America, the land of … the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, 20 percent sexually transmitted disease rate (that’s 55 million), billions of your tax dollars spent on welfare mothers and premature births, girls and dropping out of society ( i.e. high school, college, jobs) to have kids with no money, no help from the immature deadbeat dads, and no life of their own. Moron. That’s all I could think as I read Brian Johnson’s irresponsible, backward, juvenile, just plain stupid article on sex in Thursday’s Daily (Mar. 27). In an age where just about everyone can name someone with AIDS, or some one who left high school /college “unexpectedly” it is beyond me how any educated (?) individual can be so morally and socially backward. I will be perfectly honest.

Yes, I did have sex before marriage and yes, it was often unprotected but when I was 18 AIDS was something associated with gays or Africa. STDs were supposedly curable with a shot. I was wrong, way wrong. That does not make what I did right and in fact makes it worse. Through my ignorance and immoral attitude I not only exposed myself to potentially deadly diseases but I also recklessly gambled with the lives of others.

In Iowa, there are 991 diagnosed cases of AIDS and a STD rate of 19 percent (how many are undiagnosed?). These are not just numbers, they are real people. The person who sat next to you in chemistry. Gary, the guy you shot hoops with. Shelly, your ex-girlfriend. Real people whose lives are forever changed by a one-night stand. Ask them if it was worth it. Ask an AIDS victim what he would do with his life if only he had just one more chance.

The bottom line is you cannot audit AIDS, a few more bucks from mom won’t cure genital warts, and maybe you can walk out on a partner but one might stay with you forever. Think before you act. AIDS is the #1 killer of Americans between the ages of 25 and 44. Is this the freedom you were talking about Brian? I am not saying do not do it or become celibate, but for Johnson to preach that sleeping around is a wonderful way to free yourself defies all logic. There is no freedom in unplanned pregnancy or death and it can happen to you! You are not special and the odds are stacked against you, even with protection.

Women have a 40 percent chance of contracting chlamydia from just one contact, but 75 percent of them won’t even know they have it until the damage, sterility, is done. It might be years before you find out that you and your husband will not be having kids. If monogamy is the “prison” Johnson says it is then it’s one we should all be so lucky to get in. One encounter gives you a 50 percent chance of getting gonorrhea. With odds like that I plan to make my marriage “sentence” a long one.

Johnson says that those who sleep around are heroes. I say they are chumps who have bought the line that as long as it feels good it’s OK. Just do it. That there are no repercussions for your actions. Bull. If you play expect to pay. When you are dying of AIDS Johnson won’t be there for you, he may be dead already.

His feel-good words certainly will not save you from a life on welfare or a death in lonely agony. Only one person in the world is responsible for what becomes of you and that person is reading and hopefully learning from these words. Choose the who and the when well, it could be the most, and last, important decision of your life.

Wake up Brian Johnson, you are not a hero. You are juvenile, irresponsible and pathetic.

Michael W. Tyra

Sophomore

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