This week we are re-presenting our essay series “Boys & Girls,” a perspective on teens and sex borne out of frustrations with the black church’s idiotic and ineffective youth ministries. Neither Neil nor I know of any black church in this city where we would be allowed to present this study to teens. It’s too blunt, perhaps too graphic, for most churches to allow. The big problem are the mommies. Most mommies are simply over-protective of their fragile little darlings, most of whom have been giving up the goods since they were twelve or thirteen,. Single moms, specifically, can be an enormous pain in the rear when trying to minister to teen girls. Mainly because single moms have major hang-ups about men. Some guy hit it and left them pregnant or walked out when the going got rough or whatever their soap opera is. Bottom line: most of these single moms gave it up to someone they knew, going in, was irresponsible. Some tough guy, some roughneck, some hood they thought was the deal. Ladies; please don’t beat *me* up because you were dumb enough to have unprotected sex with a moron.
Hysterical, over-protective single moms are desperate to protect their daughters’ virtue. Most of these women are simply in denial about the fact their little miss has been sexually active since middle school. That she’s regularly engaged in oral sex and, likely, anal sex in some misguided effort to “protect her virginity.” And, that blocking important information from their little darlings only sets those girls on the same path they themselves were on.
The main cause of teen pregnancy, so far as I’m concerned, is obsessive, insecure, single moms. The best form of birth control you can provide your daughter is information. Not information about condoms and so forth but information about what creeps boys are. About how ultimately selfish they are and the reality of the sexual act as opposed to their idiotic fantasy of what “lovemaking” should be. You’ve got to explode myths and de-mystify the experience, speaking in blunt terms about the nonsense they see on TV versus the reality of teen pregnancy and STD’s. Most of all, you’ve got to contrast the dozens and dozens of sex acts portrayed on television every single day against what the bible has to say about it.
But most of these mommies block all of that. Pastors, more concerned about their church’s bankbook than their church’s souls, are, in turn, terrified of the mommies. They cave into pressure from histrionic nitwit women out to crucify Neil for telling their creampuff daughter to stop giving blowjobs in the back of the school bus. So Neil gets yelled at and the daughter gets no information just so the Mommy can feel satisfied that she’s “won.” The fruits of that win being her becoming a grandmother at 35.
It’s insane. It’s stupid. Pastors who refuse to lead. Who follow pushy, over-emotional, ridiculous women hell-bent on shutting down people genuinely concerned for the souls of their children. It is so incredibly ass-backwards for a pastor to be led rather than to lead, but, these days, churches are struggling. Pastors are terrified of losing even one tithe-paying member. So they walk on eggshells and tie their youth leaders up in knots, watering down the youth program until it’s all Noah And The Arc; useless platitudes lost on the young.
Boys & Girls: Straight Talk About Sex was born out of that frustration. It’s the youth workshop we’d love to do but would never be allowed to do it.
