I thought this article strode a wise middle course between "just say no" prudery and the slightly alarming suggestion by a British advocate recently that children should be taught their right orgasm.

Also, while I had a good chuckle at Wing Ah Ling's comment, when I think back to a recent radio segment following the tawdry Matthew Johns affair, in which a women's advocate argued that consent could be retroactively withdrawn, it may not be so far off the mark.

The idea of discussing the ethics of sex is excellent....as long as Nina doesn't get to decide what is ethical. It wasn't obvious from this article, but other writing from this particular author has been quite disturbing.

What runner means by "ethical sex eductation" is a church sanitized version that contains neither sex nor education.

Abstinence based sex education is a joke and produces regular crops of teenage mothers.

Note the results of the ultra conservative education given to Sarah Palin's daughter.

This is yet another example of where the church is less than ethical.

Well said, Shadow Minister.

Human beings have sex and like it. It's no less immoral than eating, drinking or breathing.

The research has been done and clearly demonstrates that keeping adolescents ignorant through abstinence sex ed only results in increased unprotected sex and the consequent disease and unwanted pregnancy.

Why do we tolerate this Taliban mentality in a supposedly civilised nation?

The presumption here is that sex is something that needs to be negotiated. For most people this is not the case. Either you want sex or you do not. There is nothing to negotiate there. If you say no and are forced against your will then it is assault and should be treated as such. Assault is assault and no amount of education will make it anything else. This is true of any crime. If I am mugged in a lane way it is absurd to think that education would make for better negotiation between me and my attackers.
If someone assaults another person it is not because they lack sex education but because they lack a basic respect for the rights of other human beings. They are just as likely to assault people who get in their way of a robbery or who cut them off in traffic. Sex is not an isolated case – it is just another place where some people act out their need for power or control

Having suffered through 12 years of Catholic girls only school education, I can tell you that not having any sex education in school certainly did not hold me back!
However, now that my daughter has just completed her 12 years in a coed Catholic school education, I can tell you she is far better behaved than I ever was! She has had some sex education from her school, as well as quite a bit from me.
The Catholic church had it all wrong. The more they restricted information about boys and sex, the more we wanted to find out about it.