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Emily, Jess, Hanna, when it comes to teens and sex, the language of "condoning" doesn't seem that useful to me. After all, it just reinforces a kind of pressure and rebellion, a dichotomy that takes authority and security away from the girl (or boy) trying to figure out how she feels about sex. And sex is, finally, extremely personal. That's part of what makes it so hard to agree about. So, Emily, rather than condone or disapprove, I think parents need to cast the discussion about teen sex in terms of autonomy and making good choices. (Also: Protection!!!) Basically, I think you say what my mom said to me, which is actually similar to what Tami said to Julia. In the midst of some crisis, I had mentioned that a friend of mine was having sex. My mom's response made me stop and think (even if it was awkward, too). She said, pretty simply, that sex was a very special thing that could be beautiful (yes, she used that word!), but sometimes wasn't. And that for my sake, she hoped I would make sure it happened in a way I felt good about. A lot of her meaning was conveyed in her tone and in her attitude, which was direct, inclusive, and not embarrassed. It had as large an impact on me as her words. It made me feel that having sex was my choice (which took it out of the realm of rebellious activity) but also that she had motherly hopes about how I'd feel about my choices.
Because sex is so personal, the idea of assigning an abstract age at which it is "OK" for kids to have sex doesn't feel terribly useful to me. (I grant that under 15 seems too young.) Put it this way: I had sex for the first time when I was 17, with a boyfriend I absolutely loved. In college a year or so later, I briefly went out with someone I liked but was much less close to. I am confident that if I'd "waited" and had had sex for the first time with him, I would not have felt as good or as secure about it. In other words, older is not necessarily better. Kids have to choose for themselves. They can only do this if they truly are choosing for themselves, if parents are helping them see that choice is a way out of peer pressure, and that their choice is valid. Talking openly--rather than handing down rules--has an additional boon: some studies show that countries or cultures where parents routinely talk to their kids about sex have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy and STDs.
On a side note: As a non-parent, it often seems to me that parents focus on the issue of age and sex because later always seems better to them. It means that much more time when they don't have to confront their own rightfully ambivalent, complex feelings about their kids having sex.
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Jess, I'm glad you brought up the Gardasil news. I'm amazed (if not surprised) by how different the rhetoric surrounding boys getting it is. A while back, I wrote about the totally bizarre idea that an HPV vaccine for girls would somehow promote promiscuity. As you may remember, this was the conservative critique opponents of the HPV vaccine: Having one would turn girls into sluts, and even allowing your teen daughter to getone somehow besmirched her purity. Never mind that according to the National Cancer Institute nearly 3700 women die a year of cervical cancer, which sometimes develops from the HPV virus; implicit in the opponents' critique was the idea that it was only "loose" girls who got HPV. (And I guess they don't matter as much. Or, serves them right.)
What was so strange was how the conservative firestorm somehow ignited another kind of anxiety, one more typically associated with crunchy liberal types: namely, vaccine anxiety. When Gardasil began to be administered, there were widespread reports of group fainting fits among the girls who received it. And so even liberals began to wary about the drug. I can't help but feel that the liberal anxiety grew out of the conservative one, partly because teenage girls, so quick to internalize external cues, were picking up on the fact that this particular vaccine had...drama at the heart of it. Every vaccine produces a few adverse reactions in those to whom it's administered; but in this case, those adverse reactions were being magnified, it seems, by the reactions of parents primed to be nervous about the vaccine, and by suggestible teenage girls who (in some cases, at least) had more of a psychosomatic response than a purely physical one.
The libertarian in me at times resists the idea of making any vaccine mandatory. But this vaccine will save women's lives. Cancer is not pretty. And it would be awful if our collective squeamishness about female adolescent sexuality meant that this vaccine never became as effective as it could be. To me, the great irony is this: We have been trying to come up with vaccines for cancer for decades. We have spent millions of dollars doing so. Now we found one. And no one wants to use it. Is teen sexuality that scary?