What if government got out of the marriage business?
A better solution than letting government define marriage and who is allowed to partake
Despite the lengthy and rarely intelligent debates about marriage, marriage equality, gay marriage, or whatever label the media decides to use, I have not found any articles discussing the removal of govenrment or civil law from marriage altogether. However, I finally found one. It actually discusses the issue intelligently. The article does go in-depth into how this might come about, but it poses good points. The article is posted on a blog called Big Think. I am agnostic toward the blog in general and only wish to bring attention to the article I found there, by Peter Lawler, called "Should Government Get Out of the Marriage Business?"
High Schoolers and Sexual Risk Behavior
Besides moral and/or religious grounds (not that one needs more rationale than morality/religion), can one tell a high school that sexual activity during high school has consequnces? First, we need data to see the current landscape. I found the following data from the CDC {Youth risk behavior surveillance—United States, 2011. MMWR 2012;61(SS-4).} You can find it on the CDC website, but restated here for convenience:
Many young people engage in sexual risk behaviors that can result in unintended health outcomes. For example, among U.S. high school students surveyed in 20111
- 47.4% had ever had sexual intercourse
- 33.7% had had sexual intercourse during the previous 3 months, and, of these
- 39.8% did not use a condom the last time they had sex
- 76.7% did not use birth control pills or Depo-Provera to prevent pregnancy the last time they had sex
- 15.3% had had sex with four or more people during their life
Sexual risk behaviors place adolescents at risk for HIV infection, other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and unintended pregnancy:
- An estimated 8,300 young people aged 13–24 years in the 40 states reporting to CDC had HIV infection in 20092
- Nearly half of the 19 million new STDs each year are among young people aged 15–24 years3
- More than 400,000 teen girls aged 15–19 years gave birth in 20094
AP Report to the Nation
But look at the demographics
Have you seen the College Board's 9th Annual AP Report to the Nation? The numbers are a bit white-washed and curated. However, one can gleen some interesting trends. For examaple, 29.2% of Maryland's high school graduates of 2012 scored a 3 or higher on an AP Exam while 8 States had 10% or less. The USA average was 19.5%. Although currently, the College Board is a not-for-profit corporation, its CEO earned over $1 million in 2009. It is my beleif that, ultimately, this report is about increasing or maintaining the College Board's intake of money. Still, given that the College Board's standardized exams do act as a gate for access to the best of USA society, being knowledgeable about the demographics of success on these exams is important. Here's the demographic that I recall the most (click to see a pop-up larger version):