"religious guilt"

Its amazing what you can blame on religion: war, crime, misogyny, repression of human rights, etc.

Now you can add 'bad sex life' to the list.

I had intimate encounters with several girls of a sky-pixie-fan persuasion when growing up. As a randy teenager it was always rather frustrating being turned down for reasons of religion. I always thought it was an enormous cop-out (possibly one of the reasons for my deep-seated hatred of religion?). I now firmly believe that parents should teach their children all about sex and leave it up to the child to decide when they need to gain any direct experience. Trying to control my development into an adult through direct repression always backfired with me and made me all the more determined to expand my knowledge of forbidden pleasures such as smoking, drinking and girls' naughty bits.

If you can raise a well balanced child with a broad set of interests and pastimes and help them to understand the pressures of modern society then they are going to be far better placed to deal with the advances of randy teenagers or their own hormonal urges than a child who has been repeatedly told that such things are evil and to be suppressed and resisted at every turn. Human beings are human beings, the better parents understand this and treat their children accordingly the better society will become.