In overestimating young people’s sexual activity, society endorses it

“AS THE night progressed the party mood was dampened as fights broke out among several rowdy, drunken louts. Punches and kicks were thrown. Abusive language was hurled back and forth in attempts to provoke confrontation.

“One girl lay strewn across two stools, obviously distraught by her actions. She stared at her friend with bloodshot, weepy eyes and in slurred tones muttered the chilling, heartbreaking words of someone so young: ‘Do you wish you were still a virgin? Because I do.’”

Is this the new Ireland? Gemma Harding’s report in the Sunday World recently revealed the decadent milieu in which some of the nation’s teenagers socialise. Minors performing sex acts on each other, often in public places, and teenagers taking each other by surprise by doing lewd things to one another suddenly and without warning: it is very difficult to be specific without being disgusting.