Wake up, America! Your kids are having sex

The Washington Post's health section today was devoted to teens and sex. WaPo online hosted a chat with Robert Blum, MD, MPH, PhD of Johns Hopkins, who answered various questions in response to the Post's articles. My favorite was the following

Washington, D.C.: My daughter is 15 and claims that she is bi-sexual. How can this be? Is this normal or is this is just her way of rebelling?

Why is it so hard to believe that teenagers may actually have some understanding of their own sexuality? Having gone to a private, Catholic school for half of my life, even I had an idea. The message that "sex is bad" was pushed on me so much that I'm surprised I have a normal sex life. Here's the thing, peeps--teens are having sex. And they're having oral sex before they hit 13.

I realized this truth as we were doing our AMSA USC AIDS Education Project. Teaching kids about AIDS in LA middle schools was one of the most rewarding experiences in my life. The first class we taught had both 6th and 7th graders. During the Q&A session, someone asked about oral sex. Oh my God! What do 12 year olds know about oral sex? Plenty, apparently. And this was 1999.

It's now 2006. And what are we doing to our kids? We're telling them that sex is bad until you're married. How is it that marriage suddenly makes sex ok? And why is our government spending millions of dollars on abstinence only sex ed. programs that don't work? Sounds like we're setting up our kids for failure...or an STD.