The FDA wants 15-year-old girls to get morning-after birth-control drugs over the counter, without the knowledge or consent of either parents or doctors.  President Obama says he approves of this decision.  But birth-control activists say it doesn’t go far enough.  They want the requirement for teenage purchasers to show photo ID dropped, and they’d really like to see 11-year-old girls getting these pills.

Behind this drive to shower the Tiger Beat set with birth control supplies lies the conviction that young kids are sexy beasts whose urges cannot be controlled or suppressed.  Fifteen, thirteen, eleven years old… they’re all swingers now, and nothing can be done to slow them down.  All we can do is provide kids with the supplies necessary to cut down on sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy.  The religious hangups and moral standards of parents cannot be allowed to interfere with the wisdom of the State in this matter.

(The ability of previous generations to set higher standards is an inscrutable mystery, which today’s birth control activists would rather not discuss.  It’s also considered very bad form to point out that the sex partners of those young teenage girls might be considerably older than fifteen, and grateful for easy access to contraceptives that support their “lifestyle.”)

This all seems a bit inconsistent with the philosophy of socialized medicine, in which the behavior of citizens must be controlled to reduce health care costs.  Individual health is supposedly a matter of public concern, because unhealthy behavior comes at the expense of the general public.  The fit are unfairly expected to pay the freight for the fat.  With this in mind, why is the same State that tinkers with restaurant menus, and takes other steps to either warn citizens away from unhealthy meal options or forbid them outright, so intent on facilitating a profoundly unhealthy lifestyle for children?

The answer can be found in the Left’s drive to hunt down and destroy all that remains of traditional sexual morality, because it’s a barrier to the proper relationship they envision between citizens and the State.  The result is a hyper-sexualized but asexual world, in which the differences between men and women have been eliminated.  This is a huge undertaking, so it’s important to get cracking when citizens are still young and impressionable.

The traditional understanding of sexual relations emphasizes the profound differences between men and women.  They are not in any sense interchangeable.  They have a unique need for one another, and different needs from society.  The union of men and women is not seen as exclusively serving to produce and raise children, but child-rearing is exceedingly difficult without married men and women working together.

It seems like a laughable understatement to observe that pregnancy is one of the greatest differences between men and women.  Technology and culture have alleviated most of the other life-shaping distinctions between the sexes.  Male strength, for example, is obviously meaningful in professional sports or military endeavors, but it’s no longer a prerequisite for general career success or survival.  Nevertheless, pregnancy remains the unique burden of women.  That doesn’t mean it should be the unique responsibility of women.

This is the fundamental truth behind traditional sexual customs, which no amount of feminist social engineering has ever been able to erase.  Pregnancy is the responsibility of both partners.  It takes two people to make a baby, but only one of them has to carry it to term.  The male partner in this endeavor often decides to walk away, leaving the woman alone to face childbirth and all that follows.  Irresponsible men clearly see this as an attractive option.

The past half-century has seen a vast project, financed with gigantic amounts of public money, to make it a socially acceptable option.  The power of society to shape individual behavior is enormous.  Across a population of millions, widely-understood social expectations result in tectonic shifts of behavior.  Not everyone cares what society thinks of their behavior, of course, but a lot of people do.

The traditional understanding of sex as an activity that binds men and women together, giving them different responsibilities toward each other, is very conducive to healthy social development and personal independence.  The latter might seem counter-intuitive at first – the whole point of the “sexual revolution” was to give people sex without consequence so they could be more independent, right? – but consider the independence an intact family grants to its children as they enter the adult world.  The emotional and financial support such a family offers its children is invaluable.  Families are the gateway out of poverty; study after study has found no government program able to match an intact family’s ability to steer kids away from crime, drugs, and other dead ends.  Families that stick together also have a better chance of avoiding dependency on government programs.

It is foolish to accept the Left’s insistence that we trade that sort of independence for a world in which we enjoy unlimited sexual license, beginning at a very young age, but every other aspect of our lives is controlled by the State.  Distracting the public from poor governance with bread and circuses is a very old tactic, is it not?  American culture today is filled with sexual distractions, including ongoing efforts to sexualize increasingly young children.  Innocent childhood is erased, to the profit of certain industries, and the detriment of the family.

And even as childhood is cut down, adolescence is extended into our twenties and thirties.  That’s how to reconcile the apparent contradiction between 26-year-olds officially treated as “children” by ObamaCare, and the drive to make morning-after birth control pills as readily available as candy to girls of fifteen (and younger!)  The Left wants to mutate children into teenagers it can pry away from their families as quickly as possible, then keep them dependent and easily-manipulated adolescents for as long as it can.  An “adolescence” beginning as soon as girls can have sex, lasting until they’re finished paying off their student loans, would be just about perfect.

Killing off the family requires erasing the distinctions between men and women… and that’s easier to do if you get started when they’re boys and girls.  The effort to wipe out the consequences of sex, and the natural understanding of how those consequences are different for the male and female partners, continues.  When every man, woman, boy, and girl has the sexual appetites and morality of Sean Connery-era James Bond, the last barriers of family separating American citizens from the benevolent State will have been removed.

Unlike old-fashioned moms and dads, the State won’t hassle kids about restraining their sexual desires – have fun, do whatever turns you on, and if a little “accident” happens to slip past the equipment dispensed at school, just nip on down to the corner drugstore for a fix!  Hopefully soon you won’t even have to bring your photo ID, so it won’t really matter how old you are.

When the kids grow up, they’ll discover all the ways the State does plan to hassle them, but if all goes according to plan, the coming generation will be too weak to resist.