The concept of Universal Jurisdiction, a progeny of the new “international law,” creates quite a troubling situation. In short, Universal Jurisdiction creates a right for any country to prosecute any person, other than an active leader of a state, with crimes such as genocide and the increasingly vague charges of “crimes against humanity” and “war crimes.” At first glance, one interested in reducing human rights violations, will undoubtedly laud this turn of events. Yet, upon further inspection, this development, to say the least, is clearly not a good thing.

     The left’s obsession with political correctness has officially gone from annoying to dangerous. Their hysterical fear of possibly offending people with their ideas has forced them to only recognize enemies who have no name, who have no possibility to get offended, or of course who have no ability to challenge them back. So they are relegated to talking about toothless enemies like global warming or population crisis, but fail to recognize the true enemies to our liberty and way of life. That being now, Islamic terrorism.

             The debate over sexual education in public schools has come to a point where neither side makes much sense—albeit the left, as usual, makes considerably less. On one hand, obviously, we need to give our children a basic understanding of the perils that await them in the sexually promiscuous world. Yet, before moving further, we need to first answer who should be giving our kids these pearls of wisdom? While this is no easy question to answer—in general, sex-education should not be the job of the government.

While being true in every area of education, when we deal with the inculcation of values, i.e. when sex is proper, it is especially true that each child must be taught in their own special way—based on their unique circumstances. And that is exactly why the government is the worst tool at our disposal to arm our children with the knowledge they need to make the right sex-related choices. Due to its size and inherently inefficient bureaucracy, the government can only teach with a broad brush, and unfortunately, this area demands a very fine-toothed comb. Thus, when we as a society decide how and when our children should be taught about sex, we should always start off with the presumption that the government is better kept out of these intimate affairs. As the cultural left loves saying, “stay out of our bedrooms!”

That being said, if the government does decide it must stay in the sex-education business, this is what it should do: To begin with, it must regrettably dedicate a small portion of its resources to safe-sex education. This is just the world in which we live. The vast majority of the government’s time, however, should be spent teaching the kids the benefits of abstinence, and detriments of engaging in non-marital sex—especially at such a young age. We must teach them that it is good to wait until marriage—or at the very least, until they are older—and that in turn, it is bad to have non-marital sex. 

For some, saying non-marital sex is “bad” may go without saying. But nevertheless, far too many people are not willing to even take this small step. They instinctively shy away from labeling things as “bad” or “good” because they think we are not in a position to make such judgments for our “autonomous children” (an oxymoron if I ever heard one). But this is patent nonsense. We make these judgments all the time: We tell kids private property is a good thing, and thus stealing is bad conduct; or we tell them that being truthful is virtuous, and thus they should not cheat. So why can’t we tell them that sex is a good thing once you are married to a person you love and want to make a family with, and thus, sex before that is a bad thing?

At this point, there are those that will argue that the reason they do not want to label sex before marriage as a bad thing is because, plainly, they think it is not a bad thing. But this type of willful blindness—a product of the “free love” lie (nothing is free, everything has costs)—ignores far too much. It ignores the many issues non-marital sex—especially, but not exclusively, at such a young age—carries with it. There are countless studies and common sense observations that engaging in “free sex” renders people far more depressed, as they realize and experience the vacuous lifestyle it perpetuates. In addition, we need not mention in depth the terrible prices teens and adults alike have had to pay in abortions and STDs.

Now, for those that do not find these types of issues compelling, I have little to say. Yet, I am sure there are those that agree: Sex before marriage is “bad.” Therefore, we should be able to label is as such.

Nevertheless, one does not have to think hard to realize the obvious response this argument will draw. Even assuming this is all true, critics will argue, many of these issues—i.e. STDs, teen-pregnancy, abortion, etc…—can be fixed through safe-sex education. And to a certain extent this is true. Of course, teaching safe-sex techniques to kids engaging in non-marital sex will help stop many of these symptoms. Yet, what is it that we truly seek, temporary fixes of symptoms or a cure?

We have choice; we can spend most of our resources giving them the free condoms, the sex-tips, the vaccines for diseases only spread through sex—and further give them the green-light-by-implication for unfettered sex. In turn, we will then continue to allow and enable the underage sex epidemic to fester and grow, and cause more suffering than it already has—and that is a lot. Or, on the other hand, we can teach them abstention first and foremost, and then, to a much smaller degree, we can teach them sex-safety as well. In this way, we attempt to cure the epidemic of non-marital sex instead of just haphazardly trying to keep up with all the resulting symptoms.

Maybe an example will help: a 14 year old can drive, right? Most of them sure do want to, to say the least. But we don't teach them the intricacies of driving or give them a free car or free driving tips. We just tell them not to do it. And most listen. For those that don’t, we have punishments and rehabilitation.

To what result? Well, one thing is certain; there is not an epidemic of 14 year olds driving cars before they have the wisdom to make the right choices. Hence, even though kids can and will have sex, why have we collectively decided to limit our options so much? Why can we only protect our kids from the harsh realities of non-marital sex in one way? And why is that way to almost exclusively educate them how to have sex instead of above all teaching them to abstain first?

So, in the end, since these words may fall of too many deaf ears, I am willing to compromise. For all those that still say “free condoms for all thirteen year olds, no questions asked”—fine, just as long as you give us free cars too!