Last week
the United Kingdom Scouting Association announced that they'll begin offering their wards practical advice on safe sex, in an effort to encourage young people to "resist pressure to have early sex." Reportedly this will involve field trips to sexual health clinics, amongst other things, which we presume to mean "instructions on how to fabricate a prophylactic out of a pine cone and some paraffin wax."
*I should also note here that although they have shared roots, the UK Scouting Association is most definitely separate from the Boy Scouts of America, an organization so conservative that I think they're now teaching that the Earth is only about 30 years old.
One of the motivating factors held up by Scout leaders for this decision is the large percentage of British teenagers who have an STD. Teenagers are already pretty gross, and having actually spent some time living in England, I can confirm that teenage boys there are probably the most appalling creatures in the world. That they're also ridden with disease surprises me not in the slightest, and is almost enough to make me feel sorry for the teenage girls there, were they not the second most appalling creatures in the world.
I wonder too how effective this training will be. Unless things have changed recently, aren't the Scouts the refuge of the squarest kids imaginable? Any young man more interested in knot-work or archery than teenage girls or driving around in shitty cars is probably not, as they say, "celebrated by a large quantity of his peers." I don't doubt that somewhere out there are attractive, charismatic young men who happen to enjoy the outdoors and the structure of proto-militaristic organizations. But they surely must be a rare breed, like the Yeti, or Count Chocula. The sort of teen likely to even be in the Scouts long enough to get a merit badge in deep dickin' is probably the least likely to need it.
Chris Bucholz
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