Mr. Clinton, It's Time For You To Rescue The Teens Who Followed Your Example

By Michael H. Brown

In his current and highly-touted autobiography, former President Bill Clinton makes some surprising comments about his own morality, confessing to a "dark side" in the scandal that nearly brought his presidency down -- and admitting that his behavior was "immoral and foolish." The affair, it seems, helped put him on the straight and narrow, forcing him to confront inner "demons" (his word) and put them to rout.

This is all well and good, but what we need from the president now is for him to correct a huge problem that has arisen because of his conduct in office. Across the United States, teens are now engaging in the type of sexual practice that got the former President in trouble. The publicity surrounding what transpired in that study off the Oval Office has greatly affected their behavior, as have President Clinton's famous lines that it wasn't really sex, that he did not have sex "with that woman."

Cued by the President, young people opened the floodgates and let their own demons and hormones roar.

As a result, we now have incredible reports of even kids in grammar school engaged in the "non-sex" that made poor Monica Lewinsky notorious. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey last year found 55 percent of 15- to 17-year-olds had experienced this particular type of premarital sex. They were about ten when television, radio, and newspapers were full of Lewinsky reports. It soaked in.

This is hard stuff to write, and yet it is also very serious. To conclude that such a practice is okay -- tantamount to necking -- is alarming. It is also degrading: in school after school, kids are being caught in the act and even those who have pledged virginity (once more, not believing that it is sex) are involved. Young women are being degraded in the same way that Miss Lewinsky was.

Such is a result of poor White House behavior (as well as what is presented to our youth by magazines and Hollywood) and the former President owes it to the nation and to the young, as well as to his own redemption, to publicly decry what he did not only as immoral but as "sex." He removed a stigma from such conduct and must now put that restriction back. It is hard to recall a similar scandal caused by a politician that has had such a directly negative impact on our young.

Mr. Clinton, speak up. If you are sincere about "confessing" -- and we will take you at your word -- go the whole way. Clear up the confusion. And erase the deception. We're not here to judge you. We're here to implore your help. You are an excellent communicator. You can get headlines. Now go out there and rescue the teens who are wayward because of the example you set. 

June 2004