'm fairly confident that Jesus would be proud of how far we've come. And disappointed at how often we still fail to practice that very simple and central virtue in working through our most difficult problems. Twain would just think we're fools. Nice to always be right.

But that message had a very clear practical purpose. We cannot live together and support one another as well as each of us needs without plenty of room to learn how to be worthy of each others' trust. And we cannot learn to do so - noone, not even the best among us - without plenty of space for the learning and the mistakes that are its inseparable companion, with plenty of love and forgiveness for our trespasses, in the meantime.

And we cannot work through questions like this one, in our public discourse, with one another, with our spouses and families, or with our children without that kind of commitment transcending our pride and the suspicion and power obsession it breeds.

The great irony of this era on which generations down the line will comment, undoubtedly, is that for a generation that so denigrated compassion and forgiveness, it will be all of us who will need to be forgiven. For our foolishness as much as our pride.

Hopefully they will do it in good humor.

Cause, if not, we're all gonna need it changin' all those diapers.