…well nevermind.

Let me just respond this way:

“…what if most families don’t take that responsibility seriously? Do we condemn the responsible ones to shoulder the burden for the irresponsible? You can only live in an ivory tower for so long.”

We’re talking about sexual responsibility. Barring date rape and plain out rape, it takes two people to have sex.

We’re not talking about second hand smoke. If the parents that do take it seriously talk to their kids about sexual issues, the only people that are being “burdened” are the ones that don’t. Equating washing your hands with sexual activity is completely maniacal. Unless you believe there is a heavy emotional and spiritual component to washing your hands.

You see this is a classic case of “Progressives” telling us when the Government should and should not interfere. If we’re preventing adults who supposedly are educated on sex from ending a life, then we should “get out of America’s bedrooms”, but if we believe that the principal arbiter of sexual education should be the parents and not the schools, we’re just sitting in an ivory tower and “burdening” responsible parents (which makes zero sense anyway).

HOWEVER, I personally have no problem with sex education. I honestly don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Where I DO have a problem is public schools handing out condoms to kids instead of leaving THAT responsibility to the family (and if you don’t think that in the mind of a teenager that is an implicit endorsement of teenage sexual activity, then YOU, my dear friend have been hiding in an Ivory Tower for about 20 years).

Now THAT being said, I agree with Obama, and MY point was that projecting our families’ values on a third world country is not smart, and making condoms and microbicides, etc., available is important. The difference is availability. Any teenager can go buy condoms for a couple of bucks at the grocery store. There’s not even an age limit. Not necessarily the case in a third-world country. But RedStater is right about the education being even more important.

I agree - how in the world can we expect people to use condoms to protect themselves and others when we refuse to allow our educators to teach our children how diseases like this are spread and that they are in danger if they do not take steps to protect themselves?

We have gotten over teaching people to wash their hands periodically to protect against contact viruses, but somehow our “family-values” crowd has convinced all of us that talking about sex and its ramifications in the public square is somehow immoral.

“How dare the government have a conversation with my child about things that are the families responsibility?”

Great question - what if most families don’t take that responsibility seriously? Do we condemn the responsible ones to shoulder the burden for the irresponsible?

You can only live in an ivory tower for so long.

Unless obama is willing to go and personally install each condom on men on the “downlow” before they have sex with each other, then again when they have sex with their wives, we can send all the money and condoms in the world and the problem won’t be fixed.
money is not the cure for aids, education and responsiblity are.
It’s not an airborne virus.
-red

Kennedy was a freshman Senator…the last Senator to win the Presidency. Just saying if you’re prepared to support his nomination campaign, be prepared to have him as President.

He did manage to avoid (and rightly so) making the politically incorrect put logically quite correct statement that there is a difference between making condoms available to Jr High students in Topeka, and making it available to sexually active youth and adults in third world Africa.

He also acknowledged President Bush’s putting our money where his mouth is. This administration has spent more on this issue than any previous, even though he is of course an evil Republican mastermind.

Speaking of that, it was good to see Obama and Brownback working on this issue together. Brownback gets a bad rap for being so adamant on the border issue…too bad he’s right about it. Wonder if anyone has his speech?

Last, but certainly not least, this is certainly a MUCH better example of a pastor taking the right stand on political issues in a non-partisan fashion than this example where a pastor decides that his church should not have any political positions and should remain “neutral” and “apolitical” because his poor congregation might be unduly influenced for lack of being able to think for themselves.

Inviting policymakers that have something to contribute on a certain issue is much better than inviting them to stump for their party line and candidacy (e.g. Reverend Falwell’s church in Lynchburg) and there is a distinct difference between the two.

And as far as Barak and Hillary, I’m just not sure Barak is dumb enough to take the chance in 2008. I would personally feel more comfortable with him in 2012 because we will all know more about him. Edwards made the mistake of running too early and he didn’t even pick up his home state.

Barak is stronger, but apart from great speeches, I just don’t see it yet. It also depends on who the Republicans put up. I don’t see anyone to get excited about, except perhaps Newt, and I’m not convinced he can make it.