Barbados' Pure Sex Campaign Takes Island's Youth By Storm

One of the new initiatives we beheld in Bim this time around was the Pure Sex Movement which had already organized one full march at the Barbados Community College by the end of our first week. The BCC event was mobilized by a bright-eyed young woman of 19 I will call "Evie" who related to The Barbados Advocate how important it was for a teen to remain pure before entering into marriage. She also made clear that sex performed before one is ready "can't be that good". (Hmmm....hate to break it to her but some would have to disagree!)

She also indicated she was following the agenda from the "Pure Sex Center" operated by Maria Carter and it had many other stipulations to try to get youngsters onto the straight and narrow. For example, even though Pure Sex demanded no intercourse before marriage, it also insisted on no partaking of porn (in any form) or masturbation. "After all, you can't be having pure sex if you are molesting yourself!" Evie made clear.

This, of course, begs the question of what these youngsters (full of raging hormones)  can do if they are not to engage in premarital sex OR seek any kind of relief on their own. Again, it appears the norms of provisional morality might serve these kids better than absolutist dictates. By provisional morality (see e.g. Michael Shermer's 'The Science of Good and Evil') a masturbating teen is much less objectionable than one having intercourse without protection and getting an STD, or pregnant.

Energized by the BCC march a subsequent one in Bridgetown saw dozens of "purists"  bearing many placards promoting abstinence until marriage and preaching the VIP – Virginity is Possible – message. The group also handed out fliers and placards on their way from Cheapside to Heroes Square. You had to give them props for determination if nothing else, even as they were eyed by many bystanders almost like a contingent of invading Martians.

According to Maria Carter the leader of the march:

"I think a lot of money is put behind condomizing, but the same amount of money, time and effort should be put into teaching the purity message. We need to give them viable options. These children are buckling under peer pressure and we need to help them. There is another way and it has to be said,”

She was referring to the Barbados Family Planning Association Clinic which for decades has been distributing condoms as a way to keep the island's once soaring birth rate under control. Not until Clyde Gollop began BFPA) did the numbers fall under control, and out of wedlock births go down, as well as unwanted births overall. The arrival of the pill and condoms, then, provided a means of choice where the number and quality of births was concerned. Interestingly, as the numbers fell - so did the island's crime rate. (At least until the specter and scourge of drugs arrived in the mid-1980s).

However, with the rise of evangelicalism in the U.S. and its mirrored ascent in Bim (via the 'People's Cathedral with Rev. Holmes Williams in the 70s) the value of sex education diminished as well as the solution to out of wedlock teen births being condoms. In its place, total abstention was offered and the emphasis placed on virginity and even "secondary virginity" - i.e. in the case of those whose spouses left and they hadn't yet found another to marry.

The Catholic Church also helped fuel this meme with assorted articles from different padres advocating abstinence and citing assorted papal encyclicals inveighing against birth control.  One of the prime RC voices in the Bajan press was Father Leonard Alfonso, who also condemned Barbados' high abortion rate, warning the island nation of future retribution if it didn't mend its ways.  (Never mind that most of the poor, lower class women who aborted had been deserted by boyfriends or husbands and could no more support another mouth to feed than jump over the Moon.)

By this time the climate was ripe for a "Pure Sex" Center to emerge in which "condomizing" would be harshly criticized as giving license to young adults (and even younger kids) to do whatever they wanted. Sex then, as advocated by the purists, was only valued if in a single, committed relationship and no alternative forms of release were allowed - irrespective of the hormonal "load".  In addition, "no sex" was promulgated as the only form of safe sex.

Carter, one of the directors of the Pure Sex Center, the organizer of the Bridgetown walk, said their main aim today was to sensitize the public, mainly young people, that no sex was safe sex. She went on to say:

“The walk today is sensitizing the general public. We want society to see that there is an answer besides telling our children to condomize, because we go into schools to talk about purity and we realize that a lot of our children are not told that purity is a possible option.

As opposed to condomizing, we are telling people that it is possible to maintain their virginity and we would say that this is the only [sure] way to prevent HIV/AIDS and other STDs,”

She added that while it was important to preach about condomizing, and there still needed to be a focus on encouraging young people to keep their virginity until marriage.

The jury is still out on whether the Pure Center or Pure Sex Movement has made any difference in the island's birth rate, especially illegitimate births.  According to World Bank data the fertility rate for Barbados has been essentially fixed at 1.8 for the past several years. Most rational people attribute this to the BFPA's aggressive family planning policies not to Pure Sex abstinence. Most ratonalists also believe total abstinence (e.g. from all sex, even self-stimulation) is total nonsense, and possibly harmful.

One thing most observers agree upon is that the Pure Sex movement is in Bim to stay, and its virginity message is currently grabbing the interest and commitment of a lot of kids. Whether that continues and actually helps lower the fertility rate remains to be seen.

A Guy From Barbados Who Has NO Clue on Reality!

Probably 50% of working Barbadians are entrepeneurs with their own small businesses, such as this corner rum shop owner. In many cases, their property ownership arrived via inheritance not purchase!





This morning I read an article appearing in The Barbados Advocate News, e.g.

http://www.barbadosadvocate.com/newsitem.asp?more=local&NewsID=23614

with open-mouthed disbelief. The article ‘Population the Problem- Not Land’ (March 24) quotes Managing Director of Terra Caribbean, Andrew Mallalieu as asserting that in order for more property to be owned on the island, its population needs to be increased! Is he serious? He can’t possibly be!

According to the 2010 CIA World Factbook, Barbados has amongst the highest population densities on the planet with over 654 per square kilometer (1,692 per sq. mile)! The issue of "unused land" therefore cannot have anything to do with "too few people" inhabiting the island nation, but rather the distribution of wealth which allows the few (often wealthy foreigners) to own large mansions- say in St. Thomas- but the masses to have to crowd 8-10 in one chattel house in the Bayland.

That Mallalieu doesn’t grasp this discloses he doesn’t comprehend the roots of the island’s land-ownership issues or, I would argue, the distribution of incomes! Obviously then, the reason more plots of land aren't occupied, or subject to ownership (including home ownership) is primarily because the incomes of would-be owners is too low, and they can't obtain a mortgage or credit. This is the same reason that's hamstrung many would-be owners in the U.S.

The article then notes:

"Mentioning China, a country which has seen great economic growth credited mostly to the size of its population, as an example, the Terra Managing Director suggested that Barbados is in fact capable of sustaining more people. "

But this is arrant bollocks! Comparing Barbados to China is ludicrous, because first China’s land area is thousands of times larger (21, 640 times, actually), and moreover the population density is very much LOWER (according to the same CIA Factbook it is 142 per sq. kilometer). In addition, China has the innate natural resources to support affordable building of domeciles for most of its people - and also a large industrial manufacturing base for them to earn enough- Barbados must import nearly all its materials (and most food stuffs) and now relies mainly on offshore banking & tourism for income.

Thus, if even food imports were cut off, Barbados with even more population would surely suffer starvation on scale even worse than Haiti. With so many people, even as many as it has currently, it would not be able to feed itself!

While true, a number of nations have attempted to grow economic prosperity via population (e.g. Nigeria) an analogous increase has not existed for China over the last 3-4 decades since it's implemented a firm 1 –child per family policy. This also explains why it's population density is so low, thereby imploding Mallalieu's arguments for Bim to take China's path.

Indeed, the Chinese understood (as the late Clyde Gollop did when he launched the Barbados Family Planning Association in the 60s) that unless something was done to curtail excess population growth, China would remain an under-developed, overpopulated 3rd world backwater whose resources wouldn't match the numbers. China’s success, in other worlds, has come precisely from population control not license.

Mallalieu is correct that economic prosperity – or rather the lack of it – is at the root of property ownership imbalance in the island. But adding more people is not the solution to acquiring such prosperity, essentially overturning Clyde Gollop’s efforts! What is needed is to address the economic retrenchment ongoing since the 2007-08 recession which still affects many nations. Thus, it is capital that must be grown and distributed more equitably, which can only arrive via outside investment.

This external capital must be applied not just to warehousing in offshore accounts but to actual, active investment in jobs for the Barbadian people (well paying so they can afford to be property owners) and also investment in construction of affordable homes.

Why isn’t Barbados attracting outside investors to construct affordable condos, or homes on the available lots? Instead of expending so much energy on tourism, organize to make sales pitches to real estate investors in the States! Also, adjust laws to make construction beneficial to would be investors! At the top of this list, as pointed out recently by The Economist, is the fact so many Caribbean states lack laws to ensure completion of projects – i.e. if raw materials are short, labor input just ceases and laborers vanish to move to other projects. Thus, hotel builders (as in the Dominican Republic) have found multi-million dollar projects languishing uncompleted while being out tens of millions. Thus, they are disinclined to begin new projects.

Where is the island's pitch also to bring jobs to Barbados, to supply the adequate income needed to buy the homes? These are the questions Mallalieu and his group need to address.
In short, the problem is not too few people in Bim, but too little investment capital needed to support major capital works housing projects, and jobs.

If Barbados and Mallalieu’s group can attract that capital, they will not have to resort to a draconian population growth solution which ensures Bim’s prosperity dwindles over time because its numbers are permitted to outpace its limited resources.

Proper Birth Control: The Answer to Out-of-Wedlock Births

In Barbados over the 1950s and 60s, the island's population exploded mainly because of the sheer number of out of wedlock births, attributed to poor, working class women. Typically these were 16 to young -20 somethings who on average had 4- 9 partners over 5 years (on average) and as many kids born....all out of wedlock. (In Barbados, what has been called "common law marriage" was established many years earlier).

Not until Clyde Gollop began the Barbados Family Planning Association (BFPA) did the numbers fall under control, and out of wedlock births go down, as well as unwanted births overall. The arrival of the pill and condoms, then, provided a means of choice where the number and quality of births was concerned. Interestingly, as the numbers fell - so did the island's crime rate. (At least until the specter and scourge of drugs arrived in the mid-1980s).

This was shown to be paralleled in the U.S. by the authors of the book, Freakonomics, who traced the decline of crime from the mid-70s onward to the 2000s to the absence of uncared for, unwanted offspring - who had a higher probability of becoming muggers, rapists, burglars and murderers. Thus, the authors estimated our country was spared tens of thousands of otherwise vicious crimes simply by the non-births of tens of thousands of criminals thanks in no small measure to the appearance of 'Roe v. Wade' in 1972.

New evidence coming to the fore shows the U.S. needs to mount at least as efficient a birth control campaign as Barbados did in the 60s. Far from being the morally "degenerate" path as the right wing nuts proclaim, it is clearly the way to a higher moral order - if by that one means lessening unwanted and out of wedlock births.

One thing Clyde Gollop discovered very early in his Barbados mission, was that calls for "abstinence" didn't work. Almost invariably, the raging hormones took their toll and triumphed over the paltry efforts of youths, young adults to hold back. And since the only other feasible option for release- masturbation or mutual masturbation - is looked down upon, that meant birth control had to be available to cover all bases.

The situation is no doubt analogous in the U.S. What ought to then concern us is how the unwanted births are increasing again - after a brief (2004-07) respite. A recent Pew study, for example, has found that the percentage of children born out of wedlock has increased to 41% overall, and 53% for women under 30. A large contribution to this sad stat is that unmarried women in particular tend to be poorer and the 20-somethings are the fastest growing segment.

The sociologist Jennifer Manlove of nonprofit Child Trends notes that studies have disclosed that three fourths of births outside marriage are unwanted. Given the deleterious effects on the kids, this is a national tragedy of epic proportions that rivals the deteriorating state of our civil infrastructure. It's a worse tragedy when one contemplates (as Ms. Manlove points out) that while poor unmarried young American women often rely on "withdrawal" their European counterparts receive free, state-funded care including condoms or pills. It's no wonder Europeans regard us as knuckle draggers - because in this sense, we are.

Obviously, birth control, because 3/4 of births are unwanted, is the very device that would create more stable families. This would be a practical solution as opposed to one in the clouds based on abstinence. Neither is marriage the answer or remedy (as IQ and statistical boffins like Charles Murrary claim) because it makes no difference. According to Princeton professor Sara McLanahan: ""Bush era programs encouraging people to marry really had no effect."

She went on to observe that previously co-habiting American couples had higher average divorce rates. Of course, as I noted in an earlier blog - part of this is also economic. Because of the scarcity of jobs for young working class men more working class women end up having to go it alone. This also means often having to raise an unwanted child by their lonesomes. If even half the manufacturing jobs dispatched overseas to China and Bangalore were returned, the dismal marriage and out of wedlock birth numbers could be improved.

But make no mistake that the cheap moralizers of the GOP want no part of this. They will fight to the end to keep this nation poor, dumb, and overpopulated by the unwanted in order to try to drive them into the GOP "family" using the sticks of morality and "big gubmint". It is a plan that's destined to fail, just as the Catholics' plan to add to their numbers and win a demographic religious battle by seeking to ban artificial contraception.