As many as 17 teen girls in Gloucester, Massachusetts High School agreed  to get pregnant and have their babies together.  They deliberately chose the fathers. Some of the fathers were teenage boys in their school.  However, some were young men in their twenties.  One father was a 24 year old homeless man in the community.

Under Massachusetts law, having sex with anyone under the age of 16, even if it is consensual is considered to be statutory rape.  This means that all the fathers are in serious trouble with the law.

There is a controversy in the Gloucester High School over the administration’s refusal to allow  the school’s health clinic to distribute condoms confidentially to teenagers.  Two of the school’s health care staff resigned in their opposition to that policy.  There contention is that some of the 150 pregnancies that occurred in the last academic year among the 1200 students in the high school could have been prevented.  However, a change of policy would not have helped these girls.  They did not want condoms.  They wanted a baby!

Something deeper is going on here.  The mechanics of contraception will not remedy a lack of moral values.  What kind of values are being communicated to these students by their familes and school?  Have their parents tried to be invovled in their sex education?  After all, doesn’t sex education really belong in the home?  Has anyone tried to communicate to these teens  the sacredness of life and the seriousness of parenthood?  Are they invovled in any church youth groups?  If so, have those churches done anything to help their parents become responsible sex educators of their children?

Shock and shame are not adequate responses to such a community tragedy.  Something proactive must be done. Parents are struggling.  They know the world is sexually dangerous for their children, but they don’t what they can do to protect them.  After all, chances are their parents had very little to say to them about sex.  What about churches training parents to be the primary sex educators of there children? What do you think?