"Sex without consequences"

Over at Pandagon, they are discussing the real motivations of the abstinence-only crowd. Since their methods are sure to cause an upsurge in unwanted pregnancies and STD's, their motivations can't be reducing those numbers. So what's their real motivations? Well, moralizing and acting superior are cited by a number of people. Making sure that god punishes the sinners by maxing out HIV transmission is considered. (Again, if god wants to strike down sinners, why does he need the Baptists' help? Can't he do it himself?) One poster mentions the ubiquitous tendency to decry people who have sex without consequences.
But why do they care if someone has sex without consequences? Where is it written that sex has to have "consequences"? What the hell does that mean, anyway?
My guess is that the motivations behind the belief that the government needs to be making sure that sex is a profoundly negative thing for young people is two parts jealousy and one part self-righteous pissiness. Brought up to believe that you had to be married to have sex, many of the abstinence-only types did just what they were told. And so sex did have consequences--marriage, mortgage, kids, job, debt, weekly church meetings to bore you to death. And they'll be damned if kids these days are going to escape their miserable fates. And they'll be especially damned if kids who have a little fun in the sack before they take on a lifetime's worth of responsibilities escape without getting sick. Or better yet, having the sudden consequence of a baby that forces the other responsibilities into your life.
But the fact of the matter is that marriage, mortgage, kids, job, debt and boring things are just part of growing up and taking on responsibilities. Sex is knit into the fabric of life and a huge part of it, but it isn't the sole cause of those "consequences" that are the inevitable result of just living. Those of us who have managed to learn about birth control and STD prevention and have sex without "consequences" seem to stumble into those "consequences" anyway.
But I suppose that those who have sex without "consequences" but fall into those "consequences" anyway aren't really getting punished enough. After all, if you have ways of having sex without marriage and children, then marriage and children are a choice you make freely. A chosen baby is not a consequence of sin. And if the fear is, as it seems to be for the Catholic Church, that people won't take on life's responsibilities like having children unless tricked into it by their hormones, well, the evidence that people choose adult responsibilities is right there for the taking. We've had the Pill for more than 40 years, and people are still having babies.
Of course, I think there's more to the whole idea that sex should have "consequences" than simple misery loves company thinking. Without a good dose of sexism, it's hard to whip up some passion for making sure that sex has consequences. It's not all people that should have to suffer for their sexuality; it's women. Removing the "consequence" of unwanted pregnancy from sex was a feminist-driven campaign and still is. And the results in women's lives when they are given the option to have "consequence"-free sex are dramatically feminist. Marriages are post-poned until later in women's lives. Number of babies are limited, freeing women to work. Women make their own money, freeing them from economic dependence on men. Take away the "consequences" of sex and you take away a weapon in keeping men's power over women.
Sometimes it's easy to get lost in amusement/horror over the prudery that attends the abstinence-only thinking and forget exactly what the ultimate goals are when it comes to separating people from contraception. This is about more even than the laudable goals of protecting the health of our young people in school now. This is specifically about making sure that the young women in school now are not being set up to be dependent on the young men beside them in those sex education classes.