The rights of the parents end where the rights of the child are concerned. No person in a society lives in isolation and sometimes society has to protect a person from harmful influence by their supposed wardens.
It's okay to have consensual sex. If kids aren't properly educated about sex (and the consequences having sex can bring, from biological to social), they can't have consensual sex -- but that doesn't mean they won't have sex at all.
So no, sex education does not infringe on religious rights. And making condoms available to teenagers who intend on having sex doesn't either.
We're not talking about teachers throwing condoms at their students yelling "Fornicate! All of you! With each other! All the time!". We're talking about making condoms available to teenagers who ask for them and letting them know they don't have to expect any invasions of their privacy as a consequence (because doing so would discourage them from asking, thus encouraging unsafe sex).
Again: kids are going to have sex. Uneducated kids are going to have more dangerous sex. Educated kids are going to have safer sex.
Nobody has the right to deny the kid's independent decision whether to have sex or not. But this goes both ways: not only can't teachers tell a kid whether to have sex or not, but neither can the parents.
It's ridiculous that the people who fight against abortion because it infringes upon the rights of the unborn child are often the same people who then raise moral panic about children having sex and try to deny them the right to sex education (and access to things like condoms for when they decide to have sex). Especially if you consider that access to condoms and education also has a positive effect on when those kids decide to have sex, with whom and in what kind of situations -- i.e. if you properly educate kids about sex, they may even come to the realization that they are not actually ready yet and that it's okay to say "no" to horny peers.
Correct, but only partially so. How most of US law deals with this is ridiculous (i.e. the older partner becoming a sex offender). If two minors within a certain age range have sex, they may theoretically be "raping each other", but considering that an actual criminal offense in itself is absurd.
Now, an adult having sex with a child on the other hand is obviously acting criminally. It's the adult's responsibility to act in the child's best interests due to the child's lack of ability to give consent -- even if the child (for whatever reason) engages it, it's against their best interests to follow through.
As for sexually active "minors" and very young adults, especially at very narrow age ranges, that's not as trivial to answer. A hard cut-off seems the most straightforward answer but creates absurd outcomes in edge cases (e.g. someone who just turned 18 having sex with someone about to turn 18 in a country where 18 is the age of consent would be considered a rapist but not if both of them were just a tiny bit younger or older). I guess it's best to have case law deal with these situations individually.
Maybe I should clarify that the reason I used the word "kids" was to make it clear we're not specifically talking about "children" in the intuitive sense. The danger that six year olds will randomly decide to have sex with each other is relatively low (if we ignore "sex play", which is a different can of worms). That's not what the article is about. We're specifically talking about "kids" (i.e. minors, which depending on where you live can include anyone between 12 and 21) who are fairly likely to be already sexually active without any external motivation/dissuasion.
Economically? Probably not. But the problem with psychological long-term effects is that they are very difficult to determine and can vary widely from person to person and situation to situation.
It's okay to have consensual sex. If kids aren't properly educated about sex (and the consequences having sex can bring, from biological to social), they can't have consensual sex -- but that doesn't mean they won't have sex at all.
So no, sex education does not infringe on religious rights. And making condoms available to teenagers who intend on having sex doesn't either.
We're not talking about teachers throwing condoms at their students yelling "Fornicate! All of you! With each other! All the time!". We're talking about making condoms available to teenagers who ask for them and letting them know they don't have to expect any invasions of their privacy as a consequence (because doing so would discourage them from asking, thus encouraging unsafe sex).
Again: kids are going to have sex. Uneducated kids are going to have more dangerous sex. Educated kids are going to have safer sex.
Nobody has the right to deny the kid's independent decision whether to have sex or not. But this goes both ways: not only can't teachers tell a kid whether to have sex or not, but neither can the parents.
It's ridiculous that the people who fight against abortion because it infringes upon the rights of the unborn child are often the same people who then raise moral panic about children having sex and try to deny them the right to sex education (and access to things like condoms for when they decide to have sex). Especially if you consider that access to condoms and education also has a positive effect on when those kids decide to have sex, with whom and in what kind of situations -- i.e. if you properly educate kids about sex, they may even come to the realization that they are not actually ready yet and that it's okay to say "no" to horny peers.