Unmentionable

Boy, it's been a busy week and I feel like I haven't accomplished a thing--not a thing on my to-do list, anyway.

After meeting a mini-deadline last week, I needed to switch from nonfiction to fiction gear this week, but yesterday I took some time to write a proposal for an idea that hit me up side the head (the result of a year's percolation) and send it to my agent.

Today I spent most of the morning and early afternoon buying my husband a car for Christmas--now, don't think that I walked into the dealership and threw a stack of money on the desk. Ha! What I did do was pick out the car (via Consumer Reports), do the haggling over the phone (not hard, since the car went on clearance), and handled all the credit stuff. Signed our lives away for the next five years, and presto! New car hassles handled by the wife. Merry Christmas.

Finally got home, where a huge stack of pages awaited me--the first pages for THE ELEVATOR, which I have to go through for the last time before publication. So I've been busy, just not doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

Since I'm way off schedule, I wanted to blog about a book review I read last week in the Wall Street Journal. The review, by Danielle Crittenden, is of the book UNPROTECTED, by Anonymous, M.D.

The premise: young adults are endangering their emotional and physical lives by "free sex," yet no one wants to talk about it lest they be branded as intolerant. "Unfortunately," says Crittenden, "the young women described in UNPROTECTED have fallen victim to one of the few personal troubles that our caring professions refuse to treat or even acknowledge: they have been made miserable by their 'sexual choices.' And on that subject, few modern doctors dare express a word of judgment."

Doctors will warn people about fatty diets, but they won't tell young people that promiscuity can result in venereal disease now and cervical cancer later. They don't tell young people about the guilt and emotional trauma that can occur after a "problem pregnancy" is terminated by abortion.

The book's author, a medical doctor, treats Brian, a young homosexual man who is engaged in "high-risk sex" with several partners. But she can't insist that he be tested for AIDS. And if he were to submit to voluntary testing, and should it prove positive for HIV, she can't report the information to the local health department--even though she'd be required to do so if he had tuberculosis or some other contagious disease.

The author of the book, says Crittenden, "has published it anonymously precisely because she fears that if her employers and colleagues heard her unwelcome views, they would judge her negatively--and punish her, personally and professionally."

In this age of political correctness, we have found it easier to shut up than to be unpopular. But there are times when we must speak out. Someone, somewhere will be grateful that someone else had the courage.

Unprotected, by Anonymous, M.D. I'm going to look for a copy.

~~Angie