LAST MONDAY, the California Supreme Court struck down a state law that required anyone who'd had consensual oral sex with 16- or 17-year-olds to register as a sex offender. The law, which dated to 1947, was found to be unconstitutional given that the penalty for having consensual intercourse with the same teenagers would be less harsh.
That's a relief. Now high school seniors who date sophomores and juniors won't have to proceed directly from the prom to the courthouse. But it's probably small consolation to parents, many of whom have been collectively breathing into paper bags since at least 2003, when Oprah devoted an entire program to the question "Do You Know What Your Teen Is Really Doing?" Since then, countless news programs, editorials and parent associations have been on the oral-sex case.
In January, the Atlantic Monthly published an 8,000-word piece by writer Caitlin Flanagan that discussed, among other spicy concerns, a young-adult novel called "The Rainbow Party." The title refers to a custom in which a group of girls, each of whom are wearing a different color of lipstick, summon a group of boys and -- how shall I put it? -- embark on a sort of body art project that the folks at Revlon probably did not have in mind when concocting smudge-proof products. Needless to say, mayhem ensues -- as does gonorrhea.
Back in the less rainbow-like playing field of real life, American teenagers are apparently reorganizing that classic hierarchy of physical intimacy once known as "the bases." If kissing is first base and intercourse is "all the way," oral sex now seems to have been promoted from left field to some indeterminate point between third base and home. Or maybe that's optimistic. If we are to believe the buzz, teens are substituting oral sex for plain old making out. As if braces weren't a drag already.
That "Oprah" segment, which aired long before the publication of "The Rainbow Party," was perhaps not the program's most rigorous journalistic endeavor (her guest's research was composed of 50 teens and their mothers). And for all most of us know, rainbow parties could be as mythical as unicorns. Still, a report released last fall by the National Center for Health Statistics concluded that just over half of 15- to 19-year-olds have had oral sex. More alarming is a California study conducted last year among 580 ninth-graders. Twenty percent said they'd engaged in oral sex, and a third said they planned to try it in the next six months.
