{"id":4521,"date":"2006-02-17T00:38:05","date_gmt":"2006-02-17T00:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-cant-even-imagine.html"},"modified":"2006-02-17T00:38:05","modified_gmt":"2006-02-17T00:38:05","slug":"i-cant-even-imagine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-cant-even-imagine.html","title":{"rendered":"I can’t even imagine"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really can’t. I can’t imagine living in an area in which a school helps sponsor "Glove Affairs" for young people my daughter’s age, "parties" in which favors like condoms are distributed and "education" happens.<\/p>\n

Post corrected to reflect the fact that the school in question is a private school. But still!<\/em><\/p>\n

But in LA….<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Oakwood School in North Hollywood, where my daughter is in eighth grade, has been holding Glove Affair since 2000. In reality, it’s not a "condom party" but a fundraiser for L.A. AIDS-prevention groups. This year, about 500 teens attended \u2014 half from other middle and high schools across the city. <\/p>\n

The aim is for kids to understand that having sex is serious business and to help them become utterly at ease with condoms, right down to unrolling them correctly and learning to check the expiration date. Mickey Morgan, a social studies teacher at Oakwood who helps organize the event, says that’s especially important for girls "so that it’s not awkward for them to talk about safe sex with boys \u2014 when the time comes."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You know the argument, of course. They’re going to do it, they’re doing it, so let’s make it "safe." <\/p>\n

As if it will then be "safe." <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really can’t. I can’t imagine living in an area in which a school helps sponsor "Glove Affairs" for young people my daughter’s age, "parties" in which favors like condoms are distributed and "education" happens. Post corrected to reflect the fact that the school in question is a private school. But still! 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}