The other day it occurred to me that the movement in our educational system to educate teenagers about “safe sex” has a remarkably similar message to Jerry Seinfeld’s tongue-in-cheek description of our use for helmets:
“There are many things you can point to as proof that the human is not smart. But my personal favorite would have to be that we needed to invent the helmet. What was happening, apparently, was that we were involved in a lot of activities that were cracking our heads. We chose not to avoid doing those activities but, instead, to come up with some sort of device to help us enjoy our head-cracking lifestyles. And even that didn’t work because not enough people were wearing them so we had to come up with the helmet law. Which is even stupider, the idea behind the helmet law being to preserve a brain whose judgment is so poor, it does not even try to avoid the cracking of the head it’s in.”
Obviously, I wouldn’t condemn healthy activities (such as riding a motorcycle or skydiving) that would require some form of protection. But the illusion of “safe sex” troubles me because of the psychological, emotional, and spiritual damages that are formed in sex outside of marriage. And while I’m all for educating everybody about sex, it frustrates me that our society pushes for more freedom to do that which is dangerous under the guise of doing so safely.
Granted, the psychological and emotional ramifications of sexual activity are vastly different from a bump on our head or a concussion. But I think there is much to learn from the parallel. In both instances we are involving ourselves in something that is dangerous. In both we rationalize doing what we want to do with the aim of avoiding consequences. And in both there exists an illusory protection against all damages risked by our participation in the activity.
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