JONAH GOLDBERG is beating up on me over at The Corner about the teen sex post below. I kinda thought that might happen. But I don’t really disagree with this part:

Glenn, if it makes you feel better, think of “Teen” as a catchall phrase for poorly-educated people with bad or no jobs, little life experience and few life skills, raging hormones who mostly live with their parents. People — of any age – who fit this description shouldn’t be having too [much] sex, if you ask me.

Jonah’s basically describing the guests on Jerry Springer, for whom sex looks like a less desirable option (from society’s standpoint, not just their, ugh, potential partners’) with every passing year. And as someone in the comments section on the post below notes, sometimes the idea of a Norplant dart gun sounds appealing. I’m all for responsibility, but I think that the term “teen sex” is one of those media creations that lets them scare parents about 13-year-olds while showing provocative photos of 18-year-olds to boost circulation. There are a lot of reasons why policy entrepreneurs then jump on the bandwagon, but that doesn’t make it sounder.

As a noted Europhile, let me note that European countries somehow seem to have similar levels of teen sexual activity with much, much lower levels of pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Whether that’s replicable in the U.S., or whether we’d even want to replicate their approach in the U.S., is a separate question, but it indicates that the connection between teen sex and undesirable consequences isn’t set in stone.