Rainbow parties?

Lately, we've been bombarded with teen and preteen sex. Well, not teen sex itself, but rather discussions about teens and preteens having sex. "Oprah" and "Dateline" are talking about middle school kids at "rainbow parties," where teenage girls wear different colors of lipstick and teenage boys compete to see who winds up with a rainbow on their penis. I must confess that even I am shocked (and I am pretty hard to shock). \nApparently, parents in Monroe County are hearing the same things I am, so naturally, they began doing the responsible thing -- sitting down and talking to their children about the dangers of STIs, pregnancy and people who use sex to control others.\nJust kidding. They're calling Monroe County Schools to complain.\n To the school system's credit, its officials didn't laugh and tell the complaining parents that maybe they should try raising their own children for once.\nInstead, they gave a resigned sigh and set out to make a survey so they could see, once and for all, exactly how widespread the problem is and exactly what they need to be talking about. \nAnd appropriately, parents showered the schools with thanks, appreciating the fact that the schools were trying to compensate for incompetent parenting.\nKidding again.\nNope, they complained the surveys were too pornographic. One parent, who has a sixth grader in Monroe County, told The Indianapolis Star April 5 that her child "doesn't know about this stuff. Nor should he, at his age." \nHa ha. That's a good one.\nWait, she wasn't trying to be funny.\nThe whole situation illuminates the bind schools are in when it comes to sex: Parents want their children to learn about sex in school, but they don't want schools to teach it. \nThey want to believe their children still have virgin ears, even when most of the kids they go to school with aren't even virgins. \nAs society changes, we will have to treat other forms of sexual relations the way we treat vaginal intercourse because as long as adults ignore the phenomenon, kids will continue thinking oral sex is a safe way to get off and stay a virgin.\nI'm sure that's a hard thing for parents to swallow (no pun intended), but it's an unfortunate truth and a big responsibility facing this generation's mothers and fathers.\nWhether schools or parents have this discussion is a contentious subject, and I don't pretend to have a perfect answer, but it should probably be a little of both. Schools should teach the facts because that's what we expect when we send children to school. They could be charged with the lovely duty of showing those good old-fashioned "genital herpes in the throat" slides and explaining every beautiful detail of a syphilis infection.\nMeanwhile, parents need to talk to their kids about respecting themselves, conveying the family's religious position (when they are religious) on sexual issues and ensuring the communication pipeline between them and their children doesn't stop when the child is an adult.\nWe can't wait out squabbling between parents and school systems; someone needs to be talking to children now. Not doing so amounts to a lifelong disservice to them.\nAccording to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 19 percent of teens did not know STIs can be transmitted during oral sex , but the fact is that HPV, herpes, hepatitis B, gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia can all be transmitted that way. And syphilis might clear up with antibiotics, but oozing sores on the genitals are for life. \nKids today don't have virgin ears. So the best thing to do is first find out what they're doing -- denial is not a safe form of protection.