Medicine
Selling them sex
John Link later
The Brook Advisory Centres have just celebrated their tenth an niversary by holding an elegant reception, presided over by Lady Brook, amid the chandeliers, silverware and panelling of a distinguished guild hall in the East End of London.
Indeed, it needed a positive effort of mind for the elderly participant, such as your medical correspondent, to realise that the whNe decorative façade was ultimately based upon the inelegant reality of the French letter and other, similarly, indisputably useful but unbeautiful products, and that the only advice that no child ever appeared to have received at a Brook Centre was the one word — "DON'T"! It may, perhaps, have been for this reason that the well known guest speaker, Dr. Roger Bannister, opened the evening with Considerable wit and personal charm, by pointing out that multi-sport community centres offered society
an unexceptionably worthy outlet for the enthusiasm of youth. Young people enjoyed gathering at such sports centres, where they could engage in meaningful, useful and healthy relationships, and sublimate their libidinal and aggressive urges in the traditional way.
The statistical report which followed Dr. Bannister was dull, but competent and, in the end impressive. There is no doubt but that the Brook Advisory Centres have grown and flourished in the past decade. Maps with ever larger superimposed blobs and graphs, or tables, to illustrate exponentially increasing popularity, left the enchanted audience in no doubt but that they were in on a good, and increasingly popular scene. More and more people are indisputably engaged in selling safe, cheap sex, unfettered by love, constancy, responsibility, morality or self-restraint, to an everincreasing clientele, whether above or below the age of consent, and regardless of parental wishes.
To those workers who have applied so much industry and enthusiasm to the project, this must certainly have been an evening for self-congratulation. To the sceptical observer, however, a nagging question loomed larger and larger. Was growth the end, in itself? Could a greater sale of ever cheaper contraceptives and more widespread sexual knowledge and competent sexuality at the earliest age really be the end purpose of it all, or was this merely the unglamorous means of achieving some worthy, but less obvious, aim?
The question was never answered. Nor is there any answer to be found in the glossy, well produced, Brook Centre's tenth annual report. Page 7 of this report, indeed, makes the issue less than clear when it enthusiastically describes the hilarious fun of a new type of group sex chat for boys and girls, called "Talkabout," with "no white coats, coffee and biscuits available and a background of pop music. . The largest group was 16. For example one 16-year-old who had been to a Talkabout session returned with a friend, in order — she said — 'to hear it all again'. . . The talk and laughter among the group waiting to see the doctor and the difficulty the staff had some evenings to close the sessions . . . convinced the staff they had managed to create the right atmosphere."
If happy hedonism is the sole aim of the Brook Advisory Centres then this should be clearly and unequivocally stated in terms, so that the public, which will in future foot most of the bill for these sex chats, may fully understand precisely what it is paying for and what it hopes to achieve. The public will then be in a position to compare the increasing sexual orientation among the young with the steadily rising venereal disease rate and, likewise to superimpose the graph of the logarithmic growth of attendance at Brook Centres upon the graph of soaring abortion rates. It can then decide
for itself whether the whole project is not misconceived, and whether it would not be in the greater public interest to concentrate on multi-sports centres instead.
Venereal disease, illegitimacy and abortion rates are, surely, the valid parameters by which the value of sex education must be assessed. Good intentions and plausible theories are not enough.
Those who set out to overthrow proven traditional and moral structures and restraints must bear a heavy burden of responsibility to demonstrate, by continuous clarity of aim, by self-assessment and by irrefutable published results, that they are not irresponsibly titillating the innocent young into a macabre-pitfall, all too easily glossed over at such an anniversary gathering.
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