Sex Education

Hello Everyone:

A quiet Monday in store.  How lovely is that.  No appointments or car issues, just piece and quiet. So I spent time yesterday with the bf and I found our dinner conservation quite interesting.  One oft he things he's very passionate about is science.  Had it not been for the math, he would've made a great doctor.  Almost sounds like me.  He asked about Orthodox Judaism's position on the Theory of Evolution and I told him, traditionally Orthodox Jews go according to the Torah.  While there are Orthodox Jewish scientists, some of whom won Nobel Prizes, who were taught Charles Darwin, the first chapter in the first book of the Torah still holds.  The other thing we ended up talking about was reproductive health education in Yeshiva day schools.  He believes that's wrong to surpress natural desires, while I explained that sex-ed is taught from a religious point of view, sex within the context of marriage.  I'd like to elaborate on the latter point.

In traditional Judaism, men and women are taught to refrain from coming in physical contact with each other unless they are husband and wife/parent and child/sister and brother, confining public displays of affections to the privacy of the home.  The last concept is part of the whole idea of modesty and not calling unwarrented attention to yourself.  This discussion thread started because I mentioned to the bf that The Grove Mall that adults from the local yeshivas go there on Saturday nights, in part to make sure that their students don't interact improperly, meaning no mixing of genders or couples going off by themselves.  The bf seemed to get a little indignant about it because he felt that the adults were preaching total surpression of sexual desires.  What I told was that it was the exact opposite.  They don't want to encourage any sort of behavior that will lasting negative consequences.  I also think that teens need to be taught sex education in school, in a professional clinical manner, so that they can understand what is involved and what the effects are.  The religious approach is one way.  I too don't believe in surpressing natural sexual desires but I believe that it should looked as the highest expression of love with the one person you're with, whether in the context of marriage or a monogamous relationship.