Sorry to come back to this topic, I was too tired to respond when I got home yesterday and I forgot about it until now, but I want to respond.
I wouldn't call you an old fogy... but I'm 19... so 9 years younger than you and I'll say a lot changes in 9 years. The overall attitude when it comes to sex is different now than 9 years ago. I think it started getting worse 9 years ago or so... but it's different now. And yeah, I think my experience more closely resemble the experiences of people in high school now than yours because I was in high school just a year and a half ago. I feel like the show is trying to say not just be comfortable with your sexuality, but know about it. The whole point of this past week's episode, was "if you're going to have sex, learn the risks." That's an important message that needs to be gotten across to high schoolers. And I didn't see this episode encourage people to have sex. Like I said, this episode, at least to me, encouraged people to know what they were doing. If you're going to have sex... know what the hell you're doing. If you don't know what you're doing... don't do it. And the views of the SHOW wasn't if you don't have sex, something's wrong with you... the views of Gweneth's character was if you don't have sex, something's wrong with you... I disagree with that view... but I do think it mirrors the view of high school students.
Ok, I took offense to this. I read it on my phone with a bunch of friends who are still in high school and friends I hung out with in high school and they took offense to it too. This is not just my school.. I was with kids who GO (as in right now) to schools other than mine and they said they feel the same way I do. I know that not everyone is going to think that not having sex in high school is bad... I know I don't think that way at all. But that's the way MOST kids in high school GENERALLY think. I don't think my high school, my group of friends, my whatever was "sad" because the general thought process was this way... I think it was normal for the time. I don't agree with the thought process... but I get it. And by the way, with everything that is generalized... any general trend... ESPECIALLY a trend in thought, there are going to be exceptions. I know that and you could point out several and it wouldn't matter. It's a general trend of a thought process amongst an age group. In general, sex is a casual thing to teens these days. If you don't do it before you graduate, generally speaking, people think there's something wrong. Either you're "crazy" and don't believe in sex before marriage or sex in high school or something... or no one wanted to do it with you. Either way, you're looked down upon. That's just the general feeling towards sex in high school.