Just imagine it: You're wolfing down mouthfuls of chilled mango and banana to beat the heat when suddenly you switch on the TV to hear a legislator railing against sex education in high school.
The legislator is the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) Kuo Su-chun (
Next, you're hunting for a mop to clean up the almighty mess of half-digested yellow stuff you've chundered all over the living room floor, all the while thinking: Why would a KMT legislator use a biblical allusion to keep teenagers ignorant of their bodily functions?
The weird thing about sex is that most people like it. And many want to try it out when they reach this obscure phase of their lives called "puberty." Unhappily, for most hapless youngsters, puberty coincides with being in a place called "high school."
And normally, that's where the state comes in.
After decades of ignoring sex education, Taiwan is blessed with what some call Asia's highest rate of teen pregnancy. This mightn't matter so much were it not for the fact that Taiwan also has one of the highest rates of abortion in Asia, even as our modernization and wealth make betrothal less attractive and threaten to push the average marrying age for men and women above 30.
So, the government is trying to do something about it by upgrading the personal development curriculum in high schools. This is presumably to empower the kids by preventing pregnancy and making them reflect on their sexual behavior in an intelligent, responsible and mutually respectful fashion.
But oh no, says expert-on-all-things-carnal Kuo, it's all fruit -- and it's forbidden.
The problem is, fruit tastes great. If Kuo and her ilk who warn against teen sexuality had any intelligence they would steer clear of the Bible, instead warning against tasting the "forbidden gas pipe," or maybe the "forbidden latrine." That imagery would horrify slower developers into chaste submission.
But if you think Kuo was satisfied with patronizing the nation's horny teenagers, then you're wrong. Even teachers cop a blast: Apparently, they lack the expertise and experience to teach sex education.
What's that supposed to mean? That Taiwanese teachers make up one big virgins' club?
And the best thing is -- wait for it -- Kuo sits on the legislative Education and Culture Committee.
Why is it that so many people drone on and on and on about what young people shouldn't do but never present their own libidinous CV for us to emulate? If these guys are such experts, then why not be icons of carnal morality and tell us when they had sex the first time, how uncomfortable it was, what they cleaned themselves with afterwards, what turns them on, what sexy undergarments they prefer and indeed whether or not their orgasms are really worth writing home about?
The problem with this, of course, is that so many of these would-be models of sexual virtue can't afford to tell the truth about themselves, because then we would end up with a sleazy sequence of drunken seductions, extramarital affairs, dysfunctional relationships, sexual dystopia, hysterical break-ups and venereal disease courtesy of hubby's Southeast Asian business trips.
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