Mushrooming sexual activity among British youth has seen cases of gonorrhea rise about 85 percent in some five years, the doubling of chlamydia, syphilis making an unwanted comeback and also an increase in the rate of HIV infection. The resulting pressure on the NHS means that those infected often have to wait some two weeks for treatment. Speed of medication in such cases is crucial, because these types of infections are often transmitted to others in the intervening time through further promiscuous behavior.

Young people do not generally understand the principle of cause and effect as well as their elders.

The late historians Will and Ariel Durant commented: "A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group" (The Lessons of History, 1968, pp. 35-36).

This makes educating young people about sex absolutely essential, especially in our sex-obsessed age. However, many government efforts clearly do more harm than good, such as current experiments in more than 150 British schools. A shocking report in the Daily Mail revealed that "schoolchildren under 16 are being encouraged to experiment with oral sex as a part of a government drive to cut the rates of teenage pregnancy." The U.K. rate tops all nations in Western Europe.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health recently stated: "Our Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, the first of its kind, is based on the best available research evidence. That shows that the key to success is an approach involving education, health, social services, the media, parents and young people themselves."

Notice, however, that religion is not even mentioned. Clearly the Church of England is not providing much help. The Anglican Church is seriously considering changing its traditional position on sex before marriage. Clergy are currently studying a new in-house report called Cohabitation: a Christian Reflection, in which living together is termed "a new path from the single state to the married one."

This report indicated that the church must come to terms with a world in which "since 1999 more than half of religious marriages have started with cohabitation, as well as more than 85 per cent of civil marriages."

This controversial report argues that the church needs "to provide a new and what some may consider radical, even heretical understanding of sexual relationships for the 21st century." Actually, this "new" approach to sex education and practice is not new at all—it's ancient. This approach advocates breaking God's spiritual laws concerning sex, as men and women have done since the days of Sodom and Gomorrah and even before. Sadly, the end result will bring much greater unhappiness and suffering, leaving in its wake uncounted broken lives and miserable relationships.

If you would like to understand how we should be educating our children, please write for our free booklet Making Life Work. This publication teaches the real truth about human relationships like child rearing, dating and marriage—using God's Word as the standard.

(Sources: The Times, Evening Standard, Daily Mail [all London].)